WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?
- Thread starter Megadrive1988
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I sometimes wonder if Nintendo just isn't trying to make a political point, like "We don't need no stinkin' 480p." Also, maybe they got tired of getting called by people asking where they could find component cables.
Very few games were made for 480p.
I had the original GC and Component cables. But I also had an HDTV with 480p input the same year I bought the GC.
I use to question why Nintendo did what they did, but looking back now, they continue to rake in tons of money, therefore they know what they are doing way better than I do and way better than 99% of all forum posters.
most (if not all) of my cube games support 480p. the only console that had better 480p support last gen was the xbox. hell, even the DC had some pretty popular titles that didn't support 480p (all SNK fighters, NFL Blitz). but a large portion of GC games were progressive scan, regardless if they listed it on the back of the box.
[maven];902432 said:
I believe there's a whole at that position on the stand.
Anyhow, nearly any Dreamcast game could be forced into progressive scan. Technically so can gamecube, but you can't do it just by unpluggging and then plugging in the cable as the game is booting up. Still nearly every Dreamcast game supported pscan anyway.
Every 1st and 2nd party game I believe supported 480p except wario ware (which was already lacking in presentation) and about a 3rd of 3rd party games, though most of the higher profile ones supported it, though for some reason it never looked as good on a 3rd party game as it did on nintendo's. Some games looked worse when enabling progressive scan.
Correct, but usually the stand is standing on something, right?
Nintendo does what they do to make money on the console hardware. That is much different than the other console makers. That's what it comes down to. You just have to actually look back on what they've done in the past and you immediately can see that they make decisions based on cost for them. Cost is seemingly paramount to them, much more so than for their competitors.
This generation is no different except that they had to go to more of an extreme to compete. A change of direction cuz Cube faltered basically even with the same perceptible specs as Xbox, and because they can't sell a machine that has a 30% loss attached (unlike their competitors). I think that is totally obvious.
Whether or not the hardware is power saving is rather moot. It's so low end anyway that it will be lower power. They said they aren't competing on graphics. So the machine has much less powerful hardware. In the end, at 90nm vs their competition's vastly more robust hardware, they have FAR lower power usage.
Actually, considering how warm the Wii seems to get in "standby", I wonder how power efficient the system really is. It seems to have quite a flat power usage curve no matter what it's doing. A 2 yr old Dothan Pentium M, fully clocked down to 800MHz with 2MB L2 uses similar power to that itsy bitsy PPC.
This generation is no different except that they had to go to more of an extreme to compete. A change of direction cuz Cube faltered basically even with the same perceptible specs as Xbox, and because they can't sell a machine that has a 30% loss attached (unlike their competitors). I think that is totally obvious.
Whether or not the hardware is power saving is rather moot. It's so low end anyway that it will be lower power. They said they aren't competing on graphics. So the machine has much less powerful hardware. In the end, at 90nm vs their competition's vastly more robust hardware, they have FAR lower power usage.
Actually, considering how warm the Wii seems to get in "standby", I wonder how power efficient the system really is. It seems to have quite a flat power usage curve no matter what it's doing. A 2 yr old Dothan Pentium M, fully clocked down to 800MHz with 2MB L2 uses similar power to that itsy bitsy PPC.
Well, keep in mind there are two levels of "standby" for the wii... orange light for WiiConnect24, and red light for true standby. You have to hold the power button down for a while to get the true standby mode. It's the WiiC24 orange standby mode that stays warm, because the CPU is still running 100% but with the fan off.
Yah I was referring to the orange WiiConnect24 mode. The red mode feels much more like a full Off. There's no heat w/o WiiConnect24.
[maven];902780 said:
I believe there may also be some space between parts of the stand to let the air out. The stand has its own little stand, right?
Part of engineering design is keeping development costs down as well, think about how many man-hours Nintendo saved by really not even being all that power efficient!
I think its also important to note that Nintendo has made a machine
where their own first party developers can make inexpensive and profitable games.
Imagine the inhouse development costs if they had to support an HD system?
Also, relative to the other systems, I think developers will spit out Wii games faster they can get reviewed. I already saw a Wii title in stores that I couldnt find anywhere mentioned on any game site.
I understand that the Wii is not designed with HD in mind, but the funny thing is, on paper Wii should be able to handle easily HD. At least I havent seen/read anything to the contrary. There is enough memory for it and the GPU appears powerfull enough. It just wouldnt be as pretty as the as what the 360 could dish out, but even then with TEV used to its full extent.... who knows. As a previous poster mentioned the GC, a simple system, gave the HD compatible Xbox a run for its money. The system seems so well designed that the only reason they disabled or imasculated it is simply because of the power & game development costs issue.
"We already had strict restrictions on the heat that could be released from the ICs due to the small case. In IC development, there are some factors that remain unknown until you actually try to make the ICs, but the time from design to completion is very long. This means that a trial and error approach doesn't work, and doing so would not allow for revisions to be carried out within the schedule. Of course, IC development tools are also evolving and it is possible to perform simulations in advance, but the truth is that development tools cannot keep up with IC evolution and ICs rarely work as predicted by simulations. Another big issue is power consumption, but it's incredibly difficult to accurately predict how much power will be consumed. You're never entirely sure of how many watts will be consumed until the chip arrives from the factory and we can fire it up. For me, these were difficult challenges that I hadn't experienced before."
Shiota-http://wii.nintendo.com/iwata_asks_vol1_p3.jsp
where their own first party developers can make inexpensive and profitable games.
Imagine the inhouse development costs if they had to support an HD system?
Also, relative to the other systems, I think developers will spit out Wii games faster they can get reviewed. I already saw a Wii title in stores that I couldnt find anywhere mentioned on any game site.
I understand that the Wii is not designed with HD in mind, but the funny thing is, on paper Wii should be able to handle easily HD. At least I havent seen/read anything to the contrary. There is enough memory for it and the GPU appears powerfull enough. It just wouldnt be as pretty as the as what the 360 could dish out, but even then with TEV used to its full extent.... who knows. As a previous poster mentioned the GC, a simple system, gave the HD compatible Xbox a run for its money. The system seems so well designed that the only reason they disabled or imasculated it is simply because of the power & game development costs issue.
"We already had strict restrictions on the heat that could be released from the ICs due to the small case. In IC development, there are some factors that remain unknown until you actually try to make the ICs, but the time from design to completion is very long. This means that a trial and error approach doesn't work, and doing so would not allow for revisions to be carried out within the schedule. Of course, IC development tools are also evolving and it is possible to perform simulations in advance, but the truth is that development tools cannot keep up with IC evolution and ICs rarely work as predicted by simulations. Another big issue is power consumption, but it's incredibly difficult to accurately predict how much power will be consumed. You're never entirely sure of how many watts will be consumed until the chip arrives from the factory and we can fire it up. For me, these were difficult challenges that I hadn't experienced before."
Shiota-http://wii.nintendo.com/iwata_asks_vol1_p3.jsp
Even if you looked at 720p they'd blow all their memory on the framebuffer, and then we don't know squat about Wii's fillrate - which is the limiting performance factor with resolution. If Wii has that kind of fillrate to burn, we'll probably start seeing AA-enabled games though...
Hopefully we will soon see
We just got back from a marathon gaming session, and Metroid was one of the most interesting titles that we played at Nintendo's super-secret, invite-only gaming session.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Definitely stole the the show. The graphics looked amazing -- better than Halo 2 on the Xbox without a doubt -- and the levels showed off sparkling details, proving the Wii is far more powerful than the Gamecube. Out of all the games we played, the Wii controller seemed most at home with Metroid.
You don't fire with your index finger, but with your thumb (using the A button). This sounds a little goofy, but in practice it worked very, very well. You could press the directional pad to fire rockets or enter your scanning mode, and the trigger (aka the B button) handled jumps very nicely. Samus has a few new moves that take advantage of the motion-sensitive controller. By locking onto a target and thrusting the left nunchuku forward, Samus could launch a grappling beam. The beam is similar to Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun, but was mostly used to push rubble out of the way, open grates, or in a nice touch, yank shields from enemy hands. The other major Wii functionality was that some control panels needed to be lifted, rotated, and pushed back into slots -- these movements were all handled on the Wii controller.
Aiming with the point-and-shoot controller felt very nice, though it took a few minutes to become truly comfortable. The experience was much like playing a PC first-person shooter, especially since the nunchucku analog stick controlled movement We found that standing roughly four feet from the TV provided the best motion, and the cursor stayed smooth and steady -- no shakiness! The frame rate was also smooth and consistent, even when the screen got crowded with special effects.
Metroid was probably the best Wii game on display. Wii can't wait to play more!
http://www.gamepro.com/nintendo/wii/games/previews/92688.shtml
Absolutely without a doubt a huge money saver for them. Good point. I've pondered that myself while playing Zelda, but didn't remember to mention it earlier.
-The hardware is undoubtedly quite Cube like (simply based on their graphics as a non-priority mentality). Even if it has some state of the art programmability, it has much less of it than its competitors.
-No need for assets typical of more advanced hardware (said to cause dev costs to rise exponentially)
I think N has played the game extremely smartly money-wise. That assumes interest continues in their machine. And that's going to require some kick ass games (lineup has me somewhat worried right now).
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
I doubt nintendo didnt go for HD because it would cost their studios alot more money. If you look at it, each generation nintendo only makes a handfull of games with alot of content, and eacht of those titels is ment to sell consoles and they never tried to save any money on them because they need to be AAA titels not matter what. Even if it would cost nintendo twice as much to build that handfull of games, would that really be such a big impact? I dont think so.
I heard that rumor before. But that wasnt because they cared so much about gfx but if they got UE3 running of Wii it would be easier to port games because they could use the same tools etc.
Well I didn't mean to say they intentionally sacrificed gfx to save them 1st party dev costs. Whether or not that is the case (could be!), they do indeed save big bucks undoubtedly. We know from all the dev callouts that the new consoles (along with continued PC advancement) have skyrocketed dev costs. Nintendo, by sticking with hardware that at best (maybe) performs like 3 yr old midrange PC tech, will save lots of $$.
What makes a higher resolution itself more expensive to develop for? Is it the resolution jump itself what is expensive,or is it now that you are developing in this HD environment for a demanding high end consumer,the expectations of greater effects,detail etc and higher prodution values drive the cost up?
I'm not doubting HD drives the cost up,I just don't get how.
I'm not doubting HD drives the cost up,I just don't get how.
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