The Wii U's Graphics Card Has Been Revealed and Yes, It Has Better Graphics Than the Xbox 360 or PS3

The Nintendo Wii U has been outed as featuring a last-gen Radeon graphics card. Now upon first thought, you'd think that means the graphics will suck. Keep in mind, the 360 and PS3 are running on 5 year old hardware and continue to produce impressive visuals. The Wii U's GPU may be last-gen, but it's also more powerful than the 360 or PS3. For starters, the 360 is well known at this point to be a souped up version of the ATI X1900, which can barely run DirectX 9. The new, "custom-built" GPU, now thought to be a modified ATI R770, can run DirectX 10.1, which will make the Wii U the most powerful console graphically on its release.

It's obviously not as powerful as current-gen PC GPUs, but those things are gigantically huge, like my Nvidia GTS 450 which barely fits into my case (and recently crapped out). Picking an older GPU makes sense, since developers know exactly what to expect from the Wii U's graphic capabilities. Will the Wii U run Crysis on its max PC settings? Probably not, but when new 3rd party games are being developed next year, you can expect the Wii U to be the new console of choice for development with the other consoles receiving inferior ports.

Of course, the Wii U is not going to be sold until after March 31, 2012, so there's still a possibility that the Wii U could choose to use an even more powerful GPU between then and now. I was speaking with my friend Martin the other day and we were discussing what the Wii U will truly be capable of graphically. Nintendo has a history of showing tech demos and then later showcasing what their console is truly capable of. This was the Nintendo Ultra's tech demo, before it was called the Nintendo 64:

Pictured are Shadow, Locke Cole, and Terra Branford of Final Fantasy VI, rendered as if they were on the N64. Of course, we know now that the N64 was capable of much better graphics, even running some PS1 games on a cartridge despite containing less memory than a disc. Now what about the Gamecube demo? Back when it was called the "Dolphin," Nintendo ran a tech demo that looked like this:

Of course now we know that the Gamecube is possible of much better graphics, especially with its swan song, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

When the Wii was revealed, it was widely known that the Wii would have graphics that were slightly better or on par with the original Xbox, meaning that they were going to be a slight improvement over the Gamecube. This was not a secret and some people were turned off by the Wii because Nintendo chose not compete with the Xbox 360 or PS3 graphically, instead focusing on gameplay and marketing the system to people who would not normally play video games.

With the Wii U, we got another infamous tech demo, showing a possibility of what the Wii U could run. In the tech demo, they once again used Link to showcase what a Wii U Zelda game might look like.

This is of course, just preliminary and theoretical. While we all know that the Wii U will have Mario, Zelda, and Super Smash Bros., we can only fantasize over what they will look like. Mario will probably remain cartoony, but the Zelda franchise has two distinct art styles: realistic and cel-shaded. Will we see another Wind Waker or Skyward Sword hit the Wii U? Or will we see another Twilight Princess? Only time will tell, but until then rest assured that while Microsoft and Sony seem to want to hold onto their older machines, Nintendo is going to go right ahead and sell great games with great graphics.