Shifty Geezer said:Without knowing the specs, the thing to look to is the graphics and games themselves (actually you're better off looking at these than spec-sheets!). If the 'hardcore graphics-fiend' gamers are supposed to keep paying attention and expect something better than guessed so far, wouldn't that show in the games? Or is the final Wii spec going to improve noticeably from the devs have been developing for and shown their games for? Because at the moment though the Wii grapihcs are workable and not bad, they're not providing anything indicative of 'next-gen' power.
They're not, but if Nintendo works on their dev kits so that every Wii game looks like the best of gamecube (say if every game could look like rebel strike), that would probably be next gen enough. Rebel Strike already proved the performance and capability is there, now if Nintendo can just make dev tools that are easy enough so any dev can implement the features, they'll have graphics that are good enough to last a few years. I'm not sure if I expect Wii to have a normal 5 year lifespan though, but like Macs, it may be far from the best hardware out there, but as a whole it's probably the best designed hardware out there. They're going for more of the lifestyle market, like Apple does, though Apple did it out of necessity since they couldn't put better hardware in. The new Apple notebooks out now, along with the iPod show that they can do hardware that's only a bit inferior and still put out something well designed in pretty much all other areas as well. But Apple aims for the rich buyer, whereas Nintendo is definetely going for the kid who has allowance to spend. (didn't apple originally build its success by marketting its computers to school age kids though, pushing them as educational aids, and generally cheaper than other computers at the time?)