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[Cow Mengde]

Choo choo?

Anyway, I found another candidate, and this one seems a lot more likely: DMP SMAPH-S

Would be very nice if the 3DS is capable of 106 million polygons a second.

 

[ksamedi]

Those are entirely new types of games though, games that didn't even require the two screen (you could say that they require the touch screen, but everything has a touch screen now, and like 3D, touch screens were nothing new, so I would compare the 3DS' 3D more to the two screen feature of the DS than to the touch screen feature). I would guess that there's probably not going to be too many games that provide entirely new experiences based on 3D, you can turn the feature off.

Also, a lot of people are saying things like "Nintendo will probably make sure people buy it," but how exactly do you propose they do this? Marketing games to people who don't traditionally play games was a pretty obvious maneuver, and now Apple has that market. Do you think Nintendo will have an ad just saying "You want this" and people will forget that there's another device that does all the gaming they want and much more for the same price?

Why do you keep assuming Apple has that market? From what we know, the DS has sold and is still selling pretty well and all kinds of people buy it, not only non gamers. For Apple to be able to directly compete with the 3DS I believe that Apple needs a specialized gaming device. The iphone is too limited in functionality to be able to compete. Why would you think it can compete with a specialized gaming hardware that has a lot of functionality built into it and something completely new like 3D?

 

[Fourth Storm]

:lol

The plot thickens!

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Would be very nice if the 3DS is capable of 106 million polygons a second.

That would be pretty much a large amount of overkill for a platform with tiny screens.

 

[selig]

I understand all that, in fact it's one of the main points in my posts in this thread; I don't see why people would want to blow money on a 3DS when there's other things at similar price points that play the games they want to play and way more.

I would assume that many of the people buying an HDTV because of the analog/ digital conversion or to play the Wii are people who don't a new TV very often and who won't buy a new one that they have 3D, just like they won't buy a 3DS when they just bought one recently and there's other more attractive devices out there now.

Just to clarify again, I'm not saying it will sell poorly by any means, just that they'll lose a lot of the "casual" market.

Wait, you´re saying that there are more attractive gaming handhelds than what the 3DS, the next Nintendo-handheld, is going to be?

 

[dr3upmushroom]

Why do you keep assuming Apple has that market? From what we know, the DS has sold and is still selling pretty well and all kinds of people buy it, not only non gamers. For Apple to be able to directly compete with the 3DS I believe that Apple needs a specialized gaming device. The iphone is too limited in functionality to be able to compete. Why would you think it can compete with a specialized gaming hardware that has a lot of functionality built into it and something completely new like 3D?

What games do you associate with casual gamers and the DS? Nintendogs, Layton, Brain Age, all can be done on anything with a touch screen, and people who are into them are going to be more attracted to the other stuff an iTouch can do. Maybe someone who considers themselves a gamer the Apple devices are limited in gaming ability (I'm not sure what you mean by calling them limited in functionality, they do far more than the 3DS will be capable of) but to people who just want to pop in a time waster now and again, there's no need for a dedicated gaming machine.

 

[Fourth Storm]

That would be pretty much a large amount of overkill for a platform with tiny screens.

I doubt those are real world figures. I think some of the latest in the SGX series claim similar performance.

 

[Cow Mengde]

That would be pretty much a large amount of overkill for a platform with tiny screens.

Depends on the resolution of the screen. If it's 480p, it's not overkill. This is all just an assumption of course.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

That would be pretty much a large amount of overkill for a platform with tiny screens.

Ehh. Of course not official yet but it seems very very likely it will be pushing quite more than SD amounts of pixels.

 

[Mutagenic]

Better now?

No, because that wasn't your response to Father Brain. Whatever, I'm done arguing about it. I do get what your overall point was, and I agree.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

What games do you associate with casual gamers and the DS? Nintendogs, Layton, Brain Age, all can be done on anything with a touch screen, and people who are into them are going to be more attracted to the other stuff an iTouch can do.

Sure they'll be done on anything with a touchscreen now that Nintendo (and Level 5 with Layton) has made them into a big deal. But what's important is where the next Brain Age and Nintendogs will be exploding first.

 

[Snakeyes]

Great find! From what little information is available in that pdf it seems perfectly suited. Of course, with a scalability of 1-16 fragment and 1-8 vertex processors even if we had confirmation that this is it it wouldn't tell us much about the performance that can be expected.

Are the features in the box at the right anything special?

 

[ksamedi]

Sure they'll be done on anything with a touchscreen now that Nintendo (and Level 5 with Layton) has made them into a big deal. But what's important is where the next Brain Age and Nintendogs will be exploding first.

Exactly.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

All Nintendo hardware is significantly bottlenecked seemingly by design. From piss poor CPU's(SNES), to anemic texture memory(N64), low system ram and small disc media (GCN), and just purely dated hardware (Wii).

This is a company that will severely bottleneck their hardware to squeeze out a buck.

I don't expect the 3DS to be any different. I'm going to go into E3 with this as my 3DS archetype. GCN-lite on the hardware side. If they do more I'll be shocked.

 

[Durante]

Are the features in the box at the right anything special?

Not really, it seems like a bog-standard OpenGL ES 2.0 device. Which should be just perfect for DS as long as performance/watt is good.

 

[Fourth Storm]

Not really, it seems like a bog-standard OpenGL ES 2.0 device. Which should be just perfect for DS as long as performance/watt is good.

I wonder how it would work out for DS emulation... This is one of the few solid facts we know, and must be kept in mind when assessing the likelyhood of any graphics solution.

 

[Snakeyes]

Not really, it seems like a bog-standard OpenGL ES 2.0 device. Which should be just perfect for DS as long as performance/watt is good.

Is this ≈GC, ≈Wii, ≈360 level tech?

I feel like a caveman :lol

 

[fernoca]

Those are entirely new types of games though, games that didn't even require the two screen (you could say that they require the touch screen, but everything has a touch screen now, and like 3D, touch screens were nothing new, so I would compare the 3DS' 3D more to the two screen feature of the DS than to the touch screen feature). I would guess that there's probably not going to be too many games that provide entirely new experiences based on 3D, you can turn the feature off.

Also, a lot of people are saying things like "Nintendo will probably make sure people buy it," but how exactly do you propose they do this? Marketing games to people who don't traditionally play games was a pretty obvious maneuver, and now Apple has that market. Do you think Nintendo will have an ad just saying "You want this" and people will forget that there's another device that does all the gaming they want and much more for the same price?

that's why all my responses has a wait and see attitude..
We don't know prices, we don't know target demographics (if any)..for all we know the millions buying Apple products are not the same millions buying Nintendo ones..

That's their job, whether they succeed or fail we have to see..how many years it will take them is another.

Just because there are others doing something similar, doesn't mean they are even competing or targeting the same demographic..with the millions of people out there there's no way of knowing that the millions buying Apple products not buy anything else, or vice-versa. So being something out there that does more for the same price, is no guarantee that people are going to choose that one, over the other. Brand loyalty, hype, advertising and word of mouth is what decides or convinces many to choose..if they have to. because at the same time, just because some choose A, don't mean they won't choose B..

 

[DonMigs85]

All Nintendo hardware is significantly bottlenecked seemingly by design. From piss poor CPU's(SNES), to anemic texture memory(N64), low system ram and small disc media (GCN), and just purely dated hardware (Wii).

This is a company that will severely bottleneck their hardware to squeeze out a buck.

I don't expect the 3DS to be any different. I'm going to go into E3 with this as my 3DS archetype. GCN-lite on the hardware side. If they do more I'll be shocked.

you know, I've always wondered how different things would be today if Nintendo gave the N64 a 4x CD-ROM drive, 8MB of RAM from the start and at least a 16 kilobyte texture cache.

 

[charlequin]

It's impossible to say before seeing what the 3DS is. If it keeps the <$200 price point, I'll agree with you, but especially if this IGN rumor turns out to be accurate, it's seeming like the 3DS will be a more expensive, enthusiast thing, in which case Nintendo could tailor game like Zelda to the enthusiast machine and casual games could be tailored to the casual machine, with added stuff if played on the enthusiast machine.

I don't think the assumption that Nintendo is run entirely by idiots is a great place to start this discussion.

I can't believe that Nintendo will just say "See ya!" to all of the people who own a DS but don't buy games too regularly

Do you not, like, understand how console transitions work?

Stores are not going to phase out their DS sections, the hardware is not going to stop being manufactured -- but there is absolutely no reason for Nintendo to continue releasing new DS software beyond the 4-ish titles they already have in the pipeline.

The thing is Kindle exists so why people think it's beyond possibility to do any of this even on a global scale is beyond me.

Hey, here's a crazy idea -- what if you, like, looked up where the Kindle is available, how long it took to become available in those places, how well it works there, how much you pay to use it, and what the holdup was in making it available in those places, then used that to inform your argument?

What I don't like is the 'Death Star' mentality in technology products of 'OMG LOOK AT ALL THAT SHADERZ AND RAMZ'.

That's not really how I'd put it. Shaders are good not so much for making things more powerful as for making it easier for developers to use the power that's already present. (See: Flipper hardware that most devs can't or won't use as well as Nintendo does.) RAM is pretty much always a strictly good thing to have more of.

Basically I'd be pretty irritated to hear that Nintendo was cheaping out on shader-enabled hardware (i.e. making it needlessly harder on devs) or RAM (i.e. screwing up the ability of devs to produce smooth games with good IQ) but I'm not going to worry nearly as much about them using "underpowered" CPU/GPUs.

Why exactly are people upgrading to HDTV's if they can't tell the difference between a high and low resolution image?

Expensive enthusiast systems will sell on brand name alone and HDTVs are being adopted for their superior resolution. Are you by any chance posting from mid-2006?

HDTVs sell because they are a) big, b) wide, and c) flat. That is the sum total of why 99% of consumers buy them. In fact, you'll find that far more people use the terms "widescreen," "flatscreen," or "plasma" to refer to their TVs than say HDTVs, outside of narrow enthusiast circles.

... could 3DSWare/Play be the name given to backwards compatibility?

No.

 

[dr3upmushroom]

I don't think the assumption that Nintendo is run entirely by idiots is a great place to start this discussion.


Do you not, like, understand how console transitions work?

Stores are not going to phase out their DS sections, the hardware is not going to stop being manufactured -- but there is absolutely no reason for Nintendo to continue releasing new DS software beyond the 4-ish titles they already have in the pipeline.


Expensive enthusiast systems will sell on brand name alone and HDTVs are being adopted for their superior resolution. Are you by any chance posting from mid-2006?

HDTVs sell because they are a) big, b) wide, and c) flat. That is the sum total of why 99% of consumers buy them. In fact, you'll find that far more people use the terms "widescreen," "flatscreen," or "plasma" to refer to their TVs than say HDTVs, outside of narrow enthusiast circles.

I haven't said that Nintendo is run by idiots, in fact I'm calling the people I'm arguing with idiots and explaining why the way I'm predicting they will act makes much more sense.

Why exactly do you think Nintendo will completely drop support? You admit yourself that people don't buy HDTV's for the superior quality, then go on to say that Nintendo should drop support for the DS since people will buy the 3DS for its superior quality.

At least I think that's why you claim HDTV's are being sold, first you say they're being purchased for their increased resolution, then in the same post you go on to say that 99% of consumers buy them because they're big, wide, and flat. Do you not, like, understand how formulating an argument works?

 

[blu]

Yep, it's TBR: http://developer.amd.com/gpu_assets/gdc2008_ribble_maurice_TileBasedGpus.pdf

a tiler does not automatically mean opaque overdraw elimination. and AFAIK, the yamatos are not trying to eliminate opaque overdraw - they just do early-z*

They are more flexible, no doubt about it. But really, don't believe the Nvidia marketing bullshit. That kind of performance might be achievable in netbooks, but when Tegra is used in handheld devices, it's clocked much, much slower.

you're correct to be skeptical there - handheld SoCs are just approaching the true .5GPix/s mark (no depth discard, etc).


* not unlike intel GMAs, though there that feature was but an on-paper bullet point, as its driver support was spotty at best :\

 

[dr3upmushroom]

Sure they'll be done on anything with a touchscreen now that Nintendo (and Level 5 with Layton) has made them into a big deal. But what's important is where the next Brain Age and Nintendogs will be exploding first.

OK, I agree, but why do you think that they will appear on the 3DS? Not literally the sequels to Brain Age and Nintendogs, obviously, but the next games that bring in a huge audience like they did?

 

[Durante]

Is this &#8776;GC, &#8776;Wii, &#8776;360 level tech?

In terms of architecture/programmability it would be most like Xbox 1 if you wan to make a console comparison (or maybe even the PS3's RSX). For performance there is a large range depending on how many units are used.

 

[Snakeyes]

In terms of architecture/programmability it would be most like Xbox 1 if you wan to make a console comparison. For performance there is a large range depending on how many units are used.

Sounds good to me.

 

[GDGF]

Choo choo?

Anyway, I found another candidate, and this one seems a lot more likely: DMP SMAPH-S

That sounds nice and reasonable. Keeping my eye on this possibility.

Just 10 more days until the big show, and when the weekend passes, just one more week!

 

[Thunder Monkey]

you know, I've always wondered how different things would be today if Nintendo gave the N64 a 4x CD-ROM drive, 8MB of RAM from the start and at least a 16 kilobyte texture cache.

Yeah, but that's like asking what if the PS2 had a real GPU?

It'd be an entirely different system.:lol

 

[blu]

In terms of architecture/programmability it would be most like Xbox 1 if you wan to make a console comparison (or maybe even the PS3's RSX). For performance there is a large range depending on how many units are used.

today's ES 2.0 is notably more advanced architecturally than xbox's nv2a.

* fp pipelines (vs 10-12bit fixed point from the ps1.1 era)
* many times larger program contexts (shader parameters, shader temporaries, etc)
* many times longer vertex and fragment shaders
* many times more dependent texture reads
* vertex textures
/non-exhaustive list of off-the-tip-of-my-hat advantages, not even touching on optional ES 2.0 features common among the mid/high-end ES 2.0 parts

essentially, ES2.0 is a small step behind today's desktop architectures. the biggest difference being geometry shaders in the core specs.

 

[perfectchaos007]

OMG almost 12000 posts on rumors and speculation. I <3 GAF

 

[Twig]

how sad

 

[perfectchaos007]

how sad

less than 2 weeks...it's almost over

 

[Dreamwriter]

Yeah, but that's like asking what if the PS2 had a real GPU?

It'd be an entirely different system.:lol

Not entirely different system - remember the N64 already had the Expansion Pak that increased memory to 8MB RAM as an optional peripheral, and had a disk drive peripheral that would have allowed larger-than-cartridge storage at cheaper prices (though not quite at CD size/cheapness). And the Expansion Pak was even supposed to ship bundled with the disk drive. I imagine that if Nintendo had managed to ship the N64 with the 64DD and Expansion Pak built-in, without changing the system price much, the console war of the time would have had a wildly different conclusion. But alas, Nintendo likes to make a big mistake every generation. Keeps their marketing people on their toes.

 

[Keyouta]

Hurry up! We should be getting at least a low res image on the hardware. . .

I wish.

 

[gerg]

At least I think that's why you claim HDTV's are being sold, first you say they're being purchased for their increased resolution, then in the same post you go on to say that 99% of consumers buy them because they're big, wide, and flat. Do you not, like, understand how formulating an argument works?

When charlequin said "Expensive enthusiast systems will sell on brand name alone and HDTVs are being adopted for their superior resolution." I'm 99.9% sure that he was just repeating your argument before showing why it was wrong. That's why he then followed that sentence with "Are you by any chance posting from mid-2006?".

To answer your question about why Nintendo would drop support, I presume that's because as time goes on in a generation the potential benefits of starting a new generation increase and the benefits of continuing the current generation decrease. As more and more people have started to get (what they feel as) their money's worth from their purchase, and as you gradually begin to saturate the sum total of all the people potentially interested in your product, it makes more sense to try and sell something to all of them all over again than it is to try and make sure you've sold your first product to every last one of them, especially when your other competitors are also going to want to try and sell their brand-new machine to your userbase. Nintendo doesn't exist in a vacuum: unless Sony is going to leave the portable market there's inevitably going to be pressure from them for Nintendo to launch a successor to the DS.

 

[blu]

how sad

hey, at least it wasn't gaf who came up with the 'performance well beyond wii, closer to hd twins' clusterfuck.

 

[chuckddd]

Hurry up! We should be getting at least a low res image on the hardware. . .

I wish.

Nintendo only leaks when it has to. For example, we know of the 3DS because some other company, presumably long since fired, was going to leak the fact that the 3DS existed, so Nintendo issued a press release. Just how epic would it have been if the leak never occurred and we were all shocked by a 3D DS at E3?

Spoiler

Extremely fucking epic, that's how epic!

 

[Twig]

hey, at least it wasn't gaf who came up with the 'performance well beyond wii, closer to hd twins' clusterfuck.

Granted, but some of GAF seems to think it might be possible.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

Granted, but some of GAF seems to think it might be possible.

but what if it is

 

[Eteric Rice]

hey, at least it wasn't gaf who came up with the 'performance well beyond wii, closer to hd twins' clusterfuck.

To be fair, didn't they say abilities closer to the PS3/360?

It probably just means it can do some shaders and stuff, that's all.

 

[Twig]

but what if it is

good point

 

[abstract alien]

Nintendo only leaks when it has to. For example, we know of the 3DS because some other company, presumably long since fired, was going to leak the fact that the 3DS existed, so Nintendo issued a press release. Just how epic would it have been if the leak never occurred and we were all shocked by a 3D DS at E3?

Spoiler

Extremely fucking epic, that's how epic!

I'm actually glad this didn't happen, and I'm sure Evilore is as well. We couldn't take it, and neither could the gaf servers.

 

[Nirolak]

To be fair, didn't they say abilities closer to the PS3/360?

It probably just means it can do some shaders and stuff, that's all.

If it can do normal mapping that will make a very large difference.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

good point

owned

L
A
T
E
R
S

 

[GDGF]

OMG almost 12000 posts on rumors and speculation. I <3 GAF

A few weeks ago I half jokingly said we'd make it to post 12345 before E3, and now it looks like we just might get there :lol

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

you know, I've always wondered how different things would be today if Nintendo gave the N64 a 4x CD-ROM drive, 8MB of RAM from the start and at least a 16 kilobyte texture cache.

Yeah, how differently things could've turned out. Though this far out I wonder if I'd like to be in an "N64 wins!" universe as much. Like, without feeling burned by the N64 experience perhaps they don't put the emphasis on trying to make GCN development as friendly and cheap as possible. Perhaps without finding themselves in a shrinking console niche they don't feel the need to branch off into the weirdness DS and Wii introduced.

OK, I agree, but why do you think that they will appear on the 3DS? Not literally the sequels to Brain Age and Nintendogs, obviously, but the next games that bring in a huge audience like they did?

Nintendo has shown it to be a strength of theirs. Certainly they're not the only ones, but I'm not familiar with similarly influential games that have been Apple exclusive.

 

[wsippel]

A few weeks ago I half jokingly said we'd make it to post 12345 before E3, and now it looks like we just might get there :lol

Only 350 more posts in ten days? That's 35 posts a day - the IGN feature alone generated more than 300 posts in 24 hours.

 

[Caesar III]

but what if it is

 

[blu]

To be fair, didn't they say abilities closer to the PS3/360?

It probably just means it can do some shaders and stuff, that's all.

fair enough. i guess that 'it has processing capabilities that far exceed the Nintendo Wii' could be interpreted in any way one sees fit. anything of the sort of 'it can do raytracing at 100Pix/s, compared to ~1GPix/s of dumb scanconversion done by the wii' would fly when it comes to ign wii bashing.

 

[abstract alien]

If it can do normal mapping that will make a very large difference.

I know I've talked about this before, but just to clarify...

Im still curious about how the texturing is going to work in conjunction with 3D for this machine. Things like wind waker style cel shading may look great, but other things with more "real" texture styles seems like they would look flat while in 3D. My question is this: Will the 3D effects have the ability to be applied to the actual textures in any way? If some sort of normal mapping is used, would it actually give the appearance of the texture "depth" in 3D or can the 3D effect only be applied to actual geometry?

 

[OnPoint]

A few weeks ago I half jokingly said we'd make it to post 12345 before E3, and now it looks like we just might get there :lol

It's going to happen.

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