| Resident_Hazard said:
That final somewhat personal slant was unnecessary. There is no guarantee that the next console will outclass the PS3. Nintendo saw that they made oodles of money with a system that barely manages to outclass the original Xbox (if it does at all, which I like to think it does), which hardware-wise, was last generation's PS3. Plus, have you seen the images of the Unreal 3 engine? Holy fucking crap. This generation still has surprises in store where graphics and presentation are concerned. What reason would Nintendo have to even bother trying to fully outclass the PS3 for the next system? They make money either way, and increasingly powerful hardware in the past didn't guarantee Nintendo any success. See the N64 and GameCube, both were very powerful machines. Granted, of course the 3DS is more powerful than the PSP, but only a bit. The thing that helps it is having something that the PSP doesn't have, which is a GPU seperate from the CPU. In the PSP, it's all one big CPU, which is essentially the just a compact PS2 Emotion Engine. Hell, the 3DS better be a bit more powerful than the PSP--that's, at this point, practically 11-year old technology. But, the 3DS is only a little more powerful, overall, than the PSP. We know this because the Wii is only a bit of a technological upgrade over the PSP/PS2, and the 3DS is noted to not be quite as powerful as the Wii. Essentially, aside from the 3-D, Nintendo did the same thing with the 3DS as with the Wii and DS--developed a new system with essentially generation-old technology. I don't doubt that the 3DS will be graphically superior to the PSP (it has to be for the 3D processing anyway), but they didn't take a big leap with the hardware, and the overall hardware is roughly the same as the PSP. And they won't take a big leap with the hardware on the next home console.
Even graphically, the 3DS is inferior to the PSP in some aspects. This is essentially the third game system Nintendo has made with hardware technology from the last generation. GameCube, Wii, 3DS. My note about Nintendo not going over 720 is simple speculation, and more "I don't think Nintendo cares" than anything else. Even with 1080 taking off, from what I've seen, only the PS3 operates at that as a standard, and for, like, the first two years or something, very few PS3 games ran with 1080 as their native resolution. Most still ran at 720, which will be "good enough" for Nintendo. If they do use a BD technology, then maybe they'll go higher, but again, I don't think they'll use BD. If it's not the HVD's, then they're cooking something up with Panasonic we won't be aware of until the next system is about to launch. We'll see, and for what it's worth, I hope Nintendo makes some great and impressive choices, but given their history, they won't. They always do something stupid, something ridiculous, something that will leave all of us scratching our heads. They'll be things we're all just thrilled with on the next console, but like the Wii, DS, GameCube, N64, etc, there will be things those of us who love Nintendo will be arguing to defend in the face of more asinine choices. We were all thrilled by the promise of the motion control and had to deal with the half dozen ways that the Wii was mind-bogglingly inferior to the Xbox360 and PS3. |
First off, I just want to say I'm sorry if you took anything I said as any sort of personal slight. That wasn't the intent and if that's how you read into it, then apologies.
I also think we're basically saying the same thing here in essence, only I think we have different views on where the available technology roadmap actually is and what Nintendo's priorities in terms of technology are. Nintendo is most definitely an economically oriented console maker and they'll cut corners wherever they can. I think we can all agree on that, and that the Wii 2 will most likely be a profit generating platform from day one. The thing is, Nintendo will pretty easily be able to put out a Wii 2 that matches or exceeds the current console in pretty much every regard, charge $299, and still make an attractive margin. And yes, there's no guarantees (there never are), but the likelihoods lean overwhelmingly in that direction. And why wouldn't they, especially after the 3rd party rejection they've been receiving console side this generation? Why would they want to keep putting up any possible obstacle to support... is that the strategy they've pursued with 3DS?
Most PS3 games today don't output in 1080p/i, in fact looking it up less than 20 retail PS3 games render in native 1080p/i (1920 x 1080), and when they do they almost never use AA. Several 360 games also render in native 1080p/i btw. Still, much like the course Nintendo took with Wii (480p/i mandated), I think we'll see them take a similar approach with Wii 2, essentially using "last gen" tech and speccing at the upper tier and standards for that. That means probably 1080p/i mandated and full size (customized) Blu-ray (HVD is a non-starter, Nintendo will definitely not adopt a Chinese standard, and the idea that they would is probably the most controversial possibility in this entire thread)... these would literally be the equivalents to Wii's 480p/i mandated and full size (customized) DVD standards, and there's an extremely low cost technology barrier in both cases with the timelines we're looking at (Wii in 2006, Wii 2 likely in 2012). Nintendo will probably do this, and it'll be cheap for them to do so too.
I also think you're a bit confused in regards to the PSP/3DS power ratio. While both are certainly within the same general "generation" of hardware class, 3DS isn't a modest increase either... it has double the memory available for game content, it's ROM sizes already can up to quadruple UMD (8GB max, and likely to grow beyond that), it's pushing roughly double the geometry PSP is from what we've seen (it has to for 3D display), with appreciably higher texture quality and resolution, in 32bit color with zero dithering, usually at a locked 30fps (often 60fps in 2D mode) and it's throwing around shader effects that PSP simply can not emulate on top of this, effects that no last gen system can even (Xbox and Wii included)... in terms of previous home consoles, it's almost like the disparity we'd see going from Dreamcast directly to Xbox. In fact, I'm somewhat curious exactly what "aspects" you believe 3DS to be graphically inferior to PSP in? Can you tell us what those are?
