jarrod said:
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? |
Ther vertex performance is lower, which translates to ever-so-slightly lower poly-counts for characters in the game. Now, if the 3DS's texture and mapping abilities exceed the PSP (which, to be fair, early Resident Evil screenshots do indicate such a thing), then that can easily make up for lower poly counts. It's a pretty standard trick that good enough textures and bump mapping can hide lower poly counts.
The other thing, where did you hear that the 3DS cards would go up to 8GB? I'd previously read only 2 GB. Frankly, I don't see why they couldn't reach 16 GB as far as I'm concerned as the technology doesn't seem that different from SD card technology, and those can reach 32 GB easily. Even the micro SD cards reach 8 and (I think) 16 GB, which, growing up with the computers and technology that I did grow up with--is just mind-blowing.
If this card technology continues the way it has, Nintendo (or MS or Sony) could theoretically forgoe a laser and disk-based console entirely for the next generation. Rather than DVD's, BD's, or HVD's (which only Nintendo seemed to be working on), companies could use modified flash media and put the games on those. I think it'd be great to see full-blown retail games on some kind of credit card sized physical flash media. Console effeciency would go up, as reading direct from flash media would be energy and RAM-effecient, no laser or motors would keep console heat and noise down, and who knows where they could stop where storage growth is concerned?
If you're thinking of the old TurboGrafx Hu-Cards, that's exactly what I'm picturing, except based on SD card flash media. If a regular SD card could do 32GB of space, then who's to say that a next-gen "SD Hu-Card" couldn't do 64 or 128 GB? Downloadable add-ons to games could be written directly to the media, and load times could effectively be a thing of the past. The DS and 3DS have shown the potential future with this technology as DS game cards have got to be shockingly cheap to develop--and Sony agrees since the NGP will utilize similar technology.
The downside would be losing DVD/Blu-Ray movie playback, and backwards compatibility to previous consoles, but for less heat, complicated machinery, loading times, and more storage space--why aren't they working on it now? Now that's a great fucking idea. /rant
