September 13th, 2012

Wii U to have 2GB of RAM, and 25GB discs

33 Comments
Wii U Hardware Dimensions

Nintendo has shared a few specs about the Wii U, revealing that of the system’s 2GB worth of memory, 1GB of that is designated solely for the operating system. The dimensions of the hardware were also shared, along with the capacity of the discs (25GB). There’s images after the break.

  • uJheelyPimp

    Ok

  • abe

    Whao that has to be one buttery smooth console OS

  • Acephoenix

    Can’t wait to play with power! (respectful reference)

  • [V]ark

    I expected something else from the “images after the break” :P
    Whee..numbers~

  • Sdudyoy

    The release date for the wii U is 12.8.2012 the price for the basic bundle is 26.250 yen

  • http://www.facebook.com/audie.bowler Audie Bowler

    i think we all know that secondary 1gb ram will be open to some degree to developers maybe a access ram for sound and disc catching like gamcube had i dont see 1gb being needed constantly if there is a big OS and its running on the tri core i will be seriously pissed off put it on a sepertae arm 11 in the back ground i want that expresso IN GAME

    • AM

      I think that Expresso is going to be for games; Nintendo usually uses another processor for the OS, or Espresso could be a quad core and one core is dedicated to the operating system (remember how the developer leak stated that there was only 1 GB of memory when there is actually two, the developers could not access the other 1 GB, I think it is the same with the processor)

  • Bill Cosby

    Whoop ba doop!

    The disc read speed is 22.5 Megabytes per second!
    That’s just spiffy!
    Pudding pops for everyone!!

    • http://PolyKhromeGames.blogspot.com/ Brian Lockett

      Zip zop zoobity bop!

    • Bill Cosby

      Coo coo cachoo!

    • http://PolyKhromeGames.blogspot.com/ Brian Lockett

      They don’t know what the jazz is all about!

    • Okami

      Yep. And for comparison the PS3 has a read speed of only 9 Megabytes/s so games should load more than twize as fast which is nice, and the 360 has 15,85 Megabytes/s, so ~50% faster than that too. So a little less wait on the Wii U tjan what we are used to on the PS360 :)

    • Alex_Atkin_UK

      Except most games cache data onto the HDD on the PS3 and Xbox 360, so do not necessarily except that kind of improvement especially as the games have four times the RAM to fill with data. I suspect it will be quite comparable to the Xbox 360 though, which is not too bad especially without the use of a HDD cache.

      I’m certainly glad they didn’t adopt something crappy like the PS3 forced game installation. One of the big reasons I switched from PC to console was to get away from the “you do not have enough HDD space to play that game” fiasco. So I was NOT pleased with how the PS3 functions at all.

      Although, a lot of what slowed down the PS3 loading games directly off Bluray was NOT the read speed, it was the seek latency. So the fact we have more RAM is a big plus there, less likely to have to keep dropping stuff out of RAM and reloading it from disk again later.

    • Total911

      I love these comments! Keep em coming! XD

    • http://PolyKhromeGames.blogspot.com/ Brian Lockett

      It’ll be around forever. Heheheh!

  • Trulaw

    22.5 MB/S read speed is
    2.5X faster than the ps3 BD drive so it should have impressive load
    speeds. Cool

  • Nepenthe

    One Gig for the OS! That’s 32 times more than the Xbox 360 and 20.5 times more than the PS3. Good grief………………

  • Zack

    If disc space is about 25GB, then how will games be downloadable? Even if games don’t take up 25GB, the number must still be huge.

    • http://PolyKhromeGames.blogspot.com/ Brian Lockett

      And I think you’ve just brought out the chief reason why HD games will always rely on removable media like game discs.

    • Alex_Atkin_UK

      The theory was that you would be able to download them onto an external HDD connected via USB. We will have to wait and see if this is true but it would seem odd to completely avoid digital downloads just due to size.

      Its certainly true that its not going to be practical to use SD cards for games that could be up to 25GB in size.

    • http://PolyKhromeGames.blogspot.com/ Brian Lockett

      Yeah. It would be odd, and I don’t think gamers will avoid it. I think it’s most likely going to be the smaller games (like indie games) and downloadable content that see the most digital downloads.

      I wouldn’t want to wait hours or even days downloading a full-sized game I could’ve just gone to GameStop and bought all in like 15 minutes, but maybe if I’m traveling somewhere with my Wii U that’s not near a GameStop or I have no way of reaching GameStop for some reason, digital download of full games would be a godsend.

      I think buying the fuller-sized HD games will not only save time in acquiring the games, but also spare my 1TB HDD for more DLC, smaller games, and music/movies/photos I can put on my Wii U. But hey, I’m sure I’d buy and digitally download at least one full-sized games for Wii U.

    • Relytgninroht

      Not really. There are a lot of games that are relatively small in terms of disc space for HD consoles. I’ve seen retail games that only took up like 5 GB. Of course, most of the small games are multiplatform titles. Games developed for a system like the PS3 with a lot of disc space are generally much larger.

    • http://PolyKhromeGames.blogspot.com/ Brian Lockett

      True, not all HD console games are a full 25GB, and some of them don’t even hit 10GB in disc space. And early Wii U games are going to be mostly multiplatform and smaller games produced just to get something out there. But even a 5GB-10GB games takes several hours (or days, depending on your Internet service) to download.

      I wonder how much I’ll really be using digital distribution as a primary means of buying full-sized games. While I do think I’ll be using it, I don’t think I’ll want to spend hours or even days for downloading the fuller-sized games. I think it’s most likely going to be the smaller games (like indie games) and downloadable content that see the most digital downloads.

      But still, I think digital downloads of full games are a great option to at least have, and I’m sure I’ll be employing at least once a month (esp. if the Wii U allows you to download games while you’re playing, thanks to its 1GB of memory dedicated to its OS).

  • Turtshadow

    For comparison, the PS3 has around 500 mb of ram, and the 360 has about 400 mb. PC’s have at average 4gb of ram.

    • Alex_Atkin_UK

      Erm no, the PS3 has 256MB RAM and the 360 has 512MB (except the 360 assigns RAM to the GPU so what is available varies depending on how much GPU RAM each game needs).

      What is interesting is how much is assigned to the OS though. The Xbox 360 was able to do a lot of things in the popup guide while the game was still running in the background, in only 32MB RAM. It seems like on Wii U they went all out and you will be able to do pretty much anything with the game suspended in the background, as 1GB reserved for OS a an awful lot of memory.

      I wonder if part of that is actually reserved as cache memory (its a function of the OS after all) so technically IS used for the game but they don’t count it as such because its limited to pre-loading data off of the disk only? That would make sense as it would be the same principle as the Xbox 360 preloading data onto the HDD when you bootup a game.

    • http://PolyKhromeGames.blogspot.com/ Brian Lockett

      Actually, the PS3 has 256MB of main memory RAM and 256MB of RAM for its RSX graphics, so technically, it does feature 512MB of RAM.

    • Alex_Atkin_UK

      But you can’t include that “for comparison” to Wii U, as we have not been told how much GPU RAM the Wii U has, or if it just borrows it from main RAM like the Xbox 360.

      For comparison, the PS3 has 256MB of main memory and at launch 120MB of that was reserved for the OS leaving only 136MB for games. Today I believe its been reduced to 60MB for OS 196MB for games, but its still tiny compared to Xbox 360 and minute compared to Wii U.

      Fact, the Wii U has 5x the RAM available for games than the PS3, which should not be underestimated.

      The Wii U will allow open-world games like GTA with more items, more building interiors, less texture popup, as the limiting factor in these sorts of games is RAM. The fact it will allow reduced texture popup and higher resolution textures means its definitely superior to current-gen. By far Nintendo made the right choice, if you are going to skimp on anything it SHOULDN’T be RAM.

      Plus like I said, there is nothing to say that in a few years time Nintendo wont decide they can change the allocation so that more RAM can be used for games. It seems they are either just playing it safe for now so they are free to add lots of new OS features, or perhaps the GPU RAM is included in the OS RAM.

    • Alex_Atkin_UK

      Actually, this covers it quite well although they got the Xbox 360 wrong as it doesn’t reserve 256MB for OS, its more like 32MB.
      http://www.nintendo-gamer.net/2012/09/13/wii-u-faq-everything-you-need-to-know/

  • penubag

    Wewt now all you guys complaining about slow 3DS browser because of shared memory can sigh a relief

  • Hybrilynx

    images arent really useful here.

  • Tails the Foxhound

    Dat system memory, dat read speed. Hnng.

  • ARTICTHUNDER

    WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

  • http://www.nintendoworlds.com/members/turbopikachu.22921/ TurboPikachu

    DAT RAM & DISC SPEED