I could quite easily, but I'd rather those posts/rants stay deleted.
Well, here's an interesting question for those who want to say that it's all about pricepoint. . . .why is Wii outselling PS2?
Newsweek, with a little help, takes on Wii as 'GameCube 1.5'
- Thread starter B3D News
- Start date
I could quite easily, but I'd rather those posts/rants stay deleted.
Well, here's an interesting question for those who want to say that it's all about pricepoint. . . .why is Wii outselling PS2?
Readykilowatt
Regular
"People" are still talking about the Wii's specs? Oh, I forgot, these "people" are a part of a niche and irrelevant market who are infected with broken-record and beating-a-dead-horse syndrome.
Why do you only care to discuss the things about the Wii that it's not? And moving to price, why would you want to discuss based on a premise in that regard that is obviously flawed? Are there any sane people on this board that believe it is only about price? Show of hands, please? None? Well then, moving on...
I didn't know about the Gamecube's 16 stages. I would have been really interested to see if you could have uncovered the fillrate and maybe whether or not the T&L unit is any faster. The main thing that I was hoping to see was that "50% more logic transistors" claim about the GPU either confirmed or debunked, and instead it went unmentioned.
Are you sure you don't want to limit your scope any tighter to even better assist in question-begging? Possibly sane people on this board who's userid starts with a Z or something? And what percentage of Newsweek's readers would that tightly limited subset represent, do you think?
fightinfilipino
Newcomer
i just read the article over at Newsweek, and i registered here to say, well, so what? these aren't mystery items about the Wii people are uncovering for the first time, these are obvious points that pretty much everyone technically-oriented knew from the start. but this part in the article really gets me:
what? where have you been? do you connect to the internet at all? i think this exact conversation has played out hundreds if not thousands of times already electronically and in real life.
there's the argument that the "console war" is won by the company that has the most hardware out there first. but by the point where Sony or Microsoft have reduced their prices to $200 or nearby that amount, we will be around 3 to 5 years in each console's life span, an eternity in the realm of consoles. by that point, whoever's got the lead probably is not in danger of losing that lead. even if one system doesn't end up being the overall winner, the companies will already be looking towards a future product. Sony or Microsoft cannot realistically introduce controllers similar to the Wii either (although one can't fault Sony for trying!). because of intellectual property concerns, the risk of releasing an after-sale peripheral (see: Power Glove, 1980's), and the simple admission that Nintendo might have been on to something, MS and Sony won't do anything that drastic until their next console iterations.
and this last part:
that's the problem. while more tech-oriented people (myself included) clearly see the relative shortage in processing power that the Wii has when compared to the PS3 or the 360, the majority of people care more about three things: 1) will it work? 2) is it a good value for the money? and 3) is it fun? i would say that, by the numbers, more people are saying yes to all three things about the Wii than about the other consoles. this is also what is preventing a faster adoption rate for HDTV, for Hi-Def formats like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, broadband internet, etc.: for the majority, these technologies are still too chaotic and too expensive, at least in the U.S., to make sense.
let's also look at the things Nintendo did do to improve technology on the Wii. they compacted the system to fit in a much smaller package, an efficient and smart design. they created a controller that senses motion and orientation, has on-board flash memory storing individual user data, includes rumble (lol Sony), AND has an integrated speaker that plays sound effects transmitted through Bluetooth. and they developed an easy-to-use, elegant GUI.
yes, let's have a conversation about what makes gaming great and how we can get better graphics, control schemes, AND gameplay. that is important. but let's also accept the fact that Nintendo pretty much did redefine gaming by taking the traditional graphical-arms race and bleeding-edge technology scramble and simply doing something else. that in itself is amazing. this article, why spot on regarding the facts, is also extremely late to the party and, really, irrelevant now.
what? where have you been? do you connect to the internet at all? i think this exact conversation has played out hundreds if not thousands of times already electronically and in real life.
there's the argument that the "console war" is won by the company that has the most hardware out there first. but by the point where Sony or Microsoft have reduced their prices to $200 or nearby that amount, we will be around 3 to 5 years in each console's life span, an eternity in the realm of consoles. by that point, whoever's got the lead probably is not in danger of losing that lead. even if one system doesn't end up being the overall winner, the companies will already be looking towards a future product. Sony or Microsoft cannot realistically introduce controllers similar to the Wii either (although one can't fault Sony for trying!). because of intellectual property concerns, the risk of releasing an after-sale peripheral (see: Power Glove, 1980's), and the simple admission that Nintendo might have been on to something, MS and Sony won't do anything that drastic until their next console iterations.
and this last part:
that's the problem. while more tech-oriented people (myself included) clearly see the relative shortage in processing power that the Wii has when compared to the PS3 or the 360, the majority of people care more about three things: 1) will it work? 2) is it a good value for the money? and 3) is it fun? i would say that, by the numbers, more people are saying yes to all three things about the Wii than about the other consoles. this is also what is preventing a faster adoption rate for HDTV, for Hi-Def formats like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, broadband internet, etc.: for the majority, these technologies are still too chaotic and too expensive, at least in the U.S., to make sense.
let's also look at the things Nintendo did do to improve technology on the Wii. they compacted the system to fit in a much smaller package, an efficient and smart design. they created a controller that senses motion and orientation, has on-board flash memory storing individual user data, includes rumble (lol Sony), AND has an integrated speaker that plays sound effects transmitted through Bluetooth. and they developed an easy-to-use, elegant GUI.
yes, let's have a conversation about what makes gaming great and how we can get better graphics, control schemes, AND gameplay. that is important. but let's also accept the fact that Nintendo pretty much did redefine gaming by taking the traditional graphical-arms race and bleeding-edge technology scramble and simply doing something else. that in itself is amazing. this article, why spot on regarding the facts, is also extremely late to the party and, really, irrelevant now.
Nah. For a discussion on B3D, I think sane B3D posters are a reasonable enough distinction. Narrower would just be silly.
Nice one. I don't really know the extent of Level Up's readership, but I doubt it would be representative. Perhaps roughly comparable to the subset consisting of those who think the Wii success is purely based on price? The last part is just conjecture, though.
If you recall, I replied to you in the first place since you gave the impression of wanting to discuss the Wii in the context of what it's not, which IMO is a fundamentally flawed way of looking at things. Everything is flawed in that regard. The second part of what I responded to referenced unspecified 'Wii proponents' holding unreasonable positions, and why you would want o argue the merits on the system on such terms is beyond me. I certainly wouldn't, but then again I probably haven't been involved in the threads you've subsequently deleted?
Here's my outlook again for reference:
How about that?
I think people try to create some really huge mystery around the Wii and why it sells. It's pretty simple. The system is affordable and people have fun playing the games. That equals value for money, so people buy it. End of story. The average consumer does not care about technical specs. It's not that they don't know there is a difference, they just don't care. They buy what they feel is good enough. If they have fun on the Wii, and it's priced right, they'll buy it.
The same argument can be made for the style of motion control. While some people are screaming for failure in motion control because of the lack of 1:1 motion mapping, the average person feels the control is interactive enough for it to be enjoyable. End of story. There is no big secret or analysis required.
I find a lot of these Wii technical articles have kind of a negative tone, like the discussion is not really, "What can this thing do?," but, "It can't do this this and this, so why do people like it?" I mean, to each his own. Some people are more interested in the technology than others, but it shouldn't be so hard to see why the Wii is currently selling well.
The same argument can be made for the style of motion control. While some people are screaming for failure in motion control because of the lack of 1:1 motion mapping, the average person feels the control is interactive enough for it to be enjoyable. End of story. There is no big secret or analysis required.
I find a lot of these Wii technical articles have kind of a negative tone, like the discussion is not really, "What can this thing do?," but, "It can't do this this and this, so why do people like it?" I mean, to each his own. Some people are more interested in the technology than others, but it shouldn't be so hard to see why the Wii is currently selling well.
I have a question. Might not be appropriate for this thread, but hey, I may get an answer.
Hollywood and Broadway are hardly costing Nintendo too much, and I'm assuming Ati and IBM aren't getting too much for them. Is it possible that ATi and IBM could kinda convince Nintendo to use significantly powerful chips (not in the same class as what one would assume be chips for Xbox720 and PS4), but something significantly more powerful than what's in Wii currently? I ask because I think ATi and IBM wouldn't want to keep providing Nintendo with (at that point) 10+ year old hardware.
Hollywood and Broadway are hardly costing Nintendo too much, and I'm assuming Ati and IBM aren't getting too much for them. Is it possible that ATi and IBM could kinda convince Nintendo to use significantly powerful chips (not in the same class as what one would assume be chips for Xbox720 and PS4), but something significantly more powerful than what's in Wii currently? I ask because I think ATi and IBM wouldn't want to keep providing Nintendo with (at that point) 10+ year old hardware.
As long as ATi (AMD) and IBM are getting paid, I don't think they care about the age of the product. The chips will continue to get upgraded with die shrinks making them more profitable (I dunno if that goes to Nintendo or IBM/AMD tho).
I would like to know more about the specific references for the claims made within the article....
I mean regular B3D'ers trust you guys, but the article seems a little "take our word for it" to everyone else
First of all, it's kind of hard to make out what specific parts you're talking about. So I am going to assume you're talking about the bits and pieces of the specs that were not previously known, here.
I can only assure you, we've checked it. As you will understand, I obviously can't tell you whom we talked with, as we have to guarantee our sources' confidentiality.
Clearly the scope of Wii's hardware wasn't known by everyone, given by Croal's interesting in hosting the article and the responses he had to the original article in May. We had long debates on this board about what Wii could do, including many claiming Wii had special magic sauces and the like. There were proponents of the system who thought it was substantially better than Wii. There's no point them going around telling other boards Wii has 3-5x the performance of GC and MS's comment in May was a load of baloney when that's not true.
So let's get a couple of things straight - no-one said the Wii was a flop, was going to flop, is a load of rubbish, or anything else. The whole point to was get the 'fact' out the door (which has been tried before but people kept pushing it back in 'coz they didn't want to know!) that Wii is a trumped-up GC inside. That was the purpose of the article and it was targeted at those who don't know, rather than those who do know and assume everyone else does.
TBH, I think it irritating that Wii has this following where the moment anyone starts talking about its hardware, that contingent comes along to tell us we shouldn't because it's irrelevant and no-one wants to know and no-one needs to know and Wii doesn't even use technology anyway. If you're not interested in the inner workings, that's fine. Just don't tell those who are interested that they shouldn't be!
Again this reference to the abrasive 'Wii following'. Who and where are these people? I'm genuinely curious here, as I have never encountered such a thing.
Personally, I'm very interested in 'in the inner workings', but it seems to me that lots of the negativity the Wii garner amongst techheads is akin to dissing a boat for not being a car by someone who has lived in a landlocked society all their life and just can't comprehend the desire for such a thing.
If someone in particular doesn't care about the Wii for not being the foremost exhibitor of features x, y, and z, then so be it. That doesn't preclude the possibility that it's display of a', b', and c' isn't inciting for someone who doesn't care about x, y, and z at all. Nor does it inheretly make the the technical merits of a', b', and c' any less interesting simply because one is used to judge such a device based on x, y, and z.
For example, why "assume that a significant component to the Wii's success is its much lower price" and assert that people should "dispel themselves of the idea of the Wii as a magical device that will completely redefine gaming". Evidence should rather suggest that it's not and that it is.
Now, give me the articles titled (for example, less thesis-like if you want
): "Motion Control Derived Gameplay in Advanced Interactive Environments", "Possibilities for Motion Control and Physics Based Interactivity", or "The Limitations of Wiimote-control for Natural Motion Input" and I'll be there in a heartbeat.Harping about the lack of graphics and/or CPU horsepower without context, on the other hand, is just not all that interesting.
Voluntary disclosure: I don't own a Wii and have never properly played with one. Still, I'm intrigued by it, and see its success as positive for gaming in general. If/when the price comes down a bit, I'll probably get one. On the other hand, I'm not intrigued by the Xbox 360 at all. But I'm dying to play Mass Effect, so I'll be getting one for myself for Christmas (basically I see this as a PC upgrade replacement). The PS3 is currently way out of my price range for a toy (>$960!).
Why? It's obvious. PS2 is in almost 100mln households or let's say more then 100mln people have it. It can't expect anyone to buy another PS2 just because Wii is out. I think we should wait a little bit longer to jugde how good Wii is. Maybe it will stop at 20/30mln so I won't be any better then GameCube.
We are seeing Wii's CPU being more powerfull then GC's but I wonder how much power does it need to handle Wiimote. After all it has to analyst it's position and speed in 3D.
archangelmorph
Veteran
To be honest on a forum where the vast majority of members come from a more PS oriented background, I tend to find faaaaaaaaaaaar more negativity reflected towards the PS3. It's pretty clear from the time i've spent frequenting these boards that nearly every Wii-centric post is either in praise of it's current sales performance or in flame against sparse comments from users displaying their own personal tastes (albeit against the Wii..)
Sure.. Also if someone who ACTUALLY cares about the technical deficiancies of x, y & z with respect to competing hardware platforms (and the implications to software thereof), which many do here, then it shouldn't prevent such discussions from proceeding ahead, especially when the platform is (however technically challenged) in fact a piece of technical hardware and when the forum for discussion is almost entirely x,y & z related (across the whole scope/range of those elements..)
Huh?
I don't understand why anyone here would realistically attempt to content with the idea that the Wii's current success isn't almost entirely driven by it's price?
Sure the novelty of the platform and the "re-defined gaming" it reflects is appealing to most consumers but there's also no doubt that most consumers interested in the idea of video games wouldn't be attracted to the graphical, vescerial, audio-visual euphoria offered from the more expensive platforms also.. Whether someone is interested is irrelevent however, what matters is the "cost" to the consumer when you're talking about that same consumer actually making a purchase.. Do you think the Wii would be selling like it is at £425? (or the PS3 at £249 for that matter?).. Do you think most working class car enthusiasts who covet Ferrari's & Lambourgini's aren't buying them because they somehow prefer the driving experience offered by a ford irrespective of the price difference?
Price is the driver of the Wii's success currently.. It's market appeal is the only aspect of the console that could be considered "revolutionary" however considering traditionally such appeal generally being influenced directly by relative technical capability & games (I say relative because it only matters with respect to what has been defined by the market as somewhat of a standard..)
It's in this area of differentiating their product via the successful de-coupling of the concepts of hardware market viability & technical capability, that Nintendo have truely done something new and different.. Other than this the console can and should be treated the same as every other (especially with respect to the idea of real-world market success factors.. i.e. in this case being novelty, newness & price..)
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at because I rarely see disscussions around here where the Wii's technical limitations are "harped on about" without context.. Unless you're not reading the context of the discussions yourself I would love you to provide some examples of where you believe this has been done?
This kind of statement generally doesn't sit well with me.. Unless you somehow believe your entire post came across with some kind of bias then I don't see why you bothered to type this? If you did then maybe you need to either take more time in future to get your point across in a way that's more indicative of a non-slanted view, or you probably do have slanted views and your just adding this as some kind of disclaimer in an attempt to "prove your credibility"..
Either way I don't think it's really necessary and only shows both a lack of your own faith in the abilities of other B3Ders to discern your stance on a particular matter and a lack of objective reasoning (or understanding the objective reasoning of others) which would explain why you seem to comes across as somewhat "offended" by anyone who seems to try and attest to the objectivity of the article in the OP..
Personally I think it was very well written and, while not particularly complimentary of the Wii (newsflash, it wasn't meant to be..) it by no means goes so far as to condemn the platform.. I would say it merely presents the facts regarding the technical capabilities of the platform, deductive evaluations of the root of the platform's market appeal and the challenges it may very well face in the future from competitors (whom historically have shown are not only capable but probably very commited to making sure that they do everything in their power to make sure that the Wii's early run-away success doesn't affect the success of their own market performance going forward..)
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I have to say that this article sounds rather negative. Too many what-if's and all that, but fact is that we're talking about right now and not some distant future. And right now, Wii kicks arse as far as the sales go. The lack of interest about the underlying tech in the media and on the consumer side is perfectly understandable, those people only want to know two things: "Is it fun?" and "Is it affordable?".
EDIT: Zaphod - see, this is "the following" I don't give a shite about the tech in there, because it's nothing but a simple fun toy for me. For the tech stuff, PC is much more interesting anyway.
EDIT: Zaphod - see, this is "the following"
I don't give a shite about the tech in there, because it's nothing but a simple fun toy for me. For the tech stuff, PC is much more interesting anyway.That should be way less than 1% of the CPU cycles, the algorithm needed for that should be fairly simple. And if it's partly implemented as fixed function, the CPU might just not even notice the load.
archangelmorph
Veteran
I agree..
The general media have never been interested in the technical aspects of any consumer electronic product for the obvious reason that the vast majority of readers don't understand..
As far as i'm aware this remains pretty consistent with practically every console thats ever been released..
Well it's not like they don't understand, they don't WANT to bother with understanding a thing which should just work like a TV set or your regular stereo. Press a button, it runs, play and have fun, turn off, finished.
I've yet to see anyone wonder about how his TV works or what the underlying tech looks like. And Nintendo's goal was to create a simple toy for the whole family and not a new shiny geek-toy for the daddy like the PS3.
Ultimately that is the same goal that MS and Sony have/had, they were just too distracted by the technical side and missed the opportunity to place their products in the "home appliance" category properly. And they destroyed the opportunity themselves by bragging too much about the latest features instead of trying to sell a toy (which it is, in the end). They both scared the audience away by having a console which is too complex and too geeky and PC-like IMO. Actually most people were scared away from the XBox just by knowing it comes from MS, at least here in Europe. Most of us hate MS (their politics as a company) with passion here.
I've yet to see anyone wonder about how his TV works or what the underlying tech looks like. And Nintendo's goal was to create a simple toy for the whole family and not a new shiny geek-toy for the daddy like the PS3.
Ultimately that is the same goal that MS and Sony have/had, they were just too distracted by the technical side and missed the opportunity to place their products in the "home appliance" category properly. And they destroyed the opportunity themselves by bragging too much about the latest features instead of trying to sell a toy (which it is, in the end). They both scared the audience away by having a console which is too complex and too geeky and PC-like IMO. Actually most people were scared away from the XBox just by knowing it comes from MS, at least here in Europe. Most of us hate MS (their politics as a company) with passion here.