November 17th, 2012

Mass Effect 3 has “technical issues” on the Wii U

68 Comments
Mass Effect 3 Wii U 1 Small 2

According to Jeremy Parish of 1UP, Mass Effect 3 on the Wii U has technical issues. He explains:

This version of ME3 seems a lot less visually stable than, say, the Xbox 360 version — the frame rate is choppier, the animation seems rougher. The audio suffers, too; while the music and sound effects have come over fine, all the dialogue has a hollow, echoing quality to it.

Combined with the fact that the future downloadable content might not be released for the platform, this version of the game is appearing less and less appealing as time marches on.

  • Big E

    Surprise?

    • Bob.

      Yes, actually.
      Considering Batman and Blops run fine.

    • Pyroblock

      ea didnt make those games -_-

    • http://www.facebook.com/jack.smith.315080 Jack Smith

      Technically Bioware made this game, and yes I’m still getting it to play on the gamepad alone, while it may not be the best version I’ll be happy playing this game laying back comfortably in my bed.

    • Big E

      At least these reported issues from one person aren’t game-breaking…How does Batman: AC look compared to the PS3/360 version?

    • http://nottoolikely.co.uk Wizzer10

      Batman, I’d say is on par with PS3. I wasn’t expecting miracles but the extra content makes it a must buy anyway. AC3 however looks way better. Due to short dev times, the PC version isn’t that much better than the console ones meaning that the Wii U version has the SAME graphics as the PC version! Amazing right?

    • Jeff Smalley

      …. ACIII has DX11, doubled and Quadrupled texture sizes

    • http://nottoolikely.co.uk Wizzer10

      Well, obviously DX11 isn’t possible on consoles. As for the texture sizes, due to the impressive Wii U memory, it has double in gameplay, quadruple in cutscenes. I assume this is what you mean?

    • Nepenthe

      The first review I’ve seen (I think it was from Destructoid) mentioned that Batman didn’t look as good as the PS3 version. Textures on further away objects were blurrier and less detailed.

    • AxGamer

      From what I heard AC3 for Wii U is the superior version.

  • Michael Mullins

    I imagine it’s the fault of the team porting it, since all the other ports like Assassin’s Creed III and Arkham City are running flawlessly.

    • http://www.fanfiction.net/u/3204673/ GameManiac

      And for Arkham City, not just running flawlessly, but packed with all of the available DLC and with exclusive content.
      So freaking glad that I’m getting that game.

  • ABEzilla116

    I can’t help but feel like EA is doing this out if spite. Nintendo said no to letting them handle their online with that shitty Origin, so they cancelled Battlefield 3 and they’re botching the hell out of this port.

    • Michael Mullins

      To be fair, they announced that Battlefield 4 would be coming to the system instead, which is honestly better than porting Battlefield 3 when it’s so close to being replaced by the sequel, which would make the port of 3 worthless since everyone would move over to 4′s online.

  • http://twitter.com/bmcj199 Brandon Martinez

    If people think its because the Wii U isn’t powerful enough, I’m going to gut their organs and shove them up a cat’s anus. This is lousy porting!

    • http://www.fanfiction.net/u/3204673/ GameManiac

      Well Brandon, I hope your schedule schedule is free, because I believe you’re going to be very busy doing all of that.

    • AxGamer

      Knowing how haters work they probably will

    • http://twitter.com/AndrewS44084834 AndrewSimon

      Roger implied I am alarmed that some one able to get paid $6710 in a few weeks on the network.

    • http://twitter.com/AndrewS44084834 AndrewSimon

      …..goo.gl/WJSRR (Click on Home)

    • http://www.facebook.com/jack.smith.315080 Jack Smith

      Leave the poor cas alone and shove them up your anus

    • http://www.facebook.com/JonathanRider Johnny Rider

      They think the future of the Wii U is in their hands. They don’t realise the future of their company is in our hands. It’s a shame people buy their products. When was the last time they made a genuinely good game?

  • dubYA

    Who has two thumbs and is never giving another cent to EA?

    This guy.

  • DarkToonLink

    Bah, I was considering getting this game. Might get ACIII instead.

    • http://www.facebook.com/JonathanRider Johnny Rider

      Get ACIII, Ubisoft have made an effort porting that game. Don’t give any money to EA.

  • Ichigo Kurosaki

    And now they only have one decent game coming to Wii U. Most Wanted. Hopefully that doesn’t dissapoint. If so….EA should just stick to Madden.

  • TheShmow

    It looks more and more as if EA is sabotaging the Wii U. A shitty ME3 Port with no DLC – after they said they won’t do the trilogy. Before that, a Fifa 13 that inexplicably lacks features the other versions have – and an obviously cop-out excuse about not having enough time.

    • Krawu

      If they wanted to sabotage the WiiU wouldn’t it be cheaper to simply not release anything, so everyone says that it has bad 3rd party support and no one buys it?

    • newblette

      Indeed. but EA being EA still wants to sell it to people that don’t keep up. so it’ll at least sell like 500 copies from people that didn’t know this. and truly EA sucks.

    • http://www.facebook.com/JonathanRider Johnny Rider

      They have plenty of cash to throw around, they can make the Wii U look rubbish by doing it this way and then not support it in the future. Making it look like a bad console will stop other developers getting on board. Not having EA doesn’t make for bad 3rd party support since a lot of people these days think they suck.

  • Mr. Foogy

    They must have rushed it severely.

  • blabla

    All of this is intentionally. They want this port to sell bad so they have an excuse not to work with the system. That is why they won’t release DLC for it and they announced the ME Collection for PS3 and 360, so this port is irrelevant. And of top of that, it’s a bad port because they didn’t put time in to it, then again, why put time in something you don’t want to be sold…

  • VioletFox

    I hope they put out a patch to fix this, cause I was planning on getting it. I guess I’ll wait and see.

  • EASUCKS

    And they still want it to sell for it to get the Trilogy. Well i don’t know about you but EA seems to be hating on Nintendo Badly. first 6 months working on a game the first 2 months worked on creating a “plan”and beginning development. the second 2 months on making something innovative for the control and the last 2 on getting done developing and NOT putting in the physics engine. and then now the porting company makes an EA game crap. but only on Nintendo.. WTF.

    • http://www.facebook.com/JonathanRider Johnny Rider

      It’s well known they don’t like Nintendo or the Wii U. They’re trying to make the console look bad. The problem they have is that when other developers actually try to make a good game on it and all these problems don’t exist on those game people will realise it’s EA’s fault not Nintendo’s.

  • http://www.facebook.com/8xBIT Thomas Reifenberg

    Echoing sound? Try muting the gamepad maybe?

  • suportedcofe

    They’re making this version shitty on purpose so when they see it doesn’t sell they have an excuse to not make Wii U games, why do you think they are making a ME trilogy for the 360 and ps3 and not the Wii U.

  • Nepenthe

    A little bit of doubt is creeping in. It’s not just ME3. Sega Racing and Epic Mickey 2 are both apparently having frame rate issues. Likely a fill rate issue (gets smoother on the Gamepad, which only puts up 410K pixels whereas 720p is 922K pixels and 1080p is 2,100K pixels).

    PS3 and 360 level graphics are fine, and can produce enough to allow lots of creativity, do some nice HD remakes, port a wide variety of current gen games, but I also want the thing to be able to shift loads of polygons and paint lots of pixels. These early results, though early, aren’t filling me with a good dose of confidence. I’d like to at least be on par with a system that is said to have very similar architecture / easy recompiling but that debuted seven years ago.

    Also, have you seen a single frame of any game (taking frame RATE out of the equation) that couldn’t have been done on PS3 / 360?

    • Michael

      The Zelda HD demo back from 2011.

    • Nepenthe

      Nice try, but that was not a game. That was a tech demo and likely didn’t represent the final Wii U consumer hardware.

      I remember the Zelda demo for the Ultra 64 back in 1995. Didn’t really resemble what we finally got in Ocarina of Time on the N64 (which was and now on 3DS is still a great game but graphically it was nothing like that tech demo).

      No, the correct answer is that *so far* nothing on the Wii U displays any graphical complexity or elegance that would not be possible on the PS3 / 360.

    • torpedofin

      The only thing I know is that Frozenbyte said that some parts in Trine 2 Director’s cut could not run on the PS3 and Xbox360. But yea, the Wii U is inevitably more powerful. The tech within it is 5 years newer Nintendo would of had to actively try to make a weaker system and even then it would be more expensive to restart production of the weaker GPUs and CPUs.

    • Nepenthe

      First indication we’ve gotten so far is toward the speed of the RAM. It appears the XBox 360 RAM is about 32% faster than the Wii U’s. Granted, the Wii U has around double the RAM available for loading game content. So inevitably it’s going to be tough to say which one is more powerful (much like it’s tough to say that about the 360 and PS3).

      The Wii U is clearly in the same general vicinity though. My guess is that if you’re talking straight port you’ll never quite reach the level of the 360 on it (in that respect the 7-year old 360 has more raw power) but if you take advantage of the GPGPU, the out of order execution, the additional RAM, and the more advanced shader technology, you may be able to make up for its deficiencies in other ways (in that respect the Wii U does an end around and doesn’t need as much raw power to match the 360).

    • http://www.facebook.com/JonathanRider Johnny Rider

      You need to think back 7 years when they first debuted the 360. It couldn’t do much better than the previous gen for a year or two either (apart from it being in HD).

    • Symbol de Au

      Pretty sure they fixed Sonic and All Stars racing to where it’s only second to PC in terms of frame rate.

  • http://www.facebook.com/tony.lane.35 Tony Lane

    EA have not only screwed Nintendo… but also developer Straight Right.

  • Big E

    Know what sucks more than these Mass Effect news? Hostess shutting down. No more Twinkies (Not that I cared for the snack, but one of my favorite movies had Twinkies as supporting cast).

  • danpie

    I dont understand why this is a problem this is suppost to be a new consule its unexectable that a last gen consule beats it

  • Mseevers95

    EA did a half assed job and they KNOW it. Honestly I think there’s a good chance that they don’t actually want to put any games on the WiiU and they hope that by porting over a crap version of ME3 that Nintendo won’t ask them for more games.

  • http://www.facebook.com/JonathanRider Johnny Rider

    EA not doing a proper job of it, what a surprise…

  • NEStalgia

    We hate you, EA. ~Sincerely, everyone.

  • Big E

    SURPRISE! The DKC games have been taken off the NA Wii Shop Channel without warning.

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

      Why? DKC is Rare’s effort and Nintendo’s IP… We’re on an EA-related post, so that doesn’t really fit in…
      But still, I wonder why NOA pulled them from the Wii Shop…

    • Big E

      Wanted to do something random and is quite newsworthy.

  • BigRedBro

    2 MORE HOURS!! (NA)

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

    But as we all know, this won’t stop us Nintendo gamers who have never played an ME game from giving ME3 a go… :/

    • Symbol de Au

      It should. Honestly they screwed up way too much with this game.

  • BigRedBro

    Wii U OUT NOW!!!! WELCOME WI U!!!

  • Jairo

    I know this is the Wii U blog and not the normal wii one, but this is just a quick question…
    since when does the Wii have an official Youtube app?!?!? O.O

    • Bill

      Thursday

  • OMFG nintendo

    Wait guys, wii u comes out today right? And its in stores today in north america right?

    • Symbol de Au

      Yep.

    • OMFG nintendo

      DUBADHDNZBSKAHQAJK TIME TO GO SHOPPING

  • lynn7219

    Wii U consoles are available in US now. Found this to be a useful site to search for Wii U.
    zoolert.com/nintendo-wii-u-in-stock-tracker/

  • IkeFE

    If EA is hurting anyone with this, its EA.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Roy-Lagendijk/770149065 Roy Lagendijk

    EA sucks anyway imo.. Almost none of their games interest me. Of course there’s probably some exceptions, but overall.

  • dog man

    Spec rumor doing the rounds wiiu ram is ddr3 @ 17gb bndwidth well thats hourse crap as ddr3@ 800mhz 1600mhz effective dualchannel @128bit bus witch wiiu has =25.6gb bandwidth not 17 gb so the lets try and discredit wiiu crap has well and trully started

  • Total911

    VIVA WIIU!

  • treacletingle

    Uh, other websites have compared it to the 360 version and have concluded that it’s the same, framerate issues and all, so this is nothing but anti WII U BS progaganda, and this article should be discarded.

  • Super Nintendo Boy

    yeah, I’m hearing lots of bad comments about Mass Effect 3 on Wii U which is one of my favorite games I have it on the pc OMG the graphics is real I’m using Nvidia SLI cards and a i7 Quad Core and 64Gbs of ddr3 RAM the game is maxed out in performance I would have to rent Wii U’s ME3 play it for my self and make a judgement cause I don’t believe in IGN I don’t believe in Euro Games I do my own reviews and post it I don’t choice favorites I tell it how it is real time comments