baka on 09 February 2007
Kwaad said:
Baka - That you for your intelligent responses. Some of that info you list is hard to come by. So thanks for posting it. I agree on every point. You basically summed up in a technical level. Every high point on the Wii. (I never thought of how much power the pointer takes to be drawn, as it's software. That makes me think of computer games with software mouse. OUCH)
I just wanted to give you a formal, and proper. Thank you for the intelligent post. :)
Well, note that I was off by a rather large factor on the framebuffer. The fb at 24bpp is actually 921,600 bytes, or slightly under a megabyte. (8 bits being one byte, 24/8 = 3 bytes.) It's always a good idea to read one's post before submitting I suppose. It's also fairly common to have hardware pointers, but more complex pointers (such as the rotating pointer on the Wii) tend to be done in software at least at some level.
OTOH, the Wii's high points are not so much in the technical department in my opinion. That is, the specifications were not why I purchased one. More interesting for me was the wireless motion-sensitive controller packed in the box, which is basically a 3D mouse with an additional motion sensing unit for another hand. The fact that most games for the system will be built with this in mind really impressed me; new interfaces are quite a risk for a gaming company. As the default controller, game developers will need to pay more attention to how they design a game's play mechanics. That can only be good IMO. The lower price just sealed the deal.
Now that being said, I may purchase a PS3 in the future. It'll need to come down in price a bit though first, and the PS3 will have to be in a better position vs. the Xbox 360.