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shams on 13 February 2007

superchunk said: All three consoles are using ATI and IBM to make their most important parts of their respective systems. In 5 years the two with HD qualities will have helped IBM and ATI to produce these types of chips at the cost range that Nintendo will want, in order to produce a WiiHD at sub $300 levels. Also, by then HD televisions will be the majority in US homes as well as Japan, so Nintendo will see that as a must.
Current TV (i.e. "real life") works and looks just fine at non-HD resolutions ;). There are a lot of improvements that can be made to graphics in consoles that have nothing to do with increased resolutions. I'll much rather see Nintendo add support for a bunch of programmable pixel shaders than just move to 1080p res. Of course both would be nice as well. :)



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vanguardian1 on 13 February 2007

At the moment, cost is the limiting factor. If they wanted the system to cost more, they could have put better gfx/cpu chips in. It may have required more of a redesign (than just an evolution from the GC), but it could be done.
Then essentially they'll be taking the exact same route of backwards compatiblility that Microsoft took between the Xbox and Xbox360, and they STILL haven't gotten it 100%, not to mention you cannot transfer over savegames and the like.



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superchunk on 14 February 2007

vanguardian1 said: Then essentially they'll be taking the exact same route of backwards compatiblility that Microsoft took between the Xbox and Xbox360, and they STILL haven't gotten it 100%, not to mention you cannot transfer over savegames and the like.
Not so much. The problem 360 has had with backward compatibility has more to do with the complete change in architecture. xbox had different nvidia and intel whereas 360 has ati and ibm chipsets. The wii to wiiHD would be less destructive and would provide a relatively easy continuation of the wii's near perfect compatibility.



Kwaad on 14 February 2007

superchunk said: Not so much. The problem 360 has had with backward compatibility has more to do with the complete change in architecture. xbox had different nvidia and intel whereas 360 has ati and ibm chip sets. The wii to wiiHD would be less destructive and would provide a relatively easy continuation of the wii's near perfect compatibility.
Sony isn't having too much of a problem creating a emulator... why would Nintendo? Microsoft's backwards compatibility is a joke. Laugh at it. Ha Ha Ha.



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superchunk on 14 February 2007

Microsoft's backwards compatibility is a joke. Laugh at it. Ha Ha Ha.
Yeah, that is seriously an overstatement. I can't believe the MS couldn't figure that one out. I can find tons if emus online that do a better job that the 360. That's sad.



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robjoh on 14 February 2007

vanguardian1 said: WiiHD, no the tech is NOT there. Nintendo's already using the best of the same-design processor from Motorola, and even just a few upgrades to the current graphics chip design is only going to help so much.
Isn't nintendo using IBM?



 

 

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vanguardian1 on 14 February 2007

If I recall correctly, Motorola designed it, IBM manufactures it. The gamecube used the medium level processor in the series, the Wii uses a higher end from the same series, with some tweaks I've heard. Kinda like going from a Intel P2 @ 500 to a Intel P3 @ 750 or so. The tweaks can help considerably (like MMX eventually did), but only if they're taken advantage of. So technically, depending on how different the processor architecture of a "WiiHD" processor, they would at least need a mild level of "software emulation" like the 360, or an existing "Wii" processor in addition to the new one ala PS3. I haven't heard about Motorola having anything higher in the same series of processors, so I don't see a lot of options there. Looks like EA is gonna be the first to release a "significantly upgraded gamecube engine game" for the Wii with SSX Blur, as far as I know Sonic is a new engine, so that's a bit different. (SSX Blur supports 16:9 and Progressive Scan, apparently does 60fps in single player, probably 30 in 2-player split screen I'd presume since he didn't mention it. http://wii.ign.com/articles/764/764416p1.html



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reverie on 14 February 2007

Motorola did design PowerPC processors for Apple (before 2004), but I'm not sure if they did that for Nintendo. Were did you find that? Motorola doesn't even have a microprocessor business anymore. It was spun out to Freescale in 2004.



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robjoh on 14 February 2007

vanguardian1 said: If I recall correctly, Motorola designed it, IBM manufactures it. The gamecube used the medium level processor in the series, the Wii uses a higher end from the same series, with some tweaks I've heard. Kinda like going from a Intel P2 @ 500 to a Intel P3 @ 750 or so. The tweaks can help considerably (like MMX eventually did), but only if they're taken advantage of. So technically, depending on how different the processor architecture of a "WiiHD" processor, they would at least need a mild level of "software emulation" like the 360, or an existing "Wii" processor in addition to the new one ala PS3. I haven't heard about Motorola having anything higher in the same series of processors, so I don't see a lot of options there. Looks like EA is gonna be the first to release a "significantly upgraded gamecube engine game" for the Wii with SSX Blur, as far as I know Sonic is a new engine, so that's a bit different. (SSX Blur supports 16:9 and Progressive Scan, apparently does 60fps in single player, probably 30 in 2-player split screen I'd presume since he didn't mention it. http://wii.ign.com/articles/764/764416p1.html
The powerPC used in the GC at least is from IBM. It is a "G3", if we are speaking in apple terms, with some tweaks of course. So I would guess IBM is making the CPU this time also because the own the design.



 

 

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vanguardian1 on 14 February 2007

D'oh! Thanks for kicking my memory into gear, the original PowerPC design was a 3-way cooperative effort between IBM, Motorola, and I think Apple. I remember that Motorola and IBM at some point made their own variations of that design, but I never read up on the differences between them.



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