The Wii U is ‘surprisingly powerful’, says Rayman dev

The Wii U is a surprisingly powerful console and features lots of memory to enable huge textures, the creator of Rayman has said.

Speaking to Nintendo Power, as reported by Nintendo Everything, Michel Ancel claimed there were very few technical problems in developing for the console.

He explained that Ubisoft was not obliged to optimise features constantly for its upcoming title Rayman Legends, and said that the Wii U didn’t include problems such as fill-rate issues that affected the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Origins.

“It’s partly us – we improved the engine – but I think the console is quite powerful,” said Ancel.

“Surprisingly powerful. And there’ a lot of memory. You can really have huge textures, and it’s crazy because sometimes the graphic artist – we built our textures in very high-dentition. They could be used in a movie. Then we compress them, but sometimes they forget to do the compression and it still works! So yeah, it’s quite powerful.

“It’s hard sometimes when you’re one of the first developers because it’s up to you to come up with solutions to certain problems. But the core elements of the console are surprisingly powerful.”

Ancel added that he felt because Ubisoft was developing for Wii U, it also didn’t have to worry about cross-platform optimisation given the unique features of the console, meaning it could push the system to its limits.

Rayman Legends is currently in development at Ubisoft Montpellier, and is slated for release in early 2013