| Mr Khan said: You make a sound argument as always, but the only point that i can think to throw against that is that, depending on how you choose to look at it, the technology for the N6 has already been made: it's called Xenos and Xenon. Certainly there are some problems (like DirectX), but basically you've got an HD-ballpark console that's operating under concepts that Nintendo developers are already familiar with. A modified setup similar to Xenos and Xenon to work out their problems and make them similar enough to Gekko-type specifications, would minimize R&D costs, and they could be working with proven technology already, and have something that 3rd parties have gotten extremely accustomed to
It all depends on what Nintendo wants, of course. |
Thank you 
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Well in terms of development, X86 is even more proven than PowerPC so thats not a problem. A larrabee 2 style GPU/CPU hybrid is capable of using both rasterization and ray tracting techniques. In that respect as its simply a more programable version of existing GPU style hardware if you want to use traditional rasterization it would effectively act no differently assuming the software back-end is sufficiently mature. It need not be any more different or complicated than any other architecture, I assure you!
The title is wrong. Processors do not make a killer combo. Games do. Thinking otherwise is part of the problem with skyrocketing costs.
In this instance the technology is to enable more visually pleasing, not more realistic looking games whilst attempting to limit development costs. The killer combination is the technologies suitability for Nintendos applications.
Real time ray-tracing will probably be one of the key features of the "Crysis" of next generation; and by that I mean, a game released 12 to 18 months after the most powerful console and requires multiple high-end graphics cards to play on medium settings at a reasonable frame-rate and resolution. The screenshots from this game will be spectacular, but it will be the next generation where the hardware is available to produce these kinds of graphics in real time on a console.
With that said, I think you will see a handful of true ray-traced games and quite a few hybrid raster/ray-traced games but most games will stick with the conventional raster approach due to performance concerns.
That depends on whether or not specific consideration is given to the technology. We are well on the path of diminishing returns for improvement in visual technology so a sacrafice of outright technical excellence in order to make games which are less expensive and less time consuming to make is perhaps a sacrafice worth making. Ray tracing has the advantage in that it renders the scene in a more natural fashion which im sure would be appealing to Nintendo even if it cannot render outright nearly the same number of effects.
Tease.
