[joker454]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

Indeed. The introduction of SLI means $2000 worth of top-end PC will always beat consoles now. Back in the day when custom hardware could achieve great things, the consoles could hold their own. But now consoles will always be lower spec than a top-end PC rig at launch. The best they could hope to achieve is slightly lower than a top-end single GPU system.

Well top end pc doesn't cost anywhere near $2000 just fyi, at least not in USA, not even with sli. Having said that I'm also doubting if the new consoles will even be able to beat a single gpu 2012 pc, let alone a 2013 pc.

[Dr Evil]

Originally Posted by joker454

Well top end pc doesn't cost anywhere near $2000 just fyi, at least not in USA, not even with sli. Having said that I'm also doubting if the new consoles will even be able to beat a single gpu 2012 pc, let alone a 2013 pc.

Well you can still blow quite a bit of dollars if you really want a top system , but yeah beating the PC single gpu king at the time of the launch is not going to happen. It was possible in the past when power and heat weren't such a limiting factor. It should't really matter that much though, we should be getting enough for the devs to pull good stuff out of them.

[fearsomepirate]

There's one way the Wii U's chip could be less powerful than the X360's or PS3's...use an old chip. Nah, Nintendo would never do something that crazy!

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by joker454

Well top end pc doesn't cost anywhere near $2000 just fyi...

I wouldn't know. Every now and then a friend will send a random link to an expensive PC component from OverClockers or eBuyer, like £800 i7s. I doubt it's hard to spend $2000 on hardware. I guess it just depends on what you call top-end.

The real point is that there's less of a hardware limit on PCs and more a price limit, so consoles can't be expected to ever challenge them for the performance lead.

[babybumb]

http://www.forgetthebox.net/mag/cult...ii-u-price.php

Wii U BOM rumored $180 with controller

Speaking with sources closely involved with manufacturing and distributing Nintendo products, the total cost of materials to manufacture the Wii U console (includes cost of controller) is estimated to be around $180. On top of this, our source tells us the controller’s total bill of materials and components cost no more than $50.

“Cutting production costs to maximize profits is Nintendo’s main concern with the Wii U. They are cutting costs in the Wii U’s hardware to build back confidence in investors. Nintendo wants investors to view Wii U as a less risky proposition. ”

“Nintendo chose an economical GPU and CPU that could keep up with the performance of today’s current consoles, but keep hardware costs down to maximize profits. Nintendo got a bargain price on the custom GPU and CPU that the Wii U uses. There is a bigger focus on downloadable content, applications, video content, digital distribution, and services to create a stream of revenue. Investors will be ecstatic with the news.”

[AlphaWolf]

That should certainly put expectations in check

[liolio]

That indeed makes a lot of sense. Let hope the CPU keeps up because graphic can be cut down, it's not that true for the CPU jobs.

[tongue_of_colicab]

Oh boy.. if true I fear the worst. I atleast expected them to go with something a fair bit faster than ps360. I hoped for something that could run ps720 ports. If those rumors are true it seems we should be happy if wiiu can do ps360. If that BOM is true, the mainboard, cpu, gpu and ram would only cost about 80 dollars.

Trying to keep investors happy is nice, but I can see Nintendo losing all 3rd party support again after just 1 or 2 years because of ps720.

Anyway Nintendo will be losing me as a customer. I'm not willing to pay for outdated hardware again just because they wanted to glue a tablet on to wiiu. They should have just invested 100 dollars more and come up with a machine that won't be dead to new customers after 2 years.

[McHuj]

On one hand, I'm not sure how they could estimate the BOM at the moment, but on the other, it doesn't seem to far off when you consider the other costs, exchange rates, and retail profits/costs. I expect the WiiU to be at most $299 so an estimated BOM of $180 isn't that far off from the actual one imo.

[AlStrong]

Originally Posted by tongue_of_colicab

I at least expected them to go with something a fair bit faster than ps360. I hoped for something that could run ps720 ports. If those rumors are true it seems we should be happy if wiiu can do ps360. If that BOM is true, the mainboard, cpu, gpu and ram would only cost about 80 dollars.

Well, do we even have a base for comparing the BOM for the current 360S/PS3Slim? How they divy up the BOM with respect to the chips is pretty hard to define even with the motherboard and cooling setup differences with those two console designs. I don't have the chip sizes off-hand (hell, does anyone even know how large RSX is? ), so I can't say what the per die cost could be ($5000 wafer, but then there's QA etc) right now. I'll have to get back to you folks on that unless someone else has a die/wafer calculator off-hand (with appropriate yield assumptions).

The eDRAM logic does cost a bit more than standard CMOS logic processes too, but... I have no reference to specifics. It's just a more complicated process.

[DoctorFouad]

Originally Posted by liolio

That indeed makes a lot of sense..

LOL I told you so, Nintendo will surprise a lot of people in this forum,

I bet my prediction is true (we will see this E3, but the WiiU BOM rumored 180$ total cost already gives an indication) : the priority of Nintendo for WiiU is to achieve at least parity with ps360 hardware in terms of performance but with the cheapest possible way (it means a less expansive console to produce than the ps3 slim or xbox360 slim).

And I reiterate the challenge : if anyone in this forum could face this challenge better than Nintendo engineers, It would be really something !

[ultragpu]

I always thought that Zelda demo was totally possible on current gen consoles anyway, ah Nintendo you cheap bastard, if only Sony is almost as cashed up as you are.

[ninzel]

I was just thinking that a price of $280 would be perfect. Maybe to hopeful.

[joker454]

Originally Posted by tongue_of_colicab

Anyway Nintendo will be losing me as a customer. I'm not willing to pay for outdated hardware again just because they wanted to glue a tablet on to wiiu. They should have just invested 100 dollars more and come up with a machine that won't be dead to new customers after 2 years.

I think Nintendo's risk is that WiiU+tablet functionality could potentially be mimicked by a Win8 console + Win8 tablet. Just like Kinect/Move took away some of the uniqueness of the Wii, if Microsoft did support tandem (albeit optional) use of tablet+console it could steal some of WiiU's uniquness as well.

[lwill]

I think some people may be getting a little too worked up with the rumored BoM. As an example, the G3 PS Vita's BOM was reported to be almost $160, and that is on retail for $300. Most did not expect the Wii U to exceed $350 in retail, so the estimates does seem to make sense.

[AlphaWolf]

Originally Posted by DoctorFouad

LOL I told you so, Nintendo will surprise a lot of people in this forum,

I bet my prediction is true (we will see this E3, but the WiiU BOM rumored 180$ total cost already gives an indication) : the priority of Nintendo for WiiU is to achieve at least parity with ps360 hardware in terms of performance but with the cheapest possible way (it means a less expansive console to produce than the ps3 slim or xbox360 slim).

And I reiterate the challenge : if anyone in this forum could face this challenge better than Nintendo engineers, It would be really something !

I very much doubt the 4GB xbox costs $180 to make at this point so I'm not sure what you're saying.

[ninzel]

If it is true about the controller being $50 that leaves $130 for the console itself.
A much larger share of the cost compared to standard controller.

[Megadrive1988]

So with regards to Wii U, are we saying not to expect much in terms of processing power and rendering performance? What about RAM? I hope it's still at least 1 GB.

Anyway, the Zelda demo was fairly impressive. If Nintendo can make a full Zelda game at that quality, I'll still be happy.

[DoctorFouad]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf

I very much doubt the 4GB xbox costs $180 to make at this point so I'm not sure what you're saying.

we are talking hardware costs, not controller costs, if you want to compare total bundles (for a fair comparison), you should use xbox360 + kinect as a comparison to wiiU+ tablet.

the rumored estimate for WiiU hardware (without the tablet) is 130 $. If this was already the cost of xbox360 slim than Microsoft wouldnt loose the opportunity to offer its console at 149$ in shops. which is not the case. So if my prediction is true, Nintendo engineers did a wonderful job creating a console comparable in performance to ps360 but even cheaper to produce and most probably easier to program for due to more RAM.

[Megadrive1988]

I just hope Nintendo hasn't actually downgraded the graphics processor, from what we saw of the Zelda and Bird demo, I thought the graphics capability was pretty decent. Maybe on par with PS360, maybe a little better. Again, I hope Nintendo hasn't actually downgraded the GPU. They've done this before, at least twice, with the SNES graphics chip and the Flipper's clockspeed. I wouldn't be surprised if they have.

Come on guys, there's got to be hope, right?

<feeling pessimistic>

[DoctorFouad]

Originally Posted by Megadrive1988

I just hope Nintendo hasn't actually downgraded the graphics processor, from what we saw of the Zelda and Bird demo, I thought the graphics capability was pretty decent. Maybe on par with PS360, maybe a little better. Again, I hope Nintendo hasn't actually downgraded the GPU. They've done this before, at least twice, with the SNES graphics chip and the Flipper's clockspeed. I wouldn't be surprised if they have.

Come on guys, there's got to be hope, right?

<feeling pessimistic>

Honestly, I dont understand why a lot of people feel disappointed with the WiiU being on par with ps360 those were very powerful consoles at their time of release, costing a lot of losses to their manufacturers, take ps3 for example it still offers great graphical experiences, I was playing this week Uncharted 3 and it is jaw dropping stuff, the naughty dog last of us will end up even more jaw dropping....or look at god of war3, or killzone3, whats the problem with this level of graphical fidelity ?

To achieve tangible better graphics to the normal human eye consumer, it would take far more than 2x ps360 performance.....to run for example uncharted 3 at 60fps instead of 30 or at 1080p instead of 720p, you need a hardware a lot more expansive than ps3.

I believe Nintendo engineers understood that very well. even microsoft and sony are struggling to impress developers with their next gen hardware, higher precision effects take a lot of hardware resources without obvious better results for the avarage gamer...playing crysis for example at high settings and than at very high settings, wont change a lot in terms of visual fidelity, but necessitates a lot more hardware power....

in short, Nintendo understood that its not worth it anyway beating ps360 hardware (unless you do it by really huge margin which is very expansive), for the final consumer he wont even notice the difference on screen....

[Megadrive1988]

Originally Posted by DoctorFouad

Honestly, I dont understand why a lot of people feel disappointed with the WiiU being on par with ps360 those were very powerful consoles at their time of release, costing a lot of losses to their manufacturers, take ps3 for example it still offers great graphical experiences, I was playing this week Uncharted 3 and it is jaw dropping stuff, the naughty dog last of us will end up even more jaw dropping....or look at god of war3, or killzone3, whats the problem with this level of graphical fidelity ?

To achieve tangible better graphics to the normal human eye consumer, it would take far more than 2x ps360 performance.....to run for example uncharted 3 at 60fps instead of 30 or at 1080p instead of 720p, you need a hardware a lot more expansive than ps3.

I believe Nintendo engineers understood that very well. even microsoft and sony are struggling to impress developers with their hardware, higher precision effects take a lot of hardware resources without obvious better results for the avarage gamer...playing crysis for example at high settings and than at very high settings, wont change a lot in terms of visual fidelity, but necessitates a lot more hardware power....

in short, Nintendo understood that its not worth it anyway beating ps360 hardware (unless you do it by really huge margin which is very expansive), for the final consumer he wont even notice the difference on screen....

Thanks for the encouraging post. I see your point about hardware. I just hope Nintendo hasn't downgraded from what they already showed at E3 2011.

[ultragpu]

Originally Posted by DoctorFouad

Honestly, I dont understand why a lot of people feel disappointed with the WiiU being on par with ps360 those were very powerful consoles at their time of release, costing a lot of losses to their manufacturers, take ps3 for example it still offers great graphical experiences, I was playing this week Uncharted 3 and it is jaw dropping stuff, the naughty dog last of us will end up even more jaw dropping....or look at god of war3, or killzone3, whats the problem with this level of graphical fidelity ?

To achieve tangible better graphics to the normal human eye consumer, it would take far more than 2x ps360 performance.....to run for example uncharted 3 at 60fps instead of 30 or at 1080p instead of 720p, you need a hardware a lot more expansive than ps3.

I believe Nintendo engineers understood that very well. even microsoft and sony are struggling to impress developers with their next gen hardware, higher precision effects take a lot of hardware resources without obvious better results for the avarage gamer...playing crysis for example at high settings and than at very high settings, wont change a lot in terms of visual fidelity, but necessitates a lot more hardware power....

in short, Nintendo understood that its not worth it anyway beating ps360 hardware (unless you do it by really huge margin which is very expansive), for the final consumer he wont even notice the difference on screen....

Imagine if wii U is powerful enough, their Mario, Zelda, Pokemon games would look like something out of Pixar. Nintendo definitely have the cash for a monster system, it's a pity they don't prefer to push the tech envelope like Sony and MS do.

[IllusionistK]

Originally Posted by DoctorFouad

we are talking hardware costs, not controller costs, if you want to compare total bundles (for a fair comparison), you should use xbox360 + kinect as a comparison to wiiU+ tablet.

the rumored estimate for WiiU hardware (without the tablet) is 130 $. If this was already the cost of xbox360 slim than Microsoft wouldnt loose the opportunity to offer its console at 149$ in shops. which is not the case. So if my prediction is true, Nintendo engineers did a wonderful job creating a console comparable in performance to ps360 but even cheaper to produce and most probably easier to program for due to more RAM.

What proof is there that the 360 doesn't cost less than $130? Microsoft has absolutely no reason to sell a 360 at that price point when sales have increased YOY, and is outselling the competition.

According to these** articles, the basic 360 hardware started out at a BOM price of $525, and dropped to $325 in 2007.

If we assume linear regression of a price reduction of $200 ever two years, then the 360's current BOM is >=$130. No higher than the Wii U. If all they intend to do is match the PS360 as rumors suggest, then this makes a lot of sense.

**http://www.edge-online.com/news/isup...ntinue-decline
http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9822/T...tion-Consoles/

[TheWretched]

Linear price decrease? So, next year MS will get money out of IBM or whomever^^