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New Nintendo hardware confirmed.

Ranger X

Member
Vizion28 said:
Nintendo is not going to release a Wii HD anytime soon. Oh why do some people entertain that idea when

1) Reggie and Iwata have stated that they simply won't go HD just for the sake HD there has to be some other "gimmick" attached to it.

2) The masses simply don't care that much for HD. At least they don't care enough to deter them from buying a Wii making it the fastest selling console ever.

3) Nintendo has never released an graphical upgrade version of a console. Never in their 20+ years in the console market.

4) Nintendo has never released another console within 4 years from the last.

5) Nintendo have higher profit margins with SD software and hardware than they would with HD.

6) This is probably the biggest and should really be obvious (but oddly it's not): The Wii is still selling like... like a lot. They still can't keep up with demand.

Maybe you believe there will be a Wii HD soon because of wishful thinking? But hey if you want to keep dreaming go right ahead.


Let's play along:

1) Yup. So I guess a real Wii2 would come out and not a stupid WiiHD.

2) HDTVs are now around 50% penetration. People are starting to care actually.

3) Why not start now? What if they succeed into making you buy as many console as they can make you buy handhelds? That could be nice (for them). The Wii was already outdated at launch, this could be an indication that Nintendo would want to change the habits around and release cheaper hardware but more often.

4) Again, why not start now? Fuck the past and habits. Nintendo is the disruptor this gen and it worked well. They might want to continue in a more "out of the box" way.

5) Agreed. But still, I wonder why Apple prefer to shovel as much hardware as they can to the face of people. People seem to buy that so maybe Nintendo wants to create kinds the same style for gaming.

6) Here I also agree but I can't help but to question Apple ways again. It's like the philosophy is to release new stuff exactly during prime time of your current hardware so you catch people in the heat of their excitation and at the moment where there's the most people caring about you and your stuff. Also, the GBA SP was still selling great when the DS came out but Nintendo decided to end the GBA SP regardless.

.
 

NotWii

Banned
They should call the next two nintendo systems

Super Nintendo DS
Super Nintendo Wii

Now you're playing with power!
Nostalgic power!
 

cacildo

Member
Vizion28 said:
3) Nintendo has never released an graphical upgrade version of a console. Never in their 20+ years in the console market.

516FSHY0YBL._SL500_AA280_.jpg


The Wii HD Pak.... it is coming.... i can hear it across the mountains
 
Odrion said:
I thought the WiiHD is just what we call the Wii's successor now.
I am against calling it the WiiHD simply because I don't want Pachter to be even slightly right.

Though admittedly he's made the parameters such that if there is ever a Nintendo system that outputs HD, he's right.
 
elrohir said:
and how would you insert it (what?) into the Wii? via USB? SD-card slot ? GC-Memory-Card-slots?
Expansion pack doesn't make any sense for Wii as it isn't built for it. They'd basically have to build a new system that could plug into the back of the Wii and use the Wii's DVD drive, controller interfaces, SD Card slot, and network interface. It would still have to provide it's own CPU, GPU, and Memory....which are the the expensive parts anyway. Total fucking kludge.

EDIT: yes. USB.
 

seady

Member
cacildo said:
516FSHY0YBL._SL500_AA280_.jpg


The Wii HD Pak.... it is coming.... i can hear it across the mountains

Expansion like this never works. Especially for Nintendo who never follow up with their peripheral. Even for successes like Wii Balance Board and Wii Motion Plus, they pretty much ignore them after one to two games. If they do make one, expect it to be packaged with the new Zelda and stay useless after you beat the game.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
since i see we're in ultra deep speculation waters now, i too might take the plunge. *splash*

let me take on what i think nintendo with NOT do in their next home device:

* it will not be an ultra-exotic architecture to program for. nintendo can afford to go rather exotic on the handhelds, but there power efficiency can go a long way justifying various exotic decisions. not so on a home console - nintendo learned all there was to learn about 'arcane architectures' with the N64. please note that by 'exotic' i mean 'wildly-asymmetric multi-processing, saturn/ps2/ps3-style exotic'. new control schemes - yes. new performance-targetting programming paradigms - no. or at least nothing beyond vanilla desktop/360-style SMP.

* nintendo tend to respond to their design mistakes quickly. their next console will most likely not be resolution-bound. or shall i say, it will be resolution-flexible (before somebody said ps360 both are - they really arent, for different reasons, perhaps the 360 more so than the ps3). that means that higher FSAA would be effortlessly available with games lowering the framebuffer resolution. so if your title went SD, it'd get lush free, say, 16xFSAA, if it went 720p - it'd get 2x/4x at best. and by 'free' i mean DS-level free - you wouldn't gain anything by not using it, let alone having to reinvent your entire rendering backend to enable it *looks at 360*.

* nintendo will not use unencrypted ram anymore. wii uses encrypted flash, but it proved insufficient. expect every last mother-effin bus in the next console to be encryped.

* nintendo will most likely not go without a hypervisor type of system sw layer in their next console.


ed: i swear i did not mean anything dirty by that typo ; )
 
blu said:
since i see we're in ultra deep speculation waters now, i too might take the plunge. *splash*

let me take on what i think nintendo with NOT do in their next home device:

* it will not be an ultra-exotic architecture to program for. nintendo can afford to go rather exotic on the handhelds, but there power efficiency can go a long way justifying various exotic decisions. not so on a home console - nintendo learned all there was to learn about 'arcane architectures' with the N64. please note that by 'exotic' i mean 'wildly-assimetric multi-processing, saturn/ps2/ps3-style exotic'. new control schemes - yes. new performance-targetting programming paradigms - no. or at least nothing beyond vanilla desktop/360-style SMP.

* nintendo tend to respond to their design mistakes quickly. their next console will most likely not be resolution-bound. or shall i say, it will be resolution-flexible (before somebody said ps360 both are - they really arent, for different reasons, perhaps the 360 more so than the ps3). that means that higher FSAA would be effortlessly available with games lowering the framebuffer resolution. so if your title went SD, it'd get lush free, say, 16xFSAA, if it went 720p - it'd get 2x/4x at best. and by 'free' i mean DS-level free - you wouldn't gain anything by not using it, let alone having to reinvent your entire rendering backend to enable it *looks at 360*.

* nintendo will not use unencrypted ram anymore. wii uses encrypted flash, but it proved insufficient. expect every last mother-effin bus in the next console to be encryped.

* nintendo will most likely not go without a hypervisor type of system sw layer in their next console.
I agree with all of this but for the last one. The hypervisor type system has made huge strides in resolving piracy issues for the PS360. Additionally there's a strong benefit to being able to have background processes (like downloads) in this type of system. I expect games in the next system to run on top of a resident OS.
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
ShockingAlberto said:
Also I want to clarify something.

When I said "keep their own costs low", I didn't mean on hardware. They could easily get 360-level hardware out at a good profit. But what after? Have games of that technological level come down in production costs at the same level as hardware has?

It cuts in to Nintendo's profits if, say, Mario Galaxy 3 sells the same as the first one but costs twice as much to make. Their marquee titles would improve in quality, but risky titles like Captain Rainbow might be less likely.

Or not! Maybe game production costs will go hella down.
You have to remember, production costs are 90%+ man hours. If anything, Nintendo may be able to lower production costs if they can make the system even easier to program for and get a good game from concept to consumer done in 6 months to a year with a moderate sized team.
 
Drkirby said:
You have to remember, production costs are 90%+ man hours. If anything, Nintendo may be able to lower production costs if they can make the system even easier to program for and get a good game from concept to consumer done in 6 months to a year with a moderate sized team.
Except that the tendency for many (most?) teams is to try and fully exploit the entire graphical capability of a system and ends up having the opposite effect.

When/how did you tag happen anyway?
 

Ranger X

Member
upandaway said:
Oh, okay.

Thinking the future only by looking at the past is the main reason why all successful people are eventually lapsed and stop having the edge.
Nothing could predict Nintendo this gen looking at their past, remember that. At least my points are actually founded on something while you just try to make fun of me.

.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
bmf said:
I agree with all of this but for the last one. The hypervisor type system has made huge strides in resolving piracy issues for the PS360. Additionally there's a strong benefit to being able to have background processes (like downloads) in this type of system. I expect games in the next system to run on top of a resident OS.
i believe there's been a miscommunication here. double negation for the win ; )
 
Ranger X said:
But still, I wonder why Apple prefer to shovel as much hardware as they can to the face of people. People seem to buy that so maybe Nintendo wants to create kinds the same style for gaming.

They are doing that. It's called DS -> DS Lite -> DSi -> DSi LL.

The key to the Apple upgrade system is that all your iPods play the exact same music files so there are lots of different upgrade options. You can be a single person who owns one iPod Classic and just upgrades it every five years or something to get more space and capabilities like video. You can trade off upgrading a Classic and a Nano for different purposes. Or you can just buy everything they put out -- no matter which you pick, you never have to even think about whether all your music and iTMS purchases will still work. That's why Nintendo has "copied" this strategy by doing the same thing -- variants with new capabilities, incremental upgrades, and different selling points, but all the same underlying software platform.

It's also worth noting that Apple is constantly iterating and trying to sell upgrades of iPods, which cost $99 - $350, but their pace is much slower on, say, MacBooks that sell for $700-$1000. Home consoles for Nintendo are going to be the same way -- people aren't going to buy multiples to "accessorize" and won't be as quick to upgrade as they will for a handheld device, so it makes less sense to try to iterate them as often.

In terms of your broader argument, I don't think you're wrong to consider the idea, but I think you really need to give credit to the reason why almost no one does hardware cycles shorter than 5 years in this industry: a console generation is ludicrously unprofitable no matter how well you're selling during the early years, but almost entirely gravy (as long as you didn't fuck up your system's manufacturing economies the way MS did with Xbox 1) in the later years. If Wii is still selling well now, they can feel absolutely safe no one else is going to start a new generation yet and so throwing away the currently successful Wii business to pursue a new "Wii Plus" business would be foolish.

bmf said:
I agree with all of this but for the last one.

I think you're actually agreeing with him -- he's saying that Nintendo's next console will have a hypervisor.
 

cacildo

Member
Sammy Samusu said:
Everytime I see this thread I have a semi heart attack. -.-

Yeah, but somehow everyday there´s new info that´s not about new nintendo hardware and people think its worthy enough to bump up the thread.
 
Eteric Rice said:
And honestly, I like that approach more. I found the bump mapping in Mario Galaxy was more attention grabbing, because it wasn't on "everything" like in most HD games.

are we pretending for second this was because the wii could bump map entire levels and nintendo just didn't want to do that?
 

Odrion

Banned
ShockingAlberto said:
I am against calling it the WiiHD simply because I don't want Pachter to be even slightly right.

Though admittedly he's made the parameters such that if there is ever a Nintendo system that outputs HD, he's right.
That's a little unreasonable, don't you think?
 
Flachmatuch said:
Can't you take your shitty system wars elsewhere?


i did not mentioned any system.

the poster i quoted made it seem like a stylistic choice, in fact it's a technical one.


we have no idea what nintendo would do with real shader tech.
 

GamerZero

Member
I just read that Sony is still defending the UMD format. I'm starting to wonder if theres going to be a PSP2 will they still use physical media after the PSPGo's performance?
 
NinjaFusion said:
i did not mentioned any system.

the poster i quoted made it seem like a stylistic choice, in fact it's a technical one.

Of course it's a stylistic choice (Nintendo decided it didn't need better graphics technology for its games), it's just that this choice was made way before SMG was released - when the Wii was designed.
And maybe play Riddick on the Xbox :)

Anyway, the poster didn't really say this was a stylistic choice in SMG, he just said he liked it more.
 

Eteric Rice

Member
NinjaFusion said:
are we pretending for second this was because the wii could bump map entire levels and nintendo just didn't want to do that?

The point went completely over your head.

And they probably could have if they went with 30 FPS. Actually, I think one of the levels (one of the lava ones) is mostly bump mapped.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
NinjaFusion said:
i did not mentioned any system.

the poster i quoted made it seem like a stylistic choice, in fact it's a technical one.
let's see.

wii has 972MP/s of max, single-textured fillrate. outputting to SD resolution, that'd be 972M/s / (640x480) = 3164 times overdraw/s. take that @60fps, = 52 times overdraw/frame. even if we assume EMBM on the wii comes at a cost of 1/4 the fillrate (sorry, i don't recall what the actual hit was), that's still 13 times overdraw per frame, @60 fps. that's plenty of fillrate to draw your goddamn world with EMBM and have some left for dinner.

we have no idea what nintendo would do with real shader tech.
just out of curiosity, what does real shader tech mean here? SM 2? SM 3? 4?
 
NinjaFusion said:
i did not mentioned any system.

the poster i quoted made it seem like a stylistic choice, in fact it's a technical one.


we have no idea what nintendo would do with real shader tech.

It's a technical limitation that they cleverly maneuvered around.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Drkirby said:
Now with a 64 core processor!

Actually if they could get it to be 64-bit and use 3-4 GB of RAM it'd probably be a pretty strong next-next-gen console.

Then again the original 64 was no slouch and it still wasn't enough...
 
From what i keep hearing, RAM is so vital to building a game with various graphical elements at the same time (and one reason ps3 ports lagged behind for so long) that im so surprised how little the current gen consoles have. Why is this? Just how expensive was at least 1GB of RAM back in 05?
 

selig

Banned
Gamer @ Heart said:
From what i keep hearing, RAM is so vital to building a game with various graphical elements at the same time (and one reason ps3 ports lagged behind for so long) that im so surprised how little the current gen consoles have. Why is this? Just how expensive is at least 1GB or RAM back in 05?

this is what bug me all the time, too. ram is rather cheap when you buy it for pc (even that new ddr5-ram was within my limit), and console manufacturers can buy that stuff in the numbers of millions, so it should be a lot cheaper for them. yet, it is where every one of the three hesitates to spend more money on.
 
Doesnt the PS3 only have 256MB of video ram or something? That sounds absurd when a shitty laptop can easily double that. Just how different is a pc RAM chip than the ones inside our consoles?
 
Gamer @ Heart said:
From what i keep hearing, RAM is so vital to building a game with various graphical elements at the same time (and one reason ps3 ports lagged behind for so long) that im so surprised how little the current gen consoles have. Why is this? Just how expensive was at least 1GB of RAM back in 05?
I remember reading (please don't ask me for sources, I couldn't produce them easily) that the XBox 360 had originally been planned with 256 megs of ram *total*. It wasn't until they decided that they wanted to make sure that they couldn't be critisized for having less ram than the then also in the planning stages PS3 that they bumped it up to 512. I think that EPIC also pushed them in that direction as well. Of course the big complaint that I hear from developers about the PS3 and 360 is that neither have enough ram, but the GPU and CPU are adequate. They want more ram for more varied environments.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
RAM also tens to cut down loading times drastically (with decent optimization, of course.)
 
bmf said:
I remember reading (please don't ask me for sources, I couldn't produce them easily) that the XBox 360 had originally been planned with 256 megs of ram *total*. It wasn't until they decided that they wanted to make sure that they couldn't be critisized for having less ram than the then also in the planning stages PS3 that they bumped it up to 512. I think that EPIC also pushed them in that direction as well. Of course the big complaint that I hear from developers about the PS3 and 360 is that neither have enough ram, but the GPU and CPU are adequate. They want more ram for more varied environments.

Thats exactly what i heard multiple times on various podcasts.
 
Andrex said:
RAM also tens to cut down loading times drastically (with decent optimization, of course.)
And without proper optimization it adds to loading times. If a game needs 256 megs of video ram to load all of it's textures, and there are only 256 megs available, it's going to have to stop and load textures every time a scene changes. On the other hand, if the designers know that they're only going to have 256 megs to work with and decide to only use 128 megs worth of models and textures per scene, they can work out decent transitions per area based by watching the players intent and preloading areas. Too many designers focus on using as many textures as possible to make things pretty and end up producing a clunky game.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
bmf said:
And without proper optimization it adds to loading times. If a game needs 256 megs of video ram to load all of it's textures, and there are only 256 megs available, it's going to have to stop and load textures every time a scene changes. On the other hand, if the designers know that they're only going to have 256 megs to work with and decide to only use 128 megs worth of models and textures per scene, they can work out decent transitions per area based by watching the players intent and preloading areas. Too many designers focus on using as many textures as possible to make things pretty and end up producing a clunky game.

Yup, which is exactly why I added that parenthesis. :p
 
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