Fact: Nintendo to release HD console + controllers with built-in screen late 2012

[Butta]

Just wondering if it would be possible for Nintendo to include 1GB of GDDR3 for the CPU and 1GB of GDDR5 for the GPU. This would resolve any issues with CPU latency attributed to to GDDR5 and low bandwidth for GPU attributed to GDDR3.

I hadn't seen it suggested most likely because of the cost split pools. But it seems that getting a GPU with 1GB of GDDR5 would be far more affordable than 2GB. Also, the once cheaper/faster memory is available, I imagine that they could combine both into a single pool?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

With Scaleform being the standard in UE3 now, and used in plenty of other games, scaling HUD and menu elements is trivial. But if you were to take that stuff off the main screen and put it on a supplemental screen, you'd probably want to use a different layout to make the most of all the space available. When they rip the HUD off a game and put it on the DS's bottom screen, they rearrange everything.

Of course it needs rearrangement, but I don't see how it would be such a hassle for developers to make both a HUD-less mode and a HUD-enabled mode for every game.
Sounds really trivial for any experienced developer, certainly not something that would greatly increase the game's development time and budget.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Besides that I don't see why you'd make a controller with a screen just so you can have things like the hud on it, do we really want to hud on the controller? That will make it impossible to quickly check important info. Health, ammo, speed, gear, minimap etc is quite important for a lot of games and you just cant check that if you need to take your focus of the tv, focus on the controller and than refocus on the screen again.

 

[AlNom]

FWIW, it's not like we haven't seen it before (GCN Splinter Cell + GBA hook-in).

 

[AlphaWolf]

Besides that I don't see why you'd make a controller with a screen just so you can have things like the hud on it, do we really want to hud on the controller? That will make it impossible to quickly check important info. Health, ammo, speed, gear, minimap etc is quite important for a lot of games and you just cant check that if you need to take your focus of the tv, focus on the controller and than refocus on the screen again.

you'd certainly have to call it something other than a HUD if you have to look in your hand for it. HUD on the controller is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

 

[borowki]

How on Earth is getting a HUD on top of the game rendering more battery demanding?!
The rendering is all done in the console, not the controller!

If you let the player use the built-in screen as the primary display, then it has to be on at all time. That means having a higher capacity battery. As I said before, I expect the screen to be tightly integrated with motion and touch control. When these are not used, the screen is powered down, extending battery life.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

If you let the player use the built-in screen as the primary display, then it has to be on at all time. That means having a higher capacity battery. As I said before, I expect the screen to be tightly integrated with motion and touch control. When these are not used, the screen is powered down, extending battery life.

It's pretty much a given fact that it won't be like that, since all the slides and rumours have pointed that you can use the controller as main screen for multiplayer games.

It'd be ridiculous not to give the players that option, IMO.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I saw this on GAF, it's probably fake, but I'm posting it just for fun, this thread needs some life anyway.

probably-fake Cafe specs

 

[Rangers]

Yes probably fake, I'd strongly bet against an internal hard drive, or any EDRAM. Why would it need EDRAM in conjunction with such a powerful GPU anyway? That would only cripple it, especially a paltry 16 MB. XDR RAM also seems like something a layperson familiar with PS3 and 360 specs would just throw in there rather than reality.

Also, doubt Nintendo is putting out any official graphics of "final specifications" for "devkit 1.3" or any at all.

Nice specs though, minus the EDRAM and hard drive.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Yap, that'd be an enthusiast's wet dream, but a very unlikely one too.


The RV770 @ 766MHz would do ~1225GFlops, not 1398.
Unless they somehow packed more than 800 ALUs in the GPU (making it something other than a RV770).

Playing a bit of devil's advocate, I'd take the 16MB eDRAM as a need for achieving some very fast X360 ports (as in: setup, recompile, done), using the extra 6MB to get true 720p with some headroom. Implementing XDR2 RAM could actually be cheap with Rambus having already developed FlexIO for the Power architecture. Nintendo used Rambus before, and they like to go "out-of-the-box" for memory solutions.

As for the SATA connection.. it's a development kit, so larger amounts of mass storage space could be regarded as a necessity for development purposes.

 

[BRiT]

YPlaying a bit of devil's advocate, I'd take the 16MB eDRAM as a need for achieving some very fast X360 ports (as in: setup, recompile, done), using the extra 6MB to get true 720p with some headroom

Keep dreaming. It will be significantly more than that. This Nintendo Cafe will not have any of the MS APIs available to it that is used on the Xbox360 or PC, such as Direct Input, Direct Audio, Direct X, etc. There's no way MS will allow it. There's no way Nintendo is paying exorbitant money to MS for licensing.

 

[MfA]

APIs aren't copyrightable.

 

[BRiT]

Yes, that's true, but do you really think Nintendo was able to completely re-implement the entire Direct X APIs with all of the nuances used by game engines?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Switching to a Nintendo system would also mean giving up on Live, and I can't really see how they could come up with something just as good as that from basically nowhere. Is true 720p as important for the majority as multiplayer with their friends? I don't think so, as most people don't know anything about sub HD resolutions at all.

 

[Devious]

I got a question.... Is it necessary to have 16MB of eDRAM when you already have 1GB of video RAM?

I feel that this question is coming out wrong....... So please, correct me. lol

 

[pc999]

I got a question.... Is it necessary to have 16MB of eDRAM when you already have 1GB of video RAM?
]

Edram it would be there for BW not RAM size.

 

[MfA]

Yes, that's true, but do you really think Nintendo was able to completely re-implement the entire Direct X APIs with all of the nuances used by game engines?

Doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough to allow easy ports.

 

[patsu]

Switching to a Nintendo system would also mean giving up on Live, and I can't really see how they could come up with something just as good as that from basically nowhere. Is true 720p as important for the majority as multiplayer with their friends? I don't think so, as most people don't know anything about sub HD resolutions at all.

Another Steam partnership ?

 

[Squilliam]

Well it doesn't look bad aside from the fact that they'd never go for a mechanical HDD. Wouldn't the ED-RAM be too small if they're targetting 1800 by 1000 est for the four screens in addition to up to 1920 by 1080 for the main TV screen?

 

[liolio]

This specs are so badly fake, 512MB for the ram? 1024 for the Vram? And on top of it Edram?
It's a bad joke...