Ok, full interview from anonymous third party about Wii GPU.

[Eteric]

I recall Nintendo stated they wanted to make a console to be sold for $100, but the technology they put in the machine doubled the price.
I also recall that the disc drive was expensive to design too.

At any rate, people who are saying Nintendo should have done this or that are talking out of their butt. According to sales, Nintendo has done everything right this time around. And they havent even released their big three titles yet! Im curious what under the hood of the machine, but I dont think they needed to improve on anything.

In the end it comes down to if you enjoy the games that will be coming out on the console. Japanese developers are already shifting focus to the Wii away from the PS3, EA is supporting it like crazy, and we are going to probably see a slew of titles from small independent developers. Its all about the games. And in two years time I predict Wii will have the most interesting and engaging games compared to the other two consoles.

I remember the same thing. They said the drive is the most expensive part of the Wii, I believe.

Anyway, I'm anxious for the Wii. I see what companies like Square-Enix did on the PS2, and I really want to see what they can do on the Wii. I hope they have some things planned aside from CC, the Chocobo game, and DQ Swords.

How do you guys get your information, though? I mean about the inside of the console. For all I know Nintendo never said a peep about it.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

What is the consensus on using TEV to simulate certain shaders that are currently performed on PS3/360 easily?

Nintendo is supposedly working on tools, that recreate some the shaders particularly normal mapping. Based on what ERP has said and comments from Julian Eggebreht about TEV, is there any understanding on what is possible. Nintendo continues to update old patents, one being focused on bump mapping that seems to describe normal mapping implementation.

 

[Capeta]

I recall Nintendo stated they wanted to make a console to be sold for $100, but the technology they put in the machine doubled the price.
I also recall that the disc drive was expensive to design too.

I think you remembered wrong. Miyamoto said if he had his way the Wii would've been $100. IIRC this was in response to the $250 that they were criticised for being greedy for wanting to make a nice profit on basically old outdated hardware.

As far as the drive is concerned that is totally wrong. The drive is a slim DVD-ROM drive you could buy at retail for $25. Let's not start the stupid slot (expensive) vs tray (cheap) argument again which never held any water.

I remember the same thing. They said the drive is the most expensive part of the Wii, I believe.

That doesn't say much does it? If the drive is $25 and the CPU is $10 and GPU is $24 that statement would be true but still doesn't say much at all since $25 is very cheap for a slim DVD drive even if it's the most expensive component of the console.

 

[Oblivion]

My analysis on Nintendo's rationale for going the route that they chose. (Wrote this a few hours ago, but it got erased, goddamn it! )

Ability to reuse GC assets: By making the hardware very similar, they could use the same assets and code and whatnot without too much effort/time/money involved in learning new hardware, architecture and the like.

It's just fricken cheaper for Nintendo: Just going this route would save Nintendo millions on R & D.

Third parties didn't care much: For the past 2 generations, Nintendo was cursed with a lack of third party games. Very few ever bothered to put any serious effort into them, and most were ported to PS2 later anyway. Even after Nintendo revealed the Wii controller, and after all the PR shit that you heard from the big boys, they still weren't going to do anything major for it. So from Nintendo's point of view, you could figure 'hey, these guys probably aren't going to help us AGAIN, so why do we have to make our hardware to fit their needs?". So they thought they may as well cut their losses entirely.

However, 2 things here that I just don't get that don't seem to jive well with my analysis.

-The ridiculously small size
-The small power usage

Isn't it more expensive to shrink something down? Why didn't Nintendo just stay with a bigger design? It just sounds weird to me, because first of all, if Nintendo knew that it would be risky trying to go with GC+ graphics, why would they try and make it weaker, if they had a chance to make it more powerful while keeping the same profit margin? And the small power usage, some have said it's because of Wiiconnect24, but if that's the case, then that means they're really pushing that online thing very hard. But still.

But yeah, just my 2 cents. Feel free to rip apart anything I've gotten wrong.

 

[Capeta]

It's natural for ICs to get shrunken over time and fabbed on smaller processes. This allows cost and power consumption benefits. If they did a straight die shrink without overclocking it would still allow cost and power decreases.

 

[bomlat]

My analysis on Nintendo's rationale for going the route that they chose. (Wrote this a few hours ago, but it got erased, goddamn it! )

Because your starting point is wrong: your basic assumption is that they design the wii around the low cost.But in that case why they use gold plated connectors on many not visible place?

The real design center was the customer.They design the wii around the customer.Proof : sales numbers.

 

[Capeta]

My analysis on Nintendo's rationale for going the route that they chose. (Wrote this a few hours ago, but it got erased, goddamn it! )

Because your starting point is wrong: your basic assumption is that they design the wii around the low cost.But in that case why they use gold plated connectors on many not visible place?

The real design center was the customer.They design the wii around the customer.Proof : sales numbers.

Gold plating doesn't cost that much unless it's used everywhere, it's there for reliability eg corrosion resistance at key connections vs using copper.

 

[MDX]

I think you remembered wrong. Miyamoto said if he had his way the Wii would've been $100. IIRC this was in response to the $250 that they were criticised for being greedy for wanting to make a nice profit on basically old outdated hardware.

As far as the drive is concerned that is totally wrong. The drive is a slim DVD-ROM drive you could buy at retail for $25. Let's not start the stupid slot (expensive) vs tray (cheap) argument again which never held any water.



That doesn't say much does it? If the drive is $25 and the CPU is $10 and GPU is $24 that statement would be true but still doesn't say much at all since $25 is very cheap for a slim DVD drive even if it's the most expensive component of the console.

Whaaaaat? I said Design- meaning they had to figure out a few things before just sticking in a regular ol' drive:

One particular problem was the disc drive. As I'm sure you can imagine, once the space needed for the casing and other components has been taken into account, the drive unit itself can be no thicker than a single DVD case. This was a real challenge. And of course, if you make it too thin, then the issue of robustness comes into play. At the end of the day, no matter how powerful Wii is, it's still used for playing, so we have to assume that it will also be used by children. Of course, Nintendo has particularly stringent standards to ensure that our products don't break easily! (laughs) So, we carried out test after test in order to strike the perfect balance between size and strength, failing again, and again, and again... Thanks to this process of trial and error, we were finally able to achieve a thickness of 3 DVD cases by inserting some reinforcing plates.

we were also particularly keen to use a slot-loading disc drive. Using a drive with a lid, like the GameCube's, would have saved a few millimeters. In addition, slot-loading drives are expensive and their durability is a cause for concern when compared against drives that actually open. But again, we had to take into consideration where the console might be placed. Given that TVs nowadays have very little extra space around them, and given that a slot-loading drive allows for more compact access, it was an absolutely indispensable feature when thinking about our customers. Based on the kind of lifestyle our customers lead, and due to the fact that our controllers are wireless, I think we made the right decision.

ttp://wiiportal.nintendo-europe.com/91.html

As well, as I recall, it wasnt easy to implement a slot drive to take the GC and Wii discs as perfectly as the Wii drive actually does.

Your so focused on the cost of material, and not the cost of testing, thinking, labour, etc. You cant judge the genuis of the lightbulb because its cheap to make.

 

[Capeta]

Whaaaaat? I said Design- meaning they had to figure out a few things before just sticking in a regular ol' drive:

As well, as I recall, it wasnt easy to implement a slot drive to take the GC and Wii discs as perfectly as the Wii drive actually does.

Your so focused on the cost of material, and not the cost of testing, thinking, labour, etc. You cant judge the genuis of the lightbulb because its cheap to make.

It ain't f*king rocket science man!!! Slot load slim DVD drives that can take 30cm DVDs have been in existence for probably a decade used in various notebooks and sold as bare drives as replacements/upgrades. What's so f*king hard about putting one inside of a halfheight external DVD drive case??? Do you need an engineering degree for this??? You know that guy who builds those neat homeade portable consoles? That takes more thinking/designing than slapping a stupid slim drive into an external DVD drive case. You are WRONG case closed.

BTW if you are still stubborn and ignorant enough to belive that slot drives are "expensive" maybe you haven't been living on planet Earth. There are slot loading drives inside car head units all over the place for $100 retail some are even cheaper. So how much do you think it costs for the bare drives in these full head units??? $50?? I don't think so.

cost of testing, thinking, labour, etc

You act like testing/design is some exotic phenomenon that no other console manufacturer has to go through except Nintendo.

I tell you what, why don't you buy a Wii, lay it on its side and bang your fist over the top of the DVD drive as hard as you can no need for a hammer. You think it will still take the discs and be able to read them? Yeah Nintendo hired f*king Einstein by paying him $30 million to design that drive with the use of the Earth Simulator for structural modeling for it to handle 1000Gs and sh*t.

 

[Nightz]

Again the design is also fairly standard. Nothing out of the ordinary. 2 accelerometers and an IR cam. An EE student can create stuff like that after 2 semesters. Even in the initial stages of brainstorming using accelerometers was a given. All that was left to do was using a pointing system and for that there're many proven methods readily available. It's not wheel reinvented. If you think a fortune was spent on developing that you're deluding yourself.

EDIT: tried to clarify my point

Too many assumptions. If the technology is that simple to implement, as you say, how come no one ever thought of it? In fact dozens of motion sensing devices, both for gaming and for professional use were released prior to the Wiimote but none of them was ever much good. They even say the Wiimote is accurate enough for realtime 3D sculpting. As far as I'm aware all the console manufacturers, Sony, Sega & Microsoft, all experimented with motion sensing devices at some point in the past but none proved capable of coming up with a satisfactory results. Gametrak Fusion, that isn't very good.

 

[MDX]

It ain't f*king rocket science man!!! Slot load slim DVD drives that can take 30cm DVDs have been in existence for probably a decade used in ....blah blah blah...

All Im saying is that Nintendo put alot of time, energy and money into their slot drive and other components. Whether it was because their staff of engineers are morons, or because they know something about engineering a successfull and working console that you, MS and Sony dont, doesnt really matter. The facts are what they are.

I hope none of you ever do something as simple as produce a movie.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Too many assumptions. If the technology is that simple to implement, as you say, how come no one ever thought of it?

How simple something is has nothing to do with how readily people come to create it. The paper-clip is dead simple and could have been created hundreds of years before it was. The failure of other motion detectors lies in various causes. For one thing the accelerometer tech has improved, so those same designs could be implemented with modern components and achieve better results.

As for Wiimote being accurate enough for 3D sculpting...well, I'll believe it when I see it. At the moment it is accurate to the point the 'cursor' wobbles continuously, it lacks range, and games have issues with registering false motions. Some of that may be solvable with better software, but at the moment it's a far from perfect solution. The technology is pretty simple. The idea shouldn't have been one that took a bunch of engineers 40,000 man-hours to come up with. The cost of components is pretty low. In short, the cost to develop the Wiimote is not going to register much of a blip on Nintendo's finances. It's a device in stark contrast to something like BluRay that needed whole new manufacturing methods to be developed and refined, along with very accurate componentry. The cheapo components you could buy in bulk already were enough to make the Wiimote without any huge expense.

 

[function]

Too many assumptions. If the technology is that simple to implement, as you say, how come no one ever thought of it?

They did. In fact I seem to remember a MS boffin doing something pretty damn similar (in motion/pointing terms) years earlier. What Nintendo did isn't so much about technological innovation, but using impressive insight to develop a product that they had the balls to put out into the market.

In fact dozens of motion sensing devices, both for gaming and for professional use were released prior to the Wiimote but none of them was ever much good. They even say the Wiimote is accurate enough for realtime 3D sculpting. As far as I'm aware all the console manufacturers, Sony, Sega & Microsoft, all experimented with motion sensing devices at some point in the past but none proved capable of coming up with a satisfactory results. Gametrak Fusion, that isn't very good.

The DC fishing rod produced very acceptable results in Bass Fishing actually, as did the DC maracas in Samba. Two player Soul Calibur using two fishing rods was an absolute hoot btw. Nintendo didn't invent or pioneer "really good fun" motion controlled gameplay, but they certainly worked out how to make a huge, fat, stinking amount of cash from it!

"Good work" I say.

 

[ninzel]

Overall I agree with the what Nintendo did with the Wii.Sticking to SD,lower price,smaller quieter ,Wiimote etc. Where I disagree with them is in the degree to which they "underpowered" the system.
I would have been perfectly happy sticking to SD for a number of more years,but once you see higher polygon counts,better shader effects,more geometry(?) and hear better audio..it's hard to go back. It's not even about SD,it's about everything else.
If instead of aiming for 2X Metroid Prime graphics,they aimed for example Gears of War level graphics but at SD and taken a slight loss and still sold it at $250 I think they would have done even better in the long run and probably would have pulled in even more hardcore gamers.
Instead of 729Mhz G4 why not 1.2 GHz G5?
Instead of DX 8 level VPU why not DX9?
Heck even if they had put more RAM in like 256 MB instead of 88MB.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The idea shouldn't have been one that took a bunch of engineers 40,000 man-hours to come up with.

How many man-hours did it take to refine and test? How many man-hours does Nintendo put into the quality/durability testing that other companies seem to ignore? The answer is simple: You don't know. Maybe looking at a shareholders' balance sheet might tell you something, but some of the stories Iwata told indicate that they did more than slap a couple accelerometers to an RF transmitter and call it a day.

 

[ninzel]

Nintendo has a well earned reputation for quality and reliability. Quality isn't just a function of good manufacturing but good design to begin with.
Say what you will about Nintendo but they certainly put a lot of attention to detail into everything they do.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How many man-hours did it take to refine and test? How many man-hours does Nintendo put into the quality/durability testing that other companies seem to ignore? The answer is simple: You don't know.

It doesn't matter. The whole discussion of the cost of Wiimote development is regards to the price of the console and it's low-power hardware, and why they chose to not go with something more powerful. The idea is that the cost of the Wiimote development is cause to choose lower price, lower performance hardware in the console. This isn't the case. You'd have to spend a stupid amount of money to say 'let's cut $50 off the CPU and GPU because the price to make this wand thing is so damned high we'll never make any money otherwise.' And it's not logically conceivable that Nintendo did just that. Even if Wiimote cost them $50 million to develop (and I doubt even NASA could blow that much on a simple solution), in the grand scheme of things that's not going to cause them to change their minds from a 9800 and Dual-core CPU to what they've got now. And there's still no sane way they could have spent that much developing Wiimote. Perhaps their RnD budget for coming up with ideas (they did have lots, and had to decide which ones to incorporate, going by interviews) was something substantial, but still not enough to warrant cutbacks to the meat and bones of the console hardware. Price of controller can't have been an issue.

...but some of the stories Iwata told indicate that they did more than slap a couple accelerometers to an RF transmitter and call it a day.

He's hardly going to be the most honest and unbiased of sources, is he? What if it was a cheap solution? Would he publicly say as much, or spin some PR talk about investment? Wasn't it Iwata who said something like Revolution's graphics would be on a par with Next-gen, and Zelda:TP was already looking next-gen?

 

[fearsomepirate]

You'd have to spend a stupid amount of money to say 'let's cut $50 off the CPU and GPU because the price to make this wand thing is so damned high we'll never make any money otherwise.'

It's not just money, but also time, manpower, and facilities. How many engineers did Nintendo employ during this period? Don't forget that DS and DS Lite development were going on during the same time as Wii development, and there were other Wii components to be designed as well, such as the controller development tools, disc drive and user interface. That they weren't even ready for online support when Wii launched should indicate that they didn't exactly have a whole lot of engineers to spare. The simplicity of their previous two consoles would also seem to indicate that Nintendo doesn't employ a huge number of design people. The Gamecube was little more than some processors and RAM with a few simple input ports. The controllers were more rugged and compact than N64 controllers, but didn't employ any new technology. There was mass storage, creative anti-piracy solution, deep user interface, DVD playback, mechanized disc drive, or force feedback. It's quite obvious in retrospect that no online strategy was in the works, either.

Also, I'm under the impression that unlike the American companies, Japanese companies don't typically hire full-time employees for the duration of a project and fire them all when it's over, so it may very well be that Nintendo wasn't interested in hiring a whole lot more people.

 

[bomlat]

from the other side, exactly what was that innovative in the xb2?they ordered a modded gpu+cpu,and the others are commodity (memory,dvd drive etc.).
the xb2 general design , the dvd romor the controller technology,the network hardware are less advanced,than in the case of wii.
So,what was that expensive in the xb2 development?The modded gpu?that was only a slightly modded existing gpu design!!!

 

[archie4oz]

Please tell me you're being sarcastic...