Does the Dolphin team have any plans for Wii U support?

[superluig164]

Since the Wii U is basically a Wii with some updates, just like the Wii is to the Gamecube, I would think (relatively of course) that it would be decently easy to add Wii U support once every game in the Gamecube and Wii library is fully supported. I've seen some things online about the Gamepad being easily hackable, and also as demonstrated with CEMU you don't even really need to have both displays, you just render the Gamepad in 1080p. Does anyone know?

[Helios]

Dolphin will never support Wii U. Dolphin is not a Wii U emulator. This will not change.

Dolphin supports GC and Wii because disregarding some smaller details, they're effectively the same console.

[superluig164]

Alright then. I thought the Wii U and Wii were in a similar situation, the Wii U just renders at 1080p and has better shaders? Or am I wrong?

[JosJuice]

Alright then. I thought the Wii U and Wii were in a similar situation, the Wii U just renders at 1080p and has better shaders? Or am I wrong?

The differences are much bigger than that.

[Helios]

Well, at a very high level...

The Wii U uses PPC cores, sure. But, three of them. And emulating a multi-core system is a lot different than emulating a single core system, even if the arch is the same. The GPU is also wildly different than what was in the GC/Wii and would require a completely different way of emulating it. At this point you're basically writing two emulators, GC/Wii and Wii U, and shipping it as one program. We're not RetroArch.

The reason why the Wii U has perfect backwards compatibility with the Wii (And GC if you hack the vWii mode), is because the Wii U literally ships with Wii hardware on the board. In vWii mode it turns off two PPC cores and downclocks it to what the Wii was, and kicks on the Wii GPU shipped on the board.

[superluig164]

Oh. Well that definitely changes my mind LOL. I thought it was the same deal as the Wii and GC, where to play Wii games it just underclocked the GPU and CPU, instead of just literally running Wii hardware. Wow. I guess I'll just have to wait for CEMU to be good, then! Although, it is on a really good start, it has lag here and there but it runs really well for a 1 year old emulator. The only thing it doesn't support is the tilt controls and Wiimotes, but that's coming I'm sure.

[Helios]

Cemu has been in development for much longer than a year. It's only been publicly released recently.

[superluig164]

Oh. Good to know. Thanks. It's still very good for its age though.

[mbc07]

This question has been already answered a thousand of times now. Dolphin does not emulate the Wii U and will not emulate it at all.