Thats amazing.

Back in the day, Nintendo was always leading edge on graphics. It really depends where the market goes, every generation marks a big change. This upcoming generation marks when Nintendo first pushed the next generation, Nintendo almost always launched last before.

I mean this generation, there really wasn't 1 strong leader in sales, all 3 consoles will end up between 25-40% of the market. It was also the first generation where Sony was leading in graphics and Nintendo was last graphically.

Last generation, Microsoft only entered the console war, Sega dropped out, and the Gamecube was competing for best graphics against X-Box.

The generation before that Sony entered the console war, and with an inferior machine, it outsold Nintendo, and Sega.

Then before that Nintendo was always ontop, with sales and graphics, and always released their console last. Also Atari made consoles too.

However trends are emerging. It seems the cheapest and least powerful system will usually sell the most (Wii, PS2, PS1), so it makes sense that Nintendo wants to be here. Nintendo will probably continue making the least graphically powerful system, and Microsoft will likely make the most powerful, just because Nintendo is the smallest company by far, and MS is the biggest (Nintendo's worth is like 4 billion, where Sony is 30 billion, and MS is probably 100 billion or more). Also Microsoft makes OS for most computers, they probably have relationships that allow them to produce systems cheaper.

I mean with every progressing generation, games and systems cost more and more to develop. Nintendo's been bankrupt before, they probably want to play it safe.

The Sega Master System was more powerful than the NES.

The Genesis had a more powerful CPU than the SNES, but the SNES had a better graphics chip.

The N64 was more powerful than the Sega Saturn and PSX. But CDs alowed the PSX and Saturn to store more and larger textures.

The Xbox was more powerful than the Gamecube, but the Gamecube was more powerful than the PS2.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 are more powerful than the Wii.

The Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx were more powerful than the Gameboy.

The Wonder Neo Geo Pocket Color was more powerful than the Gameboy Color.

The Gameboy Advance had no competition.

The PSP is more powerful than the Nintendo DS.

The PS Vita is more powerful than the 3DS.

So far that's 8-2.



My bet is the Wii-U will be the least powerful 8th generation console.

Also Gilgamesh, Nintendo and IBM have been great partners since GameCube. Look at GameCube only about two years into its life cycle in 2003. Nintendo cut the price to 99$ the console was almost on par with the mighty X-Box. Yet guess what Nintendo announced they were still turning a profit on every GameCube.

GameCube was vastly more powerful then PS2/DreamCast and almost on par statistically with X-Box. IBM will give Nintendo a great deal and I'm sure Nintendo can get the rest of the console's parts for dirt cheap as well. I As someone said you can get a state of the art graphics chip for only 100$ that can do far better then PS3/360. So how cheap can Nintendo get that card?

Nintendo gives IBM a shit load of R&D money to create their specific parts. Also Miyamoto stated the next console would  be HD at E3 2006. With developers supposedly having had early dev kits for up to three years now, it can be assumed IBM has been working on this since 2006. IBM apparently hasn't even finished its work on WiiU.

So when will Nintendo be graphically superior? 2012! Of course being the first console out of the gate they will fall alittle behind Nex-Box and PS4. But honestly as others pointed out Nintendo's WiiU will be hard to beat graphically, when they do beat it it won't be anywhere near the difference that Wii had with 360/PS3. Infact I bet it will be closer to 360 VS PS3. I mean I heard lately that WiiU could probably handle the PC version of BattleField3, which is the best thing PC has to offer.

I bet WiiU will be on par or close to par with the latest PC technology upon launch in 2012.

Lastly Gilgamesh, who said Nintendo WiiU won't launch at 350$? Nintendo 3DS launched for an unpresidented 250$ 50$ more then the DS did. Also the Wii launched at 279.99CDN and sold fairly well in Canada. I wouldn't count a 300$-350$ price tag out yet. Also Nintendo could probably build this WiiU 5-10x the power of PS3 for 300$ easily. IBM is a good partner and Nintendo has much better R&D teams then the competition.

I still expect WiiU to dwarf the current gen consoles and be priced between 300-350$. IBM is still working on WiiU and Nintendo hasn't shown us finished games or hardware. Look at the tech demo for Zelda, that running on an early dev kit is capable of performing just as good if not way better then PS3!

"Slowly improve each aspect of the game"? Yeah, as in engine upgrades and optimization, not the addition of details. Games are not looking better just because the artists had more time to add details. You make it sound as if game developers are only adding details onto the assets of their previous games when they they are in fact creating new assets instead. If what your saying is true, then why doesn't actual GT5 gameplay look as good as photomode? 

The reason games start looking better and better throughout a console generation is because developers have to work around hardware limitations. The more time developers work on a system, the better they understand how to use the system and so better looking games come as a result. When it comes to programming, developers are looking for ways to use less system resources in certain aspects of the rendering process so that they can improve the overall graphics of the game. It's all about optimization. 

And if hardware was not the limiting factor, then why is Crysis 1 still the best looking game out there? Crysis 2 is newer, but it definitely does not look as good.  The difference between the two is that Crysis 2 can actually run on consoles.  Obviousy it was downgraded graphically so that it could run on lesser hardware. 

You are right to some extent, but it is ridiculous to say that the current generation of consoles are not currently limiting video game graphics. 

And the point of "storing more and larger textures" if they were unable to handle them properly? BTW the same could be said about texture resolution, infamous limited texture cache of N64 doesn't all of a sudden make PS1 textures look better.

Oh my, you're a prophet!

The system that's going to debut first likely will be the least powerful (NES, Wii U). Actually there's only one exclusion from that rule as long as Nintendo involved (Wii), otherwise Nintendo usually debuts with stronger hardware (SNES, N64, GC). Handhelds are totally different story, since there're battery restrictions which was Nintendo's priority until now, but even there the rule usually stays valid.

So people who imply that weaker hardware is integral part of Nintendo's strategy just ignore the past. Nintendo's attitude to profit on hardware from day one force them to design hardware with limited net cost in mind, while most competitors have a luxury to increase net cost at will but keep price tag for consumers compareble to Nintendo one. Nintendo might debut with weaker hardware but there's always a generation leap in perfromance, the only exclusion from the rule is Wii (and maybe GBC, if you consider it nextgen, not a GB revision).

Thanks!  

Apparently yes, the WiiU will be less powerful than the successors of the Xbox360 and PS3. Although it will be more powerful than current consoles (honestly it would be hard for Nintendo to develop somehting that doesn't beat current consoles), Sony and Microsoft have more time and resources to launch more powerful consoles, even if they have to loose money with the hardware, something that Nintendo can't afford.

But what if Microsoft (likely the next to move) goes with something not much powerful than WiiU? While they have had a great success with Kinect and the xbox360 have made them ean money, they had problems with their investors for the losses the Xbox division had in the past. So maybe they will find more wiser to go with a not much more powerful console (say 3x power of the 360), and bundle an improved Kinect.

If that happens, WiiU owners will probably get most multiplats and shouldn't be worried about the power, except maybe in the long term where it won't matter as the rumors of a new console will start over again.

From a recent interview with John Carmack, it sounded like next gen games will either boost games to 1080p or 60fps before hitting a wall so it doesn't sound like the difference will be ground breaking.

No, you're mis-interpreting what he said. He was only talking about the initial games for next-gen consoles, or those who will be made for current-gen then ported to next-gen. And he's right, just look at the first few Xbox 360 games, they were nothing more than Xbox or PS2 games upscaled to 720p, with a few shiny textures here and there.

Anyway it's pointless to argue this whole topic as long as we don't know the technical specs of the WiiU. And no, vaguely worded PR speak from IBM or AMD doesn't tell us much of anything interesting. There's no such thing as an R700 GPU. There is a series of R700 GPUs that range from the lowly RV710 with 80 SPUs (that's less powerful than the Xbox 360's GPU) up to the power hungry RV790 with 800 SPUs. Similarly, POWER7 isn't a processor, it's the name of the architecture several server processors from IBM use. To make one of them suitable for a console would require some modifications that can range from reduced amount of cache, less cores, smaller frequencies, making them in-order instead of out-of-order and so on, all of that hugely impacts performance. Not to mention the way IBM worded their press release we can't even be sure the CPU is based on POWER7.