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PearlJam on 23 July 2009
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The GC, Xbox and PS2 were all in the same league but Xbox and GC were much closer to each other, nothing like the difference between 360/PS3 and Wii.

Xbox had more memory, and a faster CPU with a modern GPU. The GC had a more efficient CPU, less memory and an outdated GPU design.

Xbox had unified Memory (just like 360) and GC's memory was divided. People say that GC had a better memory setup, but that's only because of the 3 MB of 1T-SRAM. This is like using the 360's 10 MB of eDRAM, and saying that all the memory is this fast.


It's this simple, GC could do any effect that XBox could but it was done in software while Xbox had everything built in to the hardware. To those of you that know about PC gaming, look at how slow games are when rendered in software as apposed to using 3D acceleration to do it with hardware. Factor 5 said this because they were towing the line. The only reason they had such high poly counts is because they weren't using real shaders and they were faking effects. GC also lacked built-in anti-aliasing so they would use a pseudo softening technique that required less processing, but would blur textures and the entire scene but it helped "fur" and water effects look better.


Overall the Xbox had more muscle but it was more about brute strength and using real 3D effects. The GC was very efficient and used tricks and techniques to fake the effects. So while the graphics could look as good or sometimes better, the Xbox did actually have more processing power.

The Wii is a souped up GC design, no ifs ands or buts. While this design was more than adequate in 2001, there have been many advances in modern graphics that you simply can't replicate with a setup that was already outdated the first time around.

And another thing since GC and Wii are so similar, you can't say that devs can't figure out the tech (this isn't PS3). There is nothing new to learn with the hardware, devs have been using this setup for nearly 10 years. It's about as good as it's going to get. The 360 is actually a lot more of a true GC successor than the Wii is in terms of hardware.

The real reasons for MS picking Ati/IBM are all legal reasons. IBM is the only chip manufacturer that would let MS own the design, and nVidia/MS had problems involving lawsuits last gen.