Wii U hardware ‘on par with current gen tech’

Nintendo’s next generation console will perform at a level similar to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, according to a game director at Texas studio Vigil Games.

Marvin Donald said the studio was able to port its current project, Darksiders 2, to Wii U development kits with relative ease.

“So far the [Wii U] hardware’s been on par with what we have with the current generations,” he told Game Reactor.

“Based on what I understand, the resolution and textures and polycounts and all that stuff, we’re not going to being doing anything to up-res the game, but we’ll take advantage of the controller for sure.”

An independent studio source previously told Develop that the Wii U performs about twice as fast as the Xbox 360, though none of the console’s details have been confirmed. A separate report suggested its performance was many times greater than current-gen.

Donald said the Wii U’s unique tablet controller “has been great to work with”.

“Now it’s just down to deciding what we really want to do to make it a unique experience on the Wii U; taking advantage of the extra screen and the touch capability and all that,” he said.

“So, we’ll have a few new features for sure, but I think visually, for the most part, it’ll be pretty much the same.”