Mad Speculation, 3DS to be replaced by Portable Wii U?!

[fillet]

chris_wing said:

fillet said:

Except you're wrong OP, most laptops don't consume 2-3 times as many watts per hour.

You're looking at it the wrong way anyway, the reason it uses so little power is because it's not using cutting edge CPU/GPU so the power demands are much lower.

There's not a hope in hell something even using this "low" amount of power could be made into a portable for at least another 5 years, the Wii-U is already built off what 28nm processes? Certainly around that figure, die shrinks have really started to slow down it's going to be literally years before it could be put into a smaller shell with a lower TDP.

Also, you have to take into account that doing such a thing would be pointless in terms of profits for nintendo, it would be a massive long term project with very little interest...oh look a Wii-U in 5 years time inside a DS case...in 5 years, that won't be cool.

Talking in "now" terms, 39 (33) watts an hour is a lot of power in terms of putting into a portable, that would be 2 hours on a standard laptop battery weighing just under 1KG.

Would you consider that portable and that is excluding a screen!!!?

Also, the technology in terms of power use used in the Wii-U is already cutting edge, that's the benefit of not using cutting edge in terms of actual performance, some very efficient designs can be churned out, which again counts against pushing things forward in die shrinks - as we're already at "the best".

Crap, I just re-read that chart I referenced and I missread it the first time.  Most laptops use 2/3 the power of a Wii U, but some do use more then twice as much power as a wII U, so I was wrong but still half right.

I'm not saying to do this now or even next year, I'm saying to introduce this when we get deep into next generation, 2, 3, probably closer to 4 years down the road.  A slim line Wii U without a disk drive could cut the power consumption even further.  They made the Wii more efficient after launch, and it was already highly efficient to start with.  The weight of a battery would be a bummer, but people carry laptops all the time.

Yeah I'd say an average laptop would use about 2/3 the power requirment of a Wii-U. You have to also think though that this is when the laptop is at peak load, the Wii-U is always at peak load when playing a game, so a laptop will last a lot longer. As you say though it varies greatly, there are some laptops that come with batteries that last twice as long but are much heavier, some devices are much lighter and so forth.

I suppose you have those ultrabooks that can go 8-10 hours, but they have the GPU built into the CPU so don't need anywhere near as much powe, but they are quite weak (Intel HD4000 graphics for example)...

 

Anyways....surely in years to come we'll see something similar after thinking about it...

 

After all, isn't the DS = n64, 3DS = Wii, PSP = PS2 ;)

(exaggerated the portable power but in similarish area).