Revolution specs from IGN

fearsomepirate said:
The problem this generation is that not that many people wanted Cube games to begin with
Why do people say that, when the number of cubes sold isn't that far less than the numberof XBs sold? I think at the greatest discrepencies it's about 22 million XBs to 18 million GCs worldwide.
 
Every GPU emulates the TnL and they know every thing about flipper, with would be easy to make a BC GPU, and Gekko is almost a normal PPC and its special instruction would be usefull in any console anyway).

BC isnt excuse for a low power console.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Why do people say that, when the number of cubes sold isn't that far less than the numberof XBs sold? I think at the greatest discrepencies it's about 22 million XBs to 18 million GCs worldwide.

Because software sales were so much less and the attach rate was lower. Cube just doesn't have many multimillion blockbusters, especially in the US. And the titles that were ported later (Monkeyball and Viewtiful Joe) were met with an entirely lukewarm reception by consumers.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within had pretty severe artifacts on all 3 consoles from what I've seen. Dunno about Two Thrones, but yes, 32-bit would be very nice if you need destination alpha. There's no reason to stay with 6x6x6x6 color.
 
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My prediction is they didn't include any DX8 - DX 9 features in the GPU for rev and it's still a DX 7 class chip with tweaks to improve throughput and performance.
 
Qroach said:
My prediction is they didn't include any DX8 - DX 9 features in the GPU for rev and it's still a DX 7 class chip with tweaks to improve throughput and performance.

If you see a few older Rev threads you can see that there is a lot of info that cantradict that (including ATI) and it will have DX9 like features, unless they canned all of that in the past weeks.
 
I'm more curious as to whether or not devs have dev kits with Hollywood. Also is all the info they have available to them is clock rate.

Now if your EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Midway, Capcom, Namco, SE, Konami, documentation may be more feature rich.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
For a lower budget you can present either a cheapo looking game on PS3 (relative to others on the same platform) or a good game (relative to that platform) on Revolution.

I don´t disagree entirely with your position, but with this I do. What makes you feel that a substantial game can come out using the same budget a low cost PS3 title has?? On what grounds? AFAIK a AAA game can cost anywhere from 10 to 30 or more millions. That hasn´t really changed.

A budget of a couple millions or less isn´t going to get you anywhere, if you want a very solid product, you´ll have to invest a very solid ammount of cash, no matter the plattform. Want a AAA game?? You´ll still have to invest the money needed for one. Perhaps 15 instead of 23 million, sure, but you´ll still have to risk it considering the potentially small userbase and typical Nintendo fandom.

I´d bet third party support will be justifiably scarce given this.
 
pc999 said:
If you see a few older Rev threads you can see that there is a lot of info that cantradict that (including ATI) and it will have DX9 like features, unless they canned all of that in the past weeks.

From what someone else posted, the last "DX9 featureset" quote from ATI was 2003. And some time after that, there was a quote about extending the life of Gamecube through peripherals. Right now, I'm leaning toward this version of the story, which someone else proposed:

Starting in 2001, Nintendo began designing a Gamecube 2 to compete with the next Xbox and PS3. At some point, the Revolution controller was being designed as a Gamecube peripheral to extend the life of the console into 2007 while they finalized the silicon and ramped up production on Cube2. But when connectivity failed and Live took off, they realized that they'd lost too much brand reputation to attract the developers needed to compete with MS and Sony in the usual race to have great power at a great price. Finally, looking at the prohibitive cost of manufacturing consoles and developing games for a system that was guaranteed to have lackluster 3rd-party support, they scrapped this idea some time in late 2003 or early 2004. Further, in the wake of connectivity's demise, they channelled money away from designing their next-gen silicon and toward developing Wi-Fi Connection. The redirected ATI to make Revolution in such a way as to guarantee 100% backwards compatibility in the hopes of giving underperforming titles like Twilight Princess and Metroid Prime 2 a new lease on life, as well as allowing developers to use existing graphics engines so that they could make games for absolutely minimal cost (and keep fabrication costs dirt-cheap). Aiming for a bargain-basement launch price, they're hoping to gain a critical mass of early adopters so as to sway developers toward their system.
 
That is a beautifull theory that explains almost everything but if you see/remember in the threads that "we made" you can see that there is a few dev that started working few time ago (+/- 2-3 mouths) that are using DX9 features or vertex/pixel shaders, plus everything else points to being more powerfull but IGN is the only one how say this, plus I even find very nice that they have benchmarked the HW without real HW (near/final only in may-june right?).

Anyway they said a 299$ console to compet with 360 so then a multicore CPU, many pipes GPU for sure, they could simple reduced it to single core 1/3-1/2 of the pipes, 1/2 memory etc... and the console would cost less than 1/2 of the 150$ so it would be possible to have such much more that 2GC for certain, as I am quite sure that BC and the remote would be part of the GC2, even if that cant be used 2004 and 2005+ would be more than enought time to make extensive modification to flipper and Gekko (or modifies a 970 to run Gekko code) specially if you see what they did with R300-R580, price cant be a good reason too.

What I said is that is something that seems very wrong here and if this is indeed real then I will need much more than IGN with half words to convice me that the 2xGC is true.
 
This thing is going to be so cheap for N to build. It must be some new level of cheapness in cost seriously. I can't think up a console in history that used such relatively slow chips for the time it was launched. They are going to have insane profits if it sells well. They definitely should make money on the hardware.

If this hardware is similar to gamecube, it should literally cost pennies to produce. And there would be so little R&D to make the tech. Wow.
 
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pc999 said:
That is a beautifull theory that explains almost everything but if you see/remember in the threads that "we made" you can see that there is a few dev that started working few time ago (+/- 2-3 mouths) that are using DX9 features or vertex/pixel shaders

Are there? There are a few that said "Pixel shader" and "Revolution" in the same sentence or paragraph in a job posting or graphics engine description, but it's possible they were simply predicting they would have a modern featureset. I'd like to hear a developer say something at this point, but that would mean breaking an NDA. I guess we'll have to wait to see the games.
 
See here

In light of announcements by hardware manufacturers it is clear that shaders play an important role across all emerging console platforms from PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 through Revolution to the PC.

This is the same team, that during the holiday season (?, not sure now) said on IGN (?) that they dont know if their game would be on Rev or not because they didnt know what Rev is capable of (as soon as I got time I will try to find it) so this info can only come from real Nintendo info, this may not mean that it will be 360 like but this say that it is not just 2xGC.

Edit: it seems it is not in IGN but for now seee this (long before any rumor of an un paired Rev), anyway I will try to find the other one.
What platforms are you developing Possession for?
Possession is truly next generation in both gameplay and presentation. Expect to see it hit PlayStation 3 and Xbox 2 in 2007, as well as a high-end PC version in the same year.

and latter

Possession is currently in development for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, and will
 
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fearsomepirate said:
Are there? There are a few that said "Pixel shader" and "Revolution" in the same sentence or paragraph in a job posting or graphics engine description, but it's possible they were simply predicting they would have a modern featureset. I'd like to hear a developer say something at this point, but that would mean breaking an NDA. I guess we'll have to wait to see the games.

I'm surprised that a board thats about 3D tech would have so many judging the hardware visual capabilities based on just clock rates. And some uncertain comments by a unknown dev on whether or not Hollywood would feature pixel shaders.

I mean "extension" is a broad term, it could mean many things. Is the CPU a 750 or 970 with the same instruction sets. There know way for us to know, until more info is released.
 
They already said that it will have the performance of a 2xGC before, this new info just "said how they get that".

Anyway yes extension is a very problematic term here (as I said many times before even Conroe is said to be a extention of P3).

BTW cant find the other coments now.
 
Ooh-videogames said:
I mean "extension" is a broad term, it could mean many things. Is the CPU a 750 or 970 with the same instruction sets. There know way for us to know, until more info is released.

That's the same argument I brought up to pc999 a few months back.
 
Legend said:
I am not :) For me, a gaming console has to be offer a strong lineup of quality-games, an easy-to-use gamepad and a quiet hardware cooling solution. The Gamecube produces more noise than my PS2, but the cube is both inexpensive and plays a fine selection of high-quality-games. Also I prefer the Gamecube's controller over the PS2 dual shock. Good games does not automatically come with pure hardware horsepower, while PS2's graphic unit is the weakest in its console generation, GT4 still offers outstandig graphics. And fun! I bought my PS2 (and Driving Force Pro) for GT4 only and I am stilly happy about it :)

Looking at Resident Evil 4 on a Gamecube, I still want to have Gamecube's raw horsepower tripled for the next generation. Gamecube's performance was enough for its generation, next generation games should offer more variety in textures (and higher texture resultion or detailmapping.) At these days I play Baten Kaitos on the Cube, it offers overall beautiful graphics and a nice battle system. The story is a bit too linear for my taste, plus the artwork is not without flaws. Still, it is fun to play; in my opinion much more important than HDTV or 5.1 surround support.

One good thing about the Revolution: With its specs it's unlikely that Revolution will be covered by multiplatform developers. In my opinion, multiplatform game's both artwork and performance are generally too compromized.
 
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aths said:
One good thing about the Revolution: With its specs its unlikely that Revolution will be covered by multiplatform developers. In my opinion, multiplatform games both artwork and performance are generally too compromized.

I'm only wondering... since when is it a GOOD thing to have less games? Maybe most of those games won't be as good as first party games, but they still provide options for people who want them.
 
Mordecaii said:
I'm only wondering... since when is it a GOOD thing to have less games? Maybe most of those games won't be as good as first party games, but they still provide options for people who want them.
I bought Need for Speed Underground 2 for the Gamecube and experienced serious problems with framerate stability. Later I bought it again, but for the PS2. It was not only smooth on the PS2, it also offered higher texture resultion (and no compression artifacts), and more graphic effects. So I consider the Gamecube-version a rip-off. It is still playable on the GCN, but it is not as half the fun as it is on the PS2.

Just to see the difference I bought RE4 for the PS2, after I played through the game on the GCN. On the first glance, it looked good. Having a 1:1-comparison one can see the massively degraded graphic detail: Nearly no lighting effects, nearly no particle effects, texture resolution is lowered and most textures are limited to a single color tint. The polygon count is lowered, and the cutscenes are no longer rendered in realtime, therefore you don't have Leon's new clothes if you replay the game. I recommend to buy a Gamecube, if you want to have the RE4-experience as "it's meant to be played". You still can play it on the PS2, but you really miss much of what made RE4 a great game.

Later I bought Need for Speed Most Wanted Black Edition for the PS2. The framerate is not smooth, it really kills any sense of driving fast. I prefer games developed and optimized for only a single piece of hardware. Then you can have great lighting and shadow effects like in Luigi's Mansion or a rock-stable framerate like in Gran Turismo 4.

To renounce multiplatform games means less games for a given platform, but allows higher quality for the games. You don't have to consider different hardware limitations and can use your whole budget to optimize the engine and the artwork for a particular architecture. That is why I hope the Revolution will get a large selection of Revolution-only titles.
 
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though many consumers share you view, aths, the publishers see things in a completely different light...
 
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there is no way any system can be successful without good 3rd party support. what do you think made PSOne and PS2 such a success story?
no matter how good Ninty games are or how many Sony games are, withoput good 3rd party support, you won't get that far out of the door. less games is better? who needs 3rd party games? who are you kidding?

sure, you may not like things like 50cent, movie tie-ins, GTA, etc. but these are million sellers. they push systems and generate more demand.

come on, you can do better than that.
 
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