Iwata Asks: Wii U (Hardware Devs + A look Inside the Wii U hardware)

[Viper1]

happydolphin said:

Viper1 said:

First off, there's already plenty of extra space already that could be used for other componenets.  We haven't even seen the underside of the motherboard yet.

Secondly, to up the hardware performance, you only need to really worry about the CPU, GPU and RAM.  The CPU and GPU are on that square MCM with the 4 RAM chips around it.   Opening up all that space where the disk drive currently resides won't do anything all all for those 3 componenets.

You seem upset. I'm just saying my naive opinion. If I'm wrong, and all the space reserved for the disk drive could not be used for more HW power, then great. Having said that, at the same time they mention they want the console to be small and affordable, so I don't see why they would include a disk drive when it doesn't even play back DVD/Blu-Ray, and could get a near-equivalent on mini-cards.

I guess the clincher is Back Compatibility, and I was assuming it would mostly be used by core Nintendo gamers who would invest in a 40$ external drive, but that's where I'm probs wrong, as a lot of current broad gamer Wii owners would enjoy the perk and wouldn't enjoy the need to set up an external DD.

Not upset at all.  Perhaps the "first off and secondly" sounded as such.  Ignore those and read it again and it may not come across the same.

Blank Blu-ray media and the mass manufacturing systems are cheaper than equivelent SDHC cards would be.   A double layer disc would have little increase in costs but an SDHC card at 50 GB would tear into the profit margin way too much.

32 GB SDHC cards probably have a market price of $15 each.   That same price will get you 10 blank Blu-ray discs at market price.

If you were to distribute 100 million games that year, the DS cards would cost you $1.5 billion. 
If you were to distribute 100 million games that year, the Blu-ray discs would cost you $150 million.

As a business decision, which wone would you take?