@theRepublic: I didn't mean it wouldn't be impressive at all, but that it's pretty basic trick since the device isn't a heater to begin with.

@KillerMan: Yes, and Nintendo is far behind in power consumption aswell.

@Famousringo: Not necessarily. Big enough heatsink or a heatsink that's integrated into the consoles exterior or different desing in the consoles ventilation. There will not be a design that requires the console to be placed vertically.

I think my post explains why... at least assuming I am correct (I could be talking total bollocks, but it makes sense in my mind at the moment)

@Bdbdbd... Lol,  I would hardly call lower power consumption behind, given that one of the advantages in lowering the size of the chips is often lower power consumption I would think going forward requires you to aim as near to 0 power as possible.

At first I thought this meant performance would be improved or something.

Did the PS1 have a fan?

I think Bdbdbd was being sarcastic there..

Also yeh your post explains what killerman was saying except that he's a troll and read half the OP before posting

Considering that heat tranfer coefficients for forced convection are generally an order of magnitude greater than for natural convection, I'm not sure its so simple.  You mentioned Nintendo might increase the size of the heat sink, but unless they change the size and shape of the Wii, I'm not sure they will be able to add much to the heat sink.

I wouldn't jump on him like that... it wasn't trolling, he speaks the truth, Nintendo are behind in this.... but then they have a good reason to be.

Sony and MS have good reasons to have shrunk the chipsets as quiickly as possible. Neither had supply problems after the first couple of months, so there was no worry about there being poor supply whilst they change over. They also designed really power hungry, super heated machines that would benefit greatly from the new chips... and the new ones save them money, which both have companies gaming divisions have been bleeding since they launched.

@theRepublic: I was only talking about the mass of the heatsink. Different aluminium compound or going to copper (financially maybe not the best thing to do). Anyway, removing the fan gives a little more space and in any case, the power consuption would go near the WiiConnect24 level, where Wii already is naturally cooled and going from 90 nanometer chips to 65 nanometer roughly cuts the size in half. Biggest problem i see is whether the DVD drive needs the extra cooling (then again, since Wii doesn't play DVD movies, the drive doesn't heat itself constantly).

Here's few pics that should give you the image about how much space there is and what you could do with the current design (and for others that are interested, there's pics about Wiis interiors and comparision between Wii and GC interiors).

http://techrepublic.com.com/2346-13636_11-38683-24.html
http://techrepublic.com.com/2346-10877_11-38928-13.html

Also, Nintendo likely will make other changes to the interior design aswell that could potentially free up space.

@TWRoo: It was a sarcastic way to point out the different need to shrink the size of the die, aside from financial incentives.

Then again, we have cold winters and nothing beats wool socks and warming up in the glow of PS360 in the livingroom.

PSX didn't have a fan if i recall. The fans appeared to sixth gen consoles.

Will this make it so that when I play Eternal Darkness, the disc drive won't drown out the sound every time it playes a video? Because that would be worth a second purchase!