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[C.T.]

Pretty sure it's still unheard of

What? New GPUS far exceed this bandwidth. (a gfx 570 has 192 gb/sec)

 

[Raistlin]

Nintendo's third party issues have to do with third party publishers deciding that the Wii wasn't one of the 2 or 3 machines they could target at once without risk. This distinction wasn't relevant until after such a decision had been made, and the decision seems to have been made before the console was even out, if you remember publisher reactions to the Wii's success after the fact.

You really aren't getting it.

"Wii wasn't one of the 2 or 3 machines they could target at once" BECAUSE of the hardware. How is this so hard to grasp?

>_<

 

[mrklaw]

Considering the extreme amount of money both MS and Sony have lost utilizing their strategy, it appears unwise to consider the strategy remotely intelligent. The truth is, if MS and Sony weren't the massive firms that they are, neither would have survived this generation. When one's strategy is only successful based on having other industries by which to prop it up, then it's not a very good one.

I agree with one thing though: So long as they've learned not to take stupidly large losses on each hardware sold, then they should be all right. I still feel in the end that both companies are mostly raising costs without figuring out how to significantly grow their markets, but I guess we'll see what they each have for next generation.



It went into guaranteeing the company's future for another two decades.

potentially much cheaper going for a blue ocean strategy if you pull it off. MS and Sony are at each others' throats, neither can afford to cut back unless they know the other will do the same. Otherwise they're dead in the console space. Pointless being efficient on costs if you're fucked anyway

 

[Vinci]

potentially much cheaper going for a blue ocean strategy if you pull it off. MS and Sony are at each others' throats, neither can afford to cut back unless they know the other will do the same. Otherwise they're dead in the console space. Pointless being efficient on costs if you're fucked anyway

Depends: If you join Nintendo in lowbie land and let the other guy chase the most powerful rig possible... then he goes broke and you're good!

 

[wsippel]

It seems most rumors regarding the hardware, including the Engadget one, were spot on (IGN aimed a little high). At least for early devkits. Or that's what I've been told. From what I hear, those devkits are nowhere near final though, and developers don't really know yet where Nintendo will take them. It's all pretty much useless speculation at this point. Hope the next devkit iteration will clear a few things up.

 

[herzogzwei1989]

Lets not forget that Wii and GameCube both use GPU technology created mainly in 1999.

Some history on the Flipper GPU used in GameCube, which also of course applies to the Wii since its Hollywood GPU is the same architecture, with a few improvements to cache and I think the TEV unit, all running 50% (1.5x) faster.

ATI Discusses GameCube Graphics
Covering white paper design to final silicon, we interview ATI's Greg Buchner about GameCube.
October 29, 2001


At Nintendo® Space World 2001, IGNcube had a chance to sit down with Greg Buchner from ATI to talk about the design and evolution of GameCube's graphics chip, code-named Flipper. In the lengthy, technical interview Greg reveals much about the decisions that were made and what we can expect from the console in terms of visuals in the future. Get a closer look at the formation of Flipper in this in-depth interview.

IGNcube: Can you discuss your position at ATI and how you became involved with Nintendo® and the design of the Flipper graphics chip?

Greg Buchner: So, going back in history, in 1997 a lot of people left SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.), which wasn't doing well, so a bunch of us started ArtX and we aimed at doing graphics in the PC space. In early '98 we started talking to Nintendo® about being their provider for the graphics and system logic for what has become GameCube. At ArtX I was vice president of engineering and part of the founding team of ArtX.

In April of last year we joined ATI through an acquisition, which ATI aquired as a way to get into the [home console] space and as a way to get another graphics development team working in the integrated graphics PC space. So, through the acquisition I've maintained a similar role for the team at Santa Clara. ATI already had a team at Santa Clara plus the addition of the ArtX team. More recently I'm operating in a more technical role, I'm giving advice on how we build chips.

IGNcube: What is your official title now?

Greg Buchner: I'm vice president of engineering, ATI.

IGNcube: You say you began talking to Nintendo® in 1998. So from white paper designs and initial design to final mass production silicon how long was the development process?

Greg Buchner: Well, there was a period of time where we were in the brainstorm period, figuring out what to build, what's the right thing to create. We spent a reasonable amount of time on that, a really big chunk of 1998 was spend doing that, figuring out just what [Flipper] was going to be. In 1999 we pretty much cranked out the gates, cranked out the silicon and produced the first part. In 2000 we got it ready for production, so what you saw at Space World last year was basically what became final silicon.

We've probably tweaked it a bunch since then and even [after the September 14 Japan launch] other versions are being tweaked. It will forever be in a cost production mode, so to say there is final silicon is something that doesn't really happen because these products live for so long. All the tweaking is for costs, everything for the last six months or even more than that has been related to getting the cost down. So over time, you know it's debuting at $199 obviously that's not the end game. We want to keep pushing the price lower and lower. So we'll continue to help NEC and their cost production efforts.

IGNcube: Can you describe how the brainstorming process worked with Nintendo®? Did you approach them with ideas, did they come to you? How did the relationship work?

Greg Buchner: It was kind of back and forth. A lot of us worked on the N64 and at that point they certainly didn't have any 3D graphics knowledge in the company. For this round, some of the team that was at SGI that worked on the N64 is now at Nintendo®. So the group up in Redmond at NTD, Howard Cheng and Rob Moore's group -- both of which worked at SGI on the N64 -- had some expertise through hiring people on the 3D side of things. They were really the link into the developers, because the whole theme of this product early on was targeting the developers, they are really the customer for us not those that played the games.

So Howard's team was really that bridge into the developers' mind. Everything was really a collaboration between our team and Howard's team -- some of our discussions were friendly and some were "passionate" about what the right thing to do was. At the end of the day there was always the theme of the developers as well as cost. Anything we discussed typically had trade-off with cost. You can go do almost anything, but everything comes at a price. It's about figuring out what's the right thing to do at this point in time, so that was a big part of the collaboration.

IGNcube: You talked about having a vision for the chip and we've heard a lot about it being developer friendly. Was there a specific mantra that the team had? In a few sentences if you could describe what the main goal of the chip was, what would that be?

Greg Buchner: There are so many pieces that factor into the decision. There's looking at the developer, looking at the development process, and making them as efficient as possible so they can make their money. The more money they make the more successful the overall products are going to be and the more successful from a selfish-intent point of view we're going to be from the royalty stream. The lower we can make the cost of the system, the more it will open up for a broader base of consumers that can buy it. So that was a very important thing.

Predicting what the technology is going to allow us to do. So you have to look into a crystal ball and figure out what's going to be fashionable and important, what's going to allow the Miyamoto-sans of the world to develop the best games. So, again, it's kind of taking your best guess at it. These are the kind of things you have to get, put them into a jar and shake them up and they all become very important to deciding what the product is going to be. You could add more and we'd be sitting at the same price point as the PlayStation 2, but I think we're already better than that at the price point we aimed at. I feel like it was the right combination of things.

IGNcube: When did the decision for the sound chip come in? Was that there from the beginning that it was going to be integrated on the graphics chip?

Greg Buchner: Certainly not from day one, but within the first six months we had already picked that direction. So by the middle of 1998 it was known, and a partner was chosen for that. The performance level of it was probably tweaked a little bit over time. The interface to memory was the thing we changed over time. The idea of the A-RAM was something that evolved probably in 1999. Originally there was something else that was there.

There was another memory out there for something else and we kind of figured out a good way from a cost point of view. Instead of having two memories that were partially used we would have one that was more fully used. It was the better way to go, so there was some structural changes to the system [later on] but from a basic 10,000-ft (Editor's note: Greg is referring to a very general, non-specific view) block diagram you could say middle of 1998 that decision was made.

IGNcube: With the embedded RAM, was that a decision from the very beginning or was that added at a later date?

Greg Buchner: That was actually one of the "passionate" arguments, because making that step there's a huge benefit to system performance but there's also the addition of risk and cost. Nothing in life comes for free. It's one of those things [when decided] it changes what we want to do from a technology partnership with NEC, what kind of process we need, from tools, and it brings a new partner, MoSys, into the mix. It limits the choices of silicon providers because there's not many people who can do something like that. In fact very few people can do what NEC has done with this. They've done a phenomenal job.

So that was a decision where we said from a practical point of view, "Do we want to do this?" and just had a very rational discussion on pros and cons. In the end clearly we get a huge benefit. Not only from the embedded DRAM, but from how we structured it. One of the other products out there has embedded DRAM, but arguably they're not getting all the bang for the buck. They've got the cost in the silicon from a process point of view, but as for the performance in memory I don't think they have what we have -- or anything close to it.

IGNcube: Seeing what developers are doing with the chip right now would you say that the team made the right decision.

Greg Buchner: Yes. I think it's worked out well. It took a lot of very hard work to get where we are, but I think it was definitely worth it.

IGNcube: Over half of the chip is embedded RAM, right?

Greg Buchner: On the version that shipped at launch it's on the order of a third. From a transistor point of view it's about half, but because it's a very regular structure it is very, very dense. So that half-transistor results in a much smaller area. So from an area point of view actually a little less than a third.

IGNcube: Is transform performance one of the big fights you had with using eDRAM, which takes up space?

Greg Buchner: That actually wasn't an issue. Those two are very separate discussions. You look at the embedded DRAM and it's going to be for performance on the fill rate side, and that's a cost trade-off. To get that kind of bandwidth with an external device, forget it, you're not going to even come close. So there's a huge benefit we get by having it.

Transform is a separate topic almost: how much do you shoot for, what's important, what are the typical cases with what developers are doing. Not many people send down triangles of the same color and never change anything else. It's these kind of fake benchmarks that are irrelevant. And so they're not streamed to data that is ever showing up in a game, so what's the point in measuring them? So what we went after is what's really happening in a game, what's really happening from a content creation point of view. We optimized around what the data patterns looked like and made a machine that screams for those kind of patterns.

IGNcube: If you had to pick one main feature on the chip that you thought as most important or most impressive what would it be?

Greg Buchner: Hmm, there's a lot of them. [Laughs] From an overall, machine architecture point of view it is a very, very clean architecture. So, again, back to the 10,000-ft level it's a sweet machine, it's just so clean and there aren't a lot of quirky behaviors. There are very few things that I would put in the quirky behavior category. So it's allowed the developers to go focus on making the games. From a raw feature point of view, in the texture area, the texture combining, what we can do with textures, how one texture can manipulate another texture...in the area of textures I think we've greatly extended what people can do and the effects that they can create. So that's something over time I think you're going to see continuing improvements as developers say, "Hey, I've got this incredible toolbox now for assembling things" I don't think that's an area that's been tapped yet. So, I think over time you're going to see better feature effects coming out.

IGNcube: So you think textures will be especially impressive?

Greg Buchner: I think that's one area where we've made a big leap in algorithms or the potential algorithms . Not diminishing any other area, everything about the chip is wonderful. But if you ask me to pick one area, I'll choose [textures].

http://cube.ign.com/articles/099/099520p1.html


here is part 2: http://cube.ign.com/articles/099/099566p1.html

 

[herzogzwei1989]

The GC situation was different. They tweaked the speed, not underclocked. I think the lowered the CPU speed and increased of the GPU speed near launch. Either that or the other.

The Dolphin/GameCube was supposed to have a 400 MHz IBM CPU and 200 MHz ArtX GPU as of E3 1999. At SpaceWorld 2000, I think the exact clockspeeds were announced, Gekko CPU was 405 MHz, the Flippr GPU was 202.5 MHz, a 2:1 ratio. By E3 2001 the GameCube had been 'rebalanced' to have the Gekko CPU @ 485 MHz and the Flipper GPU @ 162 MHz, a 3:1 ratio.

 

[Coolwhip]

Isn't it save to assume this rumour is false? If WiiU really had a RV770 why would many developers call the devkits similar or slightly more powerful than PS360? Would John Carmack say the WiiU 'barely catches up' to this gen if it had a RV770?

 

[wsippel]

Isn't it save to assume this rumour is false? If WiiU really had a RV770 why would many developers call the devkits similar or slightly more powerful than PS360? Would John Carmack say the WiiU 'barely catches up' to this gen if it had a RV770?

Carmack didn't say that. And the current devkits really seem to use an (off-the-shelf) RV770. Not necessarily of the PRO variety, though.

 

[Alexios]

the current devkits really seem to use an (off-the-shelf) RV770.

Source? Who provided this kind of information?

As for what devs say, do we even know what they base all that on? Has Carmack played around with a devkit or is he going by hearsay too, much like most others, or based on the tech demos? Does Nintendo have a history of showing id or Bethesda their stuff early? Have they even made games for them past getting others to port games to the N64?

 

[EDarkness]

Source? Who provided this kind of information?

As for what devs say, do we even know what they base all that on? Has Carmack played around with a devkit or is he going by hearsay too, much like most others, or based on the tech demos? Does Nintendo have a history of showing id or Bethesda their stuff early? Have they even made games for them past getting others to port games to the N64?

To my knowledge Bethesda has never made a game for Nintendo. Though, I think they did publish some racing game a couple years ago as their jump into Wii "core" gaming. Heh, heh. Can't imagine them jumping in now unless they had a compelling reason to do so.

 

[wsippel]

Source?

Just something I've heard in private.

As for what devs have said, do we even know what information they base what they say on? Has Carmack played around with a devkit or is he going by hearsay too, much like most others, or based on the tech demos? Does Nintendo have a history of showing id or Bethesda their stuff early? Have they even made games for them past the N64?

Carmack had pretty much all Nintendo devkits in the past, but I don't think he has a WiiU devkit (yet). They are probably quite rare at this point, so developers most likely won't get one unless they actually plan to do something on the platform.

 

[Coolwhip]

Just something I've heard in private.

Why are developers so conservative when asked about it then? Like during the Ubisoft roundtable at E3, one of the Ubi's said it's too early to tell how powerful the hardware is. But doesn't a RV770 alone blow the PS360 away?

 

[wsippel]

Why are developers so conservative when asked about it then? Like during the Ubisoft roundtable at E3, one of the Ubi's said it's too early to tell how powerful the hardware is. But doesn't a RV770 alone blow the PS360 away?

They fear the ninjas I guess. Also, what the Ubisoft and the Sega guys hinted at falls in line with what I was told: They only know what's inside the kits they have, they don't really know what Nintendo is planning.

And yes, any RV770 would blow PS360 out of the water. In theory. But it's possible Nintendo massively underclocks the chip. A lower clocked complex chip should generate less heat than a higher clocked less complex chip.

 

[herzogzwei1989]

An off the shelf RV770 (Radeon 4850-4870) has 4x to 5x the floating point shader performance of 360/PS3, I think 2.5x to 3x the pixel fillrate, even greater texel fillrate, and much greater bandwidth.

 

[mugurumakensei]

Why are developers so conservative when asked about it then? Like during the Ubisoft roundtable at E3, one of the Ubi's said it's too early to tell how powerful the hardware is. But doesn't a RV770 alone blow the PS360 away?

We've had reports that the devkits were underclocked, and we've had reports that say a newer devkit is supposed to go out soon to replace the older ones. It's pretty simple why the devs haven't been able to talk about the power of the console. They literally don't know. The only people who do know are IBM, AMD, and Nintendo.

 

[AceBandage]

Why are developers so conservative when asked about it then? Like during the Ubisoft roundtable at E3, one of the Ubi's said it's too early to tell how powerful the hardware is. But doesn't a RV770 alone blow the PS360 away?

Because the kits they had running at E3 were months old and not fully powered. They were basically just there to get games running.
There will be a dev kit refresh within a month that should have parts running closer to full speed.

 

[lherre]

Because the kits they had running at E3 were months old and not fully powered. They were basically just there to get games running.
There will be a dev kit refresh within a month that should have parts running closer to full speed.

Months? are you sure about this?

No, the kits running in E3 are from march-april. So 2-3 months old, and are examtly the same that the previous ones.

There was 3 kits already (the first one that only had nintendo) and 2 versions to 3rd parties.

 

[AceBandage]

Months? are you sure about this?

No, the kits running in E3 are from march-april. So 2-3 months old, and are examtly the same that the previous ones.

2-3 months is not months?
Er, uh... huh?

 

[lherre]

2-3 months is not months?
Er, uh... huh?

Well is a reasonable time, not a long time. And I'm sure the specs of the new one will be the same with some fixes.

 

[KHarvey16]

Well is a reasonable time, not a long time. And I'm sure the specs of the new one will be the same with some fixes.

Why are you sure?

 

[lherre]

Why are you sure?

Because they have to fix a lot of things before changing components. First you need to have a stable machine, later you need to improve it if you can (tweaking clock speeds, etc). We wiil know soon. I hope they deliver soon the new kits to check them.

 

[hellclerk]

You really aren't getting it.

"Wii wasn't one of the 2 or 3 machines they could target at once" BECAUSE of the hardware. How is this so hard to grasp?

>_<

No, you're not getting it. There was a distinctly HUMAN decision to NOT develop for the Wii. The hardware was fine. It was familiar, easy to develop for, and while not nearly as powerful as its HD rivals, did have quite a growing install base. It was a HUMAN decision to say "Nope, not powerful enough". If anything the hardware proved itself by having such a rapidly growing install base without that sort of support. Would it have run all the eyecandy games that have such large scale and fantastic effects? Probably not. Does that in any way matter to the financial choice behind making games for the Wii? No, it's an "artistic" decision. Which I find funny because the most artistic games of the generation are on the Wii.

I don't know what's so hard about grasping that.

 

[Lupin the Third]

Just following this discussion with doomed and raistlin.

I think its easy to say at hindsight that thirdparties were unsightfull for not trusting the wii.
Its also easy to say that Nintendo should have trusted their plattform by giving it more grunt.

But considering the sitsuation Nintendo was in with the cube and its third party support. And the risks that the wii was as a whole. Its easy to see why Nintendo went with cheap hardware. And also why third parties were so reluctant to adopt to the platform in its critical birthing stages.

I think both parties were just protecting their bottom line with these decisions. The wii was risky enought , the way it was designed. Actually it was designed to create a "third pillar/Blue ocean". So it made short term sense to not baloon expences with modern hardware while maintaining legacy copatibility and quick library transport. Leaving out these advantages in this steep left turn , its easy to see the resoning and perspective that led them unconfident (Going over the hoops so bear with me).

But looking at MS and sony, they both are now seeking to capitalize that blue ocean that Nintendo created. With Move & Kinect.

So the question is what would be the best way nintendo could respond to this sitsuation. Well i think its differentation yet again with the new controller. If it works it works, if it does not work, then what. Its like an endless cat and mouse game. Nintendo keeps inventing new gadgets while the competition is adopting all the succesfull ones while invertably trying to drag nintendo in to their feature set /hw power war. Whitch leaves both nintendo MS and sony in a sitsuation where their financial stability is in a constant flux. There is no stable ground to build upon. The costs are going to go up and more and more good developers will go under because everyone is just looking at their self centred projects, not realizing that they will kill themselfs invertebly by causing this havoc to others this way (Look at the current financial reality that is unfolding). Not collaborating and creating an sustanable eco system for all parties involved. Just like the clobal financial arena has relized its interconnectivity, and how when a one country overspending can colapse the whole market. So will the gaming companies have to start to think about the ecosystem as a whole, in their invidual building projects. Learn how how to build an sustanable shared ecosystem, and that includes taking all parties along with the negotiations.

I think there is motivation to be found for exelence , when each one of them can just envole their unique dna and celebrate that in an collobative supportive ecosystem where they take in to account more than their invidual projects and build acordingly. What does retro have to gain from competing with nintendo, they gain exelence by just because they have a deep respect for Nintendo and for their craft. They want to build upon that legacy and that is their inspiration for exelence and they know that with this partnership they both can achieve things that they could not alone. This hardware/software feature checkbox rat race that leads to everyone copying and competing in an arbitary standard that restsricts differentation (Only the best wins), And limits how the whole system (Fragmented uncompatible invidual visions that dont take in to account the rest of the ecosystem). How did we even get to the point that we thought that this was the most efficient way to build something?. Or are we just excepted this low standard and learned to love the sorrow of the the drama that it causes?

I for one enjoy these conversations lot more, when the whole of gaf participates in ways that are respectfull of the whole.

Don't you just love it when you spend a long time writing a thought-out post and everyone pretends you didn't even comment? Good work, Hylian.

I give Nintendo props for recognizing their biggest mistake in the Wii era was a lack of HD support. Their existing hardware could have probably even supported very limited HD (e.g., 720p in certain games, a la SoulCalibur 2) if it wasn't locked out via hardware. Thing is, though, if Nintendo HAD gone HD, they wouldn't have gotten the mass-market penetration they have now. Wii was popular in part because the system did something totally new AND it was priced significantly lower than either competing platforms. $250 was lower than 360's Core unit at $300 (which needed a memory card at minimum to operate), and way lower than Sony's $500/$600 debacle. Although the Wii's first few years in the US had a lot of eBay auctioning and some reseller chaos, that only added to the perceived value of the system. People tried this with the PS3 and it really never became ultra-rare. People would buy units and try to resell them, but people didn't want them badly like they did the Wii. Price was an issue already for the PS3, but the uniqueness of the Wii made it even more desirable at PS3-level prices than the clearly more capable PS3.

Anyway, just my two cents.

 

[Nemo]

No, you're not getting it. There was a distinctly HUMAN decision to NOT develop for the Wii. The hardware was fine. It was familiar, easy to develop for, and while not nearly as powerful as its HD rivals, did have quite a growing install base. It was a HUMAN decision to say "Nope, not powerful enough". If anything the hardware proved itself by having such a rapidly growing install base without that sort of support. Would it have run all the eyecandy games that have such large scale and fantastic effects? Probably not. Does that in any way matter to the financial choice behind making games for the Wii? No, it's an "artistic" decision. Which I find funny because the most artistic games of the generation are on the Wii.

I don't know what's so hard about grasping that.

Not getting into the actual discussion, but which ones would these be?

 

[AceBandage]

Not being able to output in HD really wasn't a big problem for the Wii.
It was the lack of being able to accept multiplatform engines. TEV just wasn't built around UE3 or Cry3.
Like I said before, if the Wii had been able to use Shader 3.0, it would have easily gotten a lot more multiplatform games.

 

[brain_stew]

No, you're not getting it. There was a distinctly HUMAN decision to NOT develop for the Wii. The hardware was fine. It was familiar, easy to develop for, and while not nearly as powerful as its HD rivals, did have quite a growing install base. It was a HUMAN decision to say "Nope, not powerful enough". If anything the hardware proved itself by having such a rapidly growing install base without that sort of support. Would it have run all the eyecandy games that have such large scale and fantastic effects? Probably not. Does that in any way matter to the financial choice behind making games for the Wii? No, it's an "artistic" decision. Which I find funny because the most artistic games of the generation are on the Wii.

I don't know what's so hard about grasping that.

The only human decision came from Nintendo. They made the decision to forgoe third party support when they decided to put out wholly inadequate hardware. It was in no way "fine" having hardware that required a completely different development paradigm from the industry standard. The Wii's third party situation was architected by Nintendo themselves.

 

[TAS]

The Wii's third party situation was architected by Nintendo themselves.

Absolutely correct. However, I am optimistic for the Wii U being that Nintendo seems to be listening to 3rd party developers this time.

 

[hellclerk]

Not getting into the actual discussion, but which ones would these be?

No More Heroes, Little King's Story, Muramasa, Fragile Dreams, Madworld, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the sort of smaller, low profile games that didn't try to be the next big AAA title. They tended to be fantastically artistic without the need and pretensions of games going for the big times

The only human decision came from Nintendo. They made the decision to forgoe third party support when they decided to put out wholly inadequate hardware. It was in no way "fine" having hardware that required a completely different development paradigm from the industry standard. The Wii's third party situation was architected by Nintendo themselves.

The "industry paradigm" was unprofitable and unsustainable. See: Industry profits (or lack thereof) in the past 5 years. I agree with Ace though. Nintendo probably should have supported things like programmable shaders. Though it's still on the industry at large to develop for the system or not. That was their choice. "Underpowered" is a matter of perspective, not fact.

 

[Nemo]

No More Heroes, Little King's Story, Muramasa, Fragile Dreams, Madworld, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the sort of smaller, low profile games that didn't try to be the next big AAA title. They tended to be fantastically artistic without the need and pretensions of games going for the big times

Indeed they are artistic and are designed from the ground up but the artistic games of the whole generation I would not call them.

 

[AceBandage]

Absolutely correct. However, I am optimistic for the Wii U being that Nintendo seems to be listening to 3rd party developers this time.

The Wii U definitely seems like the first Nintendo system to be developed for third parties more than for Nintendo itself.
Hopefully this will help a snowball effect of getting third parties back on board.

 

[Zombie James]

No, you're not getting it. There was a distinctly HUMAN decision to NOT develop for the Wii. The hardware was fine. It was familiar, easy to develop for, and while not nearly as powerful as its HD rivals, did have quite a growing install base. It was a HUMAN decision to say "Nope, not powerful enough".

I think you're really underestimating just how large the hardware gap is between the Wii and PS3/360. You can't expect developers to stand still just because a console sells a lot. See that Samaritan demo Epic made? That's the type of quality they're going after in the coming years and this current generation just isn't going to cut it if third-party developers all flock to it like they did with UE3 (yeah, I know that demos was made with UE3, but obviously it's far more advanced).

 

[Gahiggidy]

Because the kits they had running at E3 were months old and not fully powered. They were basically just there to get games running.
There will be a dev kit refresh within a month that should have parts running closer to full speed.

Are the kits in fact those same white boxes? Or are the real kits PCs with best-match parts? ( I can't imagine you can get off the shelf parts to fit in that form factor).


---

We've had reports that the devkits were underclocked, and we've had reports that say a newer devkit is supposed to go out soon to replace the older ones. It's pretty simple why the devs haven't been able to talk about the power of the console. They literally don't know. The only people who do know are IBM, AMD, and Nintendo.

Btw, If I worked for Nintendo I'd tell you guys exactly what's in the box. (Unless it really was underpowered; I'd keep that shit to myself.)

 

[AceBandage]

Are the kits in fact those same white boxes? Or are the real kits PCs with best-match parts? ( I can't imagine you can get off the shelf parts to fit in that form factor).


---



Btw, If I worked for Nintendo I'd tell you guys exactly what's in the box. (Unless it really was underpowered; I'd keep that shit to myself.)

Dev kits are never in final retail units. They're basically big square boxes with PC parts in it.
De-Bug kits are the closest that console makers send out to the retail unit.

 

[wsippel]

An off the shelf RV770 (Radeon 4850-4870) has 4x to 5x the floating point shader performance of 360/PS3, I think 2.5x to 3x the pixel fillrate, even greater texel fillrate, and much greater bandwidth.

4830/ RV770LE is also technically an RV770. Just saying...

 

[antonz]

4830/ RV770LE is also technically an RV770. Just saying...

4830 would still offer a 2.5-3X range boost

 

[LCGeek]

I think you're really underestimating just how large the hardware gap is between the Wii and PS3/360. You can't expect developers to stand still just because a console sells a lot. See that Samaritan demo Epic made? That's the type of quality they're going after in the coming years and this current generation just isn't going to cut it if third-party developers all flock to it like they did with UE3 (yeah, I know that demos was made with UE3, but obviously it's far more advanced).

That's epic who wants to do that and says we are still a bit of ways off from doing it. That was done on a triple sli machine despite them saying if they really worked it could work on one GPU.

 

[wsippel]

4830 would still offer a 2.5-3X range boost

Of course. Like I said, the "50% more powerful" claim is probably underselling it.

 

[Insane Metal]

I would suppose it's something like a 4830. Not bad for a console. But it's just like the Wii in terms of technology (supposing this is a next gen console, it'll get old pretty quickly), it's gonna be overly expensive for the technology involved, yet it will sell like hot cakes.

 

[antonz]

That's epic who wants to do that and says we are still a bit of ways off from doing it. That was done on a triple sli machine despite them saying if they really worked it could work on one GPU.

Yes and their partner in the demo Nvidia themselves said there wont be a single GPU solution capable of that demo for sometime

 

[Thunderbear]

Which I find funny because the most artistic games of the generation are on the Wii.

I don't know what's so hard about grasping that.

I think that's a really funny statement, and sounds very close-minded.

So no PS3 or Xbox360 titles have strong art styles or are among the best art wise of the last few years?

Look, more power = more choice. That's why developers went with more powerful hardware. Because you can do more with it. You can make Mario Galaxy on PS3/Xbox360, you can't make Uncharted on the Wii. It's not just the graphics, it's the gameplay it couldn't handle either because of all the physics involved (not to mention the way you convey a story). Little Big Planet couldn't have been done on the Wii. Heck, you'd have a hard time pulling of Pixel Junk Shooter with all its fluids on the Wii. The highly artistic upcoming game Journey couldn't be done on the Wii without a lot of sacrifices. Journey uses 6 of the 7 SPUs on the sand dynamics alone that directly impact gameplay. Mass Effect? No way. You don't enjoy good AI? Complex AI done on the Xbox360 and PS3 titles can't be done on the Wii. So many sacrifies would have to be made to get those titles running on the Wii that they wouldn't even be the same titles.

It's about choice. The more power you have, the more choice you have. Less power doesn't mean more artistic or gameplay focused games. That's why I want to develop on powerful hardware. It gives me more choice on how to tell my story, and how to shape my gameplay.

 

[wsippel]

I would suppose it's something like a 4830. Not bad for a console. But it's just like the Wii in terms of technology (supposing this is a next gen console, it'll get old pretty quickly), it's gonna be overly expensive for the technology involved, yet it will sell like hot cakes.

Not necessarily. R700 is DX10.1 with a few DX11 features. Sony and Microsoft will probably go for a DX11 solution. The systems are still very close, architecture wise. They'll all run the same engines and can use the same assets. The Wii situation was completely different. It wasn't just less powerful, it was a completely different and horribly outdated architecture requiring different engines and assets.

 

[AceBandage]

I think that's a really funny statement, and sounds very close-minded.

So no PS3 or Xbox360 titles have strong art styles or are among the best art wise of the last few years?

Look, more power = more choice. That's why developers went with more powerful hardware. Because you can do more with it. You can make Mario Galaxy on PS3/Xbox360, you can't make Uncharted on the Wii. It's not just the graphics, it's the gameplay it couldn't handle either because of all the physics involved (not to mention the way you convey a story). Little Big Planet couldn't have been done on the Wii. Heck, you'd have a hard time pulling of Pixel Junk Shooter with all its fluids on the Wii. The highly artistic upcoming game Journey couldn't be done on the Wii without a lot of sacrifices. Journey uses 6 of the 7 SPUs on the sand dynamics alone that directly impact gameplay. Mass Effect? No way. You don't enjoy good AI? Complex AI done on the Xbox360 and PS3 titles can't be done on the Wii. So many sacrifies would have to be made to get those titles running on the Wii that they wouldn't even be the same titles.

It's about choice. The more power you have, the more choice you have. Less power doesn't mean more artistic or gameplay focused games. That's why I want to develop on powerful hardware. It gives me more choice on how to tell my story, and how to shape my gameplay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz64e7RM8eU


Also, I can't think of a single game that has real, good AI. It's pretty much all just scripted events that are made to seem like advanced AI.

 

[Insane Metal]

Not necessarily. R700 is DX10.1 with a few DX11 features. Sony and Microsoft will probably go for a DX11 solution. The systems are still very close, architecture wise. They'll all run the same engines and can use the same assets. The Wii situation was completely different. It wasn't just less powerful, it was a completely different and horribly outdated architecture requiring different engines and assets.

Well, I was talking about the Wii U being a next gen console, competing againt the PS3 and the 360 sucessors. In this situation it will be the same as it is today with the Wii and the PS3/360.

 

[AceBandage]

Well, I was talking about the Wii U being a next gen console, competing againt the PS3 and the 360 sucessors. In this situation it will be the same as it is today with the Wii and the PS3/360.

Eh, not really.
It's going to be a much more even playing field for all systems from now on.
Support will be shared and winners will come from who offers the best exclusives and services.

 

[wsippel]

Well, I was talking about the Wii U being a next gen console, competing againt the PS3 and the 360 sucessors. In this situation it will be the same as it is today with the Wii and the PS3/360.

That's exactly what I was talking about as well, and I explained why I don't expect the same thing to happen again.

 

[antonz]

Its impossible for it to be the same situation again because all consoles will be using cryengine 3 etc. It will be upto developers to develop fun features for the controller to warrant buying the games of course.

Wii was screwed because it was stuck in the dinosaur era with fixed shader features etc.

Nintendo is finally joining the modern world with programmable shaders, modern engines etc

 

[hellclerk]

Indeed they are artistic and are designed from the ground up but the artistic games of the whole generation I would not call them.

Yeah, I probably should have said "Some of the most" if only to cover my ass, but as far as my opinion goes, I'll stand by it. I would like to hear some of yours too, though try and keep them 3rd party, retail, and not artistic just because they look pretty, since those were the limitations I was holding myself to.

It's about choice. The more power you have, the more choice you have. Less power doesn't mean more artistic or gameplay focused games. That's why I want to develop on powerful hardware. It gives me more choice on how to tell my story, and how to shape my gameplay.

It's funny how you quote choice when half of your games are PSN releases, games by their definition must be limited by weaker budgets and smaller file sizes. Choice doesn't make better art. Arguably, limitation makes better art. Since they do say that necessity is the mother of invention, when you have a necessity to make a game with less choice, you tend to invent something new to get around that lack of choice. Could Mario Galaxy be made on the HD consoles? Short some control issues, undoubtedly. But Mario Galaxy ISN'T on the HD consoles. It's on the Wii, and for all the hardware "limitations" (a relative term), its level design, visual direction, and all around feel was perfect. Better, in my humble opinion, than any of the other games you mentioned (and I've played them all, except for PJS and Journey), and yet it's on the Wii.

Oh, and for reference? Good AI by rule of thumb is less taxing on the system and LBP can be done on Wii. Case and point: Little Big Planet PSP. What made the game good were its gameplay features and concepts, not the power behind the console.

 

[KHarvey16]

Because they have to fix a lot of things before changing components. First you need to have a stable machine, later you need to improve it if you can (tweaking clock speeds, etc). We wiil know soon. I hope they deliver soon the new kits to check them.

What will they have to fix? What instability is present in the dev-kits?

 

[antonz]

What will they have to fix? What instability is present in the dev-kits?

The insufficient cooling leading to lockups when the hardware is not underclocked