It's apparently been confirmed by Nintendo that the new system is ready for E3. Specs are not confirmed though, and I personally hope that crazy screen on the controller is part of Miyamoto's line about not believing everything you read (which is why this confirmation is credible*, unlike any rumor articles).

So unless Nintendo is going to go spec crazy, I think $300 is the hard ceiling on the system price, if even that high, and it's not going to be sold at a loss, since Nintendo's main business is games unlike the other first parties.

So knowing that price limit, what do you think the specs might be, among the parts and prices around?

* Unless the confirmation is made up and Nintendo then denies this. Who the heck knows.

If the screen is on the controller, the controller will be expensive.

So, $300 for console with 1 controller and standalone controller will be $100.

Yay I get to go first and I love speculating on hardware.

My best guess is something like this:

RAM:

1024 MB of GDDR 5 this will probably yield around 50-80GB/S bandwidth. The best balance between cost/performance is around that level and it follows the current RAM size / bandwidth ratios of current generation systems and the expected trends for next generation systems. Doubling this would require 8 chips which would be cost prohibitive and won't yield good performance/price ratios as the bandwidth wouldn't scale with any increase in capacity.

Optical Drive:

4-8* Blu Ray, what else can I say?

CPU:

X86/PPC equivalent to a fast Core 2 Duo.

GPU:

~between an HD 4850 or HD 5770 in outright performance, feature set could be DX10 or DX11.

Storage:

Something like 8GB of Flash.

lol, my explanations died out. Anyway the RAM thing probably needed the most explanation and the rest sort of feels like 6 of this compared to half a dozen of the same. Different terminology yielding the same result.

Would that all cost $300 or less?

Yes.

Counting just variable costs on a per unit basis and including what I would call reasonable royalties they'd probably be able to put it together for less than $150 and certainly no more than $200. They don't use 'withered technology' for nothing afterall. If Microsoft can make money selling an Arcade for $200 then Nintendo could sell the NES 6 for $300 especially considering the comparable materials costs. The major differences are the I.P costs with Blu Ray, newer technology and the controller.

considering the codename panned out I think the rest of the rumors are probably in line as well.

Squilliam's projections seem about right. The only thing I'm not sure of is the use of BluRay, seeing as current drives are still a bit expensive, as well as relatively slow.

Seeing as rumors about price are between $300-$400 Nintendo might "gauge demand" once again at E3, or maybe the price will come down to whether there are 1 or 2 bundled controllers...

Bottom line, and this is really important, NO Getting HYPED at E3, no matter how cool it is!

Blu Ray or equivalent is a must at this point. It isn't because they couldn't live with a DVD sized disc for one more generation as much as they need a media which can stream faster than 12MB/S without sounding like an angle grinder in the process.

The reason why Blu Ray are more expensive is because you need to pay not only for the physical drive but also for the right to play back Blu Ray movies, likely DVD movies as well and for the increased markup passed along the chain. The physical drives won't cost significantly more than physical DVD drives especially if they decide to save ~$15 and not play back movies with it.

are you sure of this?

bluray drives definitely have more components than DVD drives seeing as you need two sets of lasers, optics and actuators for compatibility with DVDs...

I agree with you that a better storage medium is very much needed. Not only for the increased space, but also in order to have better protection from piracy, which is something bluray can offer.

I'm just not 100% certain of it yet, seeing as the other components in this system are already rumored to be expensive as it is... I'm thinking Nintendo may surprise us with a different custom-format that is cheaper and also compatible with DVD, if such a thing is feasible.

Well I said it wouldn't cost significantly more when the royalty costs were removed from consideration. They would save some money if they chose not to have backwards compatibility with the Gamecube. As for the rest of the components the only major increase in cost is likely the I.P. of the components rather than the actual cost of the machine. Infact I would bet real money that the NES 6 will cost less to manufacture than the PS3 when it is released, controllers inclusive.

yes what squilliam said. I'm just agreing with you because I don't know what any of that stuff means. lol