High Voltage - we're proving that the Wii isn't underpowered

[SaviorX]

shams said:

thetonestarr said:

shams said:

I can let you all in on a BIG secret...

The *real* reason that games tend to suck graphically on the Wii is...
...
...
...the hardware is actually quite complex & tricky to program, especially with respect to getting the most out the hardware...


Anyone goes around saying the Wii is simple to develop for and underpowered is speaking a load of bull$hit.

...and the reason I know this? Well, I'm slowly diving further into the depths of the Wii architecture/hardware every day now. And its a lot closer to the PS3 in architecture than it is to the 360...

Its *very* different

Actually, that's very simple to explain.

Who manufactures the Wii's CPU? IBM, under the Power architecture.

Who designed/manufactures the Cell processor? IBM, and it's also based on the Power architecture.

 

Both have very similar design behind their processors (although the PS3's is theoretically far more advanced), so the overall way they work will be rather similar.

Not really to do with chip design - more about overall system architecture.

The 360 *is* a PC - shaders, DirectX (API driven), linear memory (etc).

The Wii is not - dedicated memory for different tasks, memory banks... (and a whole bunch of other things I'm not going to talk about). In some ways, its a souped up DS/GBA - without an embedded screen.

In some ways, the PS3 is a lot *easier* to program than the Wii - because you can just use the main CPU/GPU, ignore the SPUs (initially) - and get a heap of power/RAM out of it.

Its been really eye-opening porting our PC engine (and Flowerworks, which is out on the PC now btw...) to the Wii. The game has already been significantly optimised - we were just so wasteful on the PC, everywhere.

Then why are there so many more Wii games rather than  PS3 games? There are like 900.....