spemanig said:
Soundwave said:
No, I think they will use ARM. For power efficiency and cost/performance, I don't think Power PC can beat ARM. If it could other vendors (like cell phone makers) would use it.
They will just have a dev system that streamlines the process of porting old PowerPC code to the new ARM setup.
Nintendo's handhelds already use ARM so I don't think it'll be that big of a leap for Nintendo either.
The important thing really is cost/performance ... ARM scales in cost much more quickly than PowerPC I believe because no one else really uses PowerPC, it's a very custom part. ARM is used in tons of devices, so Nintendo will be able to get a part that goes down in price much more quickly. This is a problem right now I believe with the Wii U.
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Cell phones don't use x86, but that hasn't stopped PS4/XBO from using it. This is about BC, not ports. The hardware needs to be able to run the old Wii U games you already have, not port them. I downloaded MK8. I should be able to play that same copy on the Wii U's successor, and maybe even the 3DS successor.
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Backwards compatibility with the Wii U ... Nintendo's least successful and most niche console ever is not a big priority IMO. If they can ease the burden of porting games, so be it.
Price of the next handheld is much more important, one of Nintendo's biggest blunders this generation was using highly propietary components (Power PC + highly customized GPU) instead of using more economical modified off-the-shelf components.
It's why they can't make money on the Wii U even now, whereas Sony who used a more PC-like architecture is already not only profitting off the PS4 but seeing bigger than expected drops in hardware manufacturing.
No one is going to give you a sweetheart deal on components that only you use, even if they're not as powerful as what others are using.
What Nintendo is doing today is actually the antithesis of what Yamauchi did with the NES, which had decent performance for its time (relatively) for a low cost.
