You can't shrink linearly everything on a die. particularly the cell has an element interconnect bus that is very hard to shrink (and the pad area is another more obvious example). The 100nm^2 above is a wild guess for the whole "everything else but processors" in the cell, and 100mm^2 are very generous and could be two to four times bigger). Also possible improvements in the SPUs and PPUs would further increase the sizes of those elements. Nobody is going to design such a monster. And we haven't even looked at the power draw of such a monster Even if the cell used only 25Watts, a die-shrunk chip 16 times the cell would use 250Watts at least.

If you buy a game on the Windows app store you should be able to download that same game on the Xbox and vice versa because in both instances you're paying Microsoft directly and using their application store. There is no conflict of interest with paying licensing fees because they removed the 3rd parties from this relationship, I.E you pay Microsoft directly and they pay the content provider. Sony is doing something similar with their application stores with compatibility with Steam and Android as well as their purchase of Gaikai.

The only real question are the retail vs download space conflict and the pricing structure in comparison to Steam where there is much greater pricing flexibility as well as how flexible the application store will be compared to say iOS and Steam. Microsoft can substitute retail margins on the physical content for Live subscriptions but the other two cannot so hence the forward thinking idea of charging for access gives them flexibility to serve multiple masters.

The winner of the next generation will probably be decided by the network of people playing and using a particular service as they are not cross compatible. The networks are Steam, iOS, Playstation, Live/Windows and Nintendo etc. The PS2 generation was decided by content because the PS2 simply got almost all of it and much of that exclusive, the next generation is about networks and the most compelling exclusive is the ability to play with your friends and play your content on your devices.

That sort of answered the question, but yes you're right, network will be the deciding factor.

You're paying for the content and not the platform you play it on. If the content supports the platform then the game will run. To do otherwise is illogical and anti-customer. It is a total PITA that the entire Steam library for instance is single user, if you can share content say over a couple of devices to all users then that will be a fantastic way of simplifying the DRM hell we deal with from online stores. One copy per user at any one time is a good way to manage ownership.

Ahhhh I remember that one now... forgot it, as originally it was laughed and tossed out as completely bogus right away. I mean jesus... 20GB of memory??? Maybe 6GB and more realistically 4GB... but 20??? Sorry man, that is a huge fanboy created fake.

So I ask once again, how does your math work? You did use a formula to make your point.

There was an entire thread about that rumor, and it was basically trounced when it first reared it head. Since both IBM and Sony have all but abandoned the Cell. The last Cell Processor released was the PowerXCell 8i and it was put into IBM's blade servers in 2008. If I remember correctly the tech behind the Cell BE was basically caniblized to help further the developement of CPUs such as the e6500 series and Intel version of the processor.

So, you are calling it a 720p system because 3rd party developers won't redo their art assets for the 1920 x 1080 resolution?   

Have you ever known any 3rd party multiplatform title to have different resolutions between the PS3 and X360?   No.  So why in the world would you expect a 3rd party to put the time, money and resources into doing it for a Wii U launch title port?  These are just quick ports to cash in on the launch.  Most are handled by a different team or even a differnt studio.  They wouldn't even be working on the art assets, just the game code and controls.

Wow.  I've seen some fanboy wish lists but this one takes the cake.

To put the final nail in the CELL coffin, Sony's Nagasaki manufacturing plant has almost totally transitioned into developing CMOS sensors for cameras.  Sony spent $996 million on this transition.   They aren't going to spent another $1 billion to change it back to a CELL production facility and then anotehr $1 to relocate the CMOS production.

They wouldn't really have to redo assets to render the games in 1080p tho, sure you may see flaws in the textures more easilly with a higher resolution but that isn't really a big issue if you use a a bit of texture filtering and a post AA solution like FXAA to smooth out the flaws. Most of the multiplatform games have PC versions with higher res textures as well. A game will look sharper at a higher resolution no matter the assets, the reasons for using a lower resolution are performance related for the most part. We aren't talking about sprite bassed games here, 3D games resolution scales independantly to the assets. That is not to say that the Wii U can't do 1080p games and saying it is a 720p system is pretty dumb TBH, but I don't get the claim that devs aren't doing 1080p beacause of the assets not being high quality, hell all the HD remakes in recent years have used mostly last gen assets but run in 720p or even 1080p in some cases, and somelaunch titles for the X360 used last gen assets but ran at a higher resolution, so it's not like the precedent isn't there. 

For example Dark Souls same assets, view at native res for proper comparison

And I can think of quite a few games with different resolutions for PS3 and X360, Alone in the Dark = 1040x600 (2xAA) X360 vs 1120x630 (no AA) on PS3, Bioshock = 1280x720 (no AA) on X360 vs 680p (no AA) on PS3, Call of Duty: Black Ops = 1040x608 (2xAA) on X360 vs 960x544 (2xAA) on PS3 for example. Tekken 6 on 360 had 2 different resolutions in the same game even 1024x576 w/motion blur, 1365x768 w/o motion blur.

What you're describing is not a native change in the code and assets which is what Viper, myself, and the rest of the gaming community is discussing in reference to wiiU.

NATIVELY its all 720p or below. If the game and console allows, the software then bumps it up to 1080p. But the native resolution is relative to the power of the console with 720p as a base and they move it up or down to make sure the FPS is a decent number.

So certain games like COD actually run below 720p natively to maintain 60fps. Your TV may upscale it to 720 or even 1080... but natively its still like 560 or 640 or something.

WiiU will have the games at the highest native resolution the assets were initially created for. Then the console upscales the visuals to 1080p... all the time its still at 60fps and on two screens. Some of use were hoping based on statements that natively WiiU was moved up to 1080p, even though it was unlikely do to reasons Viper and myself have already stated.

However, NONE of those reasons have anything to do with the power of the console, which is what persistantthug is selling. Before 2013 is out, this will be proven.... hell, once a WiiU is at retail and others break it down thoroughly, we'll likely realize.