What would a "next gen wii" look like?

[HappySqurriel]

Sqrl said:

HappySqurriel said:

The Wii's hardware was (probably) choosen because Nintendo wasn't sure about how successful the Wii would be (save costs by reusing the Gamecube's hardware that was being modified to eventually be a handheld system) and they wanted to keep development costs down.

Nintendo will probably not be as worried about their next system failing, and I suspect that development cost increases will moderate mainly because most of the techniques needed to create games on Next Generation games are already in use on the PS3 and XBox 360 (obviously, in a more limited fashion)..

Nintendo should be able to (easily) produce a system that is 4 times as powerful as the PS3 or XBox 360 by 2009 using a 45nm process and then spend 2 years reducing the (eventual) manufacturing cost while improving the processing power and eventually release a system 8 times as powerful as either system for $200 to $300 in 2011..

The Wiimote will have matured, become far more ergonomic (they won't need to keep its remote control shape to prevent scaring non-gamers) and will probably have more advanced buttons (analogue trigger/buttons and potentially a couple of assemetric buttons in the place of the B button). The nunchuck will continue to have the existing functionality but Nintendo will also give it screen pointing capabilities.

LOL, I love your math, I have no clue how close it will/won't be to true given the nature of computer growth in spurts etc...but I just got this picture of you sitting there in your house thinking "Ok, Start with a Wii, multiply times the processing power of a bag of skittles and subtract out the greens ones...then adjust for improvements to the Snicker's Reality stabalizer and we get about.....8.023x faster...but then they have to fine tune the console to get it under the amendment sony had passed in congress (you know where they strengthened witches magic) and we end up with exactly 8x faster!"...apparently my brain just decided to wander when I started reading your post =P 

My numbers were more conceptual than anything else ... I'm not an electrical engineer and in university I never took the courses in microprocessor design so my numbers were not meant to be absolutes; we should be using a manufacturing process in the 30nm range in 2011 which (hypothetically speaking) would enable you to produce an 8-core processor where each core is as complicated as the Cell or Xenos while running your processor at a higher clock speed than either the Cell or Xenos.

I think people misinterpreted what I was saying and thought I was implying that Nintendo would make their system as powerful as was theoritically possible ... I really wasn't. I think the next Wii will be like what the XBox 360 or PS3 would be like if they were produced in 2009 but Nintendo will release it in 2011 after they have reduced the manufacturing cost and taken advantage of the extra processing power which didn't increase the cost of the system.

Edit: I'll change my prediction to be in terms of PC hardware ... The next Wii will be roughly equal to a Geforce 9800GTX SLi PC with the most powerful processor you can buy in Q4 2008.