dahuman said:
he was just being a smart ass, the cube can do all those and more, but you have to work on a fixed pipeline if you want a lot of other things which can be very inefficient on performance. Pica unfortunately is in that same state but with a very updated design and supports GL ES1.1(which is 1.5 really) so people can do much more since it supports the common important effects of today's games. |
The way I've seen it argued is that a fixed pipeline allows Nintendo to do a lot of effects using less power than shaders, at the cost of raw throughput. They of course had the option of a conventional GPU like PowerVR's and didn't choose it.
Since designers are making games with that chip in mind (and indeed, if Sony doesn't do something soon, the lead platform), they can make games look good even without the polygon power, and Nintendo gets to keep the DS's good battery life.
