lightbleeder said: yushire said: Ermm... it means that Nintendo will redesign the Wii more slim than it already was just as the PS2 did late in its life? Is it too early and too risky in its console's life to redesign only 2 years in its life? I'm just asking, I don't really know about cost reduction techniques but I't be really cool if an even smaller Wii existed, the size of a DVD case like exindguy said!

 

The PS2 slim easily overheats though, and its easily broken unlike the old PS2 model.

 

homerman100 said: We are talking about a relatively simple die-shrink, something which would not require a new chipset, Q&A, differing support for new and old designs, or a redesign of packaging. Simply put, the CPU is smaller, so the yield per wafer is greater. IBM, who manufactures their CPU, is already moving their production facilities to 45nm fabrication, so it wouldn't be a expensive transition.  Which still requires everything I just mentioned from the analysis to the alteration of box specifications.  You would definitely have to Q&A to ensure that nothing breaks in the manufacturing process, the chip batches, and possibly even system API (I'll admit this one is highly unlikely).  The cost savings would not have to be "very significant" whatsoever. Given that most people see the Wii selling 100 million consoles, give or take, that is 75 million consoles on which a small price savings would amount to a serious profit or competitive advantage.  Most people were predicting a clean sweep for the PS3 2 years ago.  Going by what "most people" believe is staggeringly bad business practice.  The Wii isn't going to stop selling tomorrow, but let's leave the risk analysis and market speculation to Nintendo's people.  And yeah, that's another cost of conversion. As I said before, this would allow Nintendo to better compete against the other consoles as they have price reductions. Either Nintendo can sell the Wii at $250 and make more profit per console, or sell the Wii at, say, $199 and maintain their profit margins.  Again, they have to beat the overhead of switching.

I'm not saying it's out of the question.  I'm saying it's not as simple as "change parts, make more money."

I'm not sure how much smaller Nintendo could make the Wii.
It's limited by the fact that you have to have a DVD-reader in it. Besides, I feel that nintendo is comfortable with the Wii just as it is now. It's severely outselling the 360, which is now possible to buy cheaper than a Wii.

So if there are no real possibilities of making it much smaller, and there are no real incentives to lower the price, I don't see how a redesigned Wii could be of much use to Nintendo.

Internally they may, but I doubt it. The only type of change I could ever see possible would be colors.

The Wii is already small and attractive and Nintendo has only redesigned the look of their consoles once it has been replaced by a successor AND that was only done to the previous console gen winners of NES and SNES. They were both reduced in size and general look/feel.

WOW, it would not be the headache you make it out to be. It is a matter of popping in a smaller version of the Wii CPU (Hollywood or Broadway... I always mix the two up) in the same chipset, in the same Wii form factor. Making software for the machine doesn't change. Of course testing must be done to insure the 45nm version is functional, but all the manufacturers (IBM, Intel, AMD, et al.) are transitioning to 45nm anyways. They're in the mode to do it. Do it now while you can profit from it. That just makes sense.

Words Of Wisdom said: homerman100 said: We are talking about a relatively simple die-shrink, something which would not require a new chipset, Q&A, differing support for new and old designs, or a redesign of packaging. Simply put, the CPU is smaller, so the yield per wafer is greater. IBM, who manufactures their CPU, is already moving their production facilities to 45nm fabrication, so it wouldn't be a expensive transition. Which still requires everything I just mentioned from the analysis to the alteration of box specifications. You would definitely have to Q&A to ensure that nothing breaks in the manufacturing process, the chip batches, and possibly even system API (I'll admit this one is highly unlikely). The cost savings would not have to be "very significant" whatsoever. Given that most people see the Wii selling 100 million consoles, give or take, that is 75 million consoles on which a small price savings would amount to a serious profit or competitive advantage. Most people were predicting a clean sweep for the PS3 2 years ago. Going by what "most people" believe is staggeringly bad business practice. The Wii isn't going to stop selling tomorrow, but let's leave the risk analysis and market speculation to Nintendo's people. And yeah, that's another cost of conversion. As I said before, this would allow Nintendo to better compete against the other consoles as they have price reductions. Either Nintendo can sell the Wii at $250 and make more profit per console, or sell the Wii at, say, $199 and maintain their profit margins. Again, they have to beat the overhead of switching. I'm not saying it's out of the question. I'm saying it's not as simple as "change parts, make more money."

 Nintendo doesn't like to talk about the technical specifications of the Wii, perhaps they planned the switch to 45nm already and just doesn't want to talk about it.

MS and Sony have plans to use the 45nm technology, so the same costs of switching applies to them too, so why make such move giving their consoles sell much less than the Wii? It's harder for them to recover from such costs.

If IBM is already moving in the 45nm direction the only real cost for console makers would be basically the Q&A, how much can that cost? I don't know anything about how much it could cost but if I can give a number I'd say it would be around 10million$ (maybe I'm crazy and that number is very low, but I have no idea), and that could be recovered easily from the extra profit the new technology would bring.

HappySqurriel said: I (personally) expect Nintendo to move towards the 45nm process in order to integrate the Hollywood and Broadway processors (and potentially the 1 transistor memory) onto one chip; the benefit of this for the Wii would be a slightly lower manufacturing cost and energy consumption, but the long term benefit for Nintendo would be that they would have the "heart" of their next handheld system, it would have all of its R&D paid off, developers would be very familiar with it, and it would (already) be in mass production.

I didn't think it that far... Extremely good point. If the tests have showed Wiis power consumption to be around 18W during gameplay, 90->45nM could reduce the processors power consumption up to a quarter. Since Hollywood and Broadway can work in variable frequincies, going down to Gekko&Flipper specs, could get us around 3-4W (DSL box says its power consumption is 2,3W). Considering the better battery tech after few years, it actually could be even likely.

HappySqurriel said:

...the long term benefit for Nintendo would be that they would have the "heart" of their next handheld system...


Interesting theory. Hadn't thought of that.

homerman100 said: WOW, it would not be the headache you make it out to be. It is a matter of popping in a smaller version of the Wii CPU (Hollywood or Broadway... I always mix the two up) in the same chipset, in the same Wii form factor. Making software for the machine doesn't change. Of course testing must be done to insure the 45nm version is functional, but all the manufacturers (IBM, Intel, AMD, et al.) are transitioning to 45nm anyways. They're in the mode to do it. Do it now while you can profit from it. That just makes sense.

I'm getting tired of repeating myself.  Agree to disagree?

I know what you mean. Agree to disagree. Good game.