Revolution increases competitions sales?

[Ruariâ„¢]

I think if Revolution doesn't match 360 specs, then it will lose out on games like Resident Evil 5. Games like that are huge! People were willing to lower games graphics to get them to run on PS2 then upgrade them a small bit for Cube and XBOX. However, with Revolution I doubt too many developers will be willing to make the same sacrifice.

This will only force people that want play these big games, to get rival consoles. It's just being silly. Nintendo are willing to skimp on power just to make Revolution tiny.

Don't flame me, I am a huge Nintendo fan... but this seems like the classic Nintendo mistake. No CD, DVD and Online (to a lesser extent).

 

[Farid]

This thread is made of 100% flammable materials. Especially the thread tittle.

Also, I fail to see how this relates to 3D technology. But well, if someone wants to discuss this topic, civily and politely, why not...

 

[Ruariâ„¢]

It's about graphical prowess of the consoles, so it is kind of about 3d technology. Anyways keep it clean.

 

[Arun]

Well, the first (and only) semi-obvious thing about Revolution right now is that it doesn't support HD resolutions, so fillrate costs automatically go down compared to the other consoles for an identical per-pixel detail. That means developers will probably even be able to increase detail a bit per-pixel since I doubt that Revolution's GPU will be twice as slow as the one launched nearly one year earlier in the XBox360.

So, what I suspect would happen - if the Revolution GPU indeed is subpar, which I don't think has been reliably determined at this point - is that developers would reduce the polygon counts and add normal maps to the few models that don't have them already on the XBox360/PS3 (emphasis on "few", really). That could easily be done through many of the freely available NVIDIA or ATI tools for this purpose (automatic generation of normal maps with a higher quality model).

I would tend to believe that porting between XBox360 and Revolution should not be too hard for these reasons, but the big question mark then is just how similar the CPUs will be, and how comparable their performance will be.

There will also be the obvious question of the required development time to make proper usage of Revolution's "exclusive" features, if there indeed are any big ones. For example, the touch screen on the DS certainly implies that to take full benefit of the handheld console, you'd need to change your game a bit to benefit from this feature.

Depending on the kind of "new" feature on the Revolution, this may or may not be the case. This, and the CPU, are in my opinion the two big "unknowns" here. If it's all too different, there will be slightly less ports - if it's really nothing hard to take into consideration, there will be slightly more. Obviously, most of the port decisions will be determined by how big the Revolution playerbase will be.


Uttar

 

[Ruariâ„¢]

Well about the Revolutions' installed userbase. Well we don't know, Revolution could be the DS of home consoles. It could sell very well and the 'innovative' stance could really benefit Nintendo by seperating them from the other 2. But it will take time to judge how many owners of it there will be and with no strong 3rd party support to begin with that will only stunt userbase growth.

Also if Revolution is less powerful, by quite a lot (this could be true). Then when developers run off and finally push 360 and PS3 later on, porting to Revolution will become even harder.

 

[Farid]

Here's some food for thought. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president, talked to EGM about the graphical capabilities of the Revolution:

EGM: Some people are saying Nintendo has given up trying to lead technologically and is focused on innovation.

Satoru Iwata: I don't think the Revolution's (graphics) will be inferior in any fasion to Xbox 360 or PS3. Even if you look at Zelda on GameCube.
I don't think that looks inferior to what (the competition) is touting as 'next generation' visuals. But we think there are more important things for now than making the system (work with) a high-definition television. The majority of people won't be playing our system with an HDTV, (though) with the Revolution, 480p [resolution] will be standard. We are not making light of graphics and technology, we are trying to make the best balanced machine that will appeal to the most people.

We have, in this interview, the confirmation (Translation errors aside) that the revolution will at least output a progressive signal (480p) and not a SDTV compatible signal only (480i).

 

[jvd]

Nintendo can make a cheaper system which in the end will put out an image of the same quality to that of ps3 and x360 . It will just be at a lower res .


There is alot of talk this gen about hd era . However that is the future . Right now and for a few more years the majority of users will be using standard def tv sets in both japan and the usa. In europe hd tvs are like a blad eagle . very rare .

Also understand that 480p is a third of the pixels of 720p . That means the same hardware can do 3 times the amount of work on each pixel .

Last point is that ati has a very efficent 6x fsaa . The x800xt pe I have gets away with all games but eq2 and doom3 at 1600x1200 and 6x fsaa . Nintendo should be fine at 480p with 6xfsaa keeping the image quality higher than just a normal 640p image .


oh one more random thought. If the hardware is easier to developer for and less complex (perhaps two power pc cores on a chip and a r520 ) developers may still flock to the system

 

[Ruariâ„¢]

I heard, a newish PC monitor can handle up to 720p. Iwata in the past said Revolution could connect to PC monitor. So when you take into account the amount of homes with access to an HD screen (pc monitor) then also take into account that by 2008 stanard tv's will be totally fazed out. Only HD TV sold. This happening early in Revolutions' life span. Then the whole arguement of there not being enough HD TV screens out there to merit supporting 720p is silly.

 

[Farid]

Last point is that ati has a very efficent 6x fsaa . The x800xt pe I have gets away with all games but eq2 and doom3 at 1600x1200 and 6x fsaa . Nintendo should be fine at 480p with 6xfsaa keeping the image quality higher than just a normal 640p image .

If the hardware can't provide free (Or almost free) AA solution, it wouldn't be wise to make AA mandatory. Let alone 6XMSAA.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

If the hardware is easier to developer for and less complex (perhaps two power pc cores on a chip and a r520 ) developers may still flock to the system

Was revolution touted to have a built in hard drive? If so, then it could feasibly become a mac mini competitor seeing as how such a setup completely bitchslaps the mini.

 

[Farid]

Was revolution touted to have a built in hard drive?

It has 512MB of built-in solid state memory, no HDD.

 

[PC-Engine]

I've been thinking the same. Revolution would be a nice little computer especially for the Japanese market.

 

[Farid]

I've been thinking the same. Revolution would be a nice little computer especially for the Japanese market.

Hmm... Family Computer?

 

[Ruariâ„¢]

Yes, Nintendo should call Revolution alterations of NES and Famicom. Famicom is a HUGE name in Japan to rival PlayStation. Famicom name would attract the older gamers too


Anyway, Revolution saves space.

1 - It has small flash memory (not large HD)
2 - Has small WiFi chip (no large router or modem)
3 - It has 7 months + over 360 for things to be minaturised.
4 - It has very few space wasting expansion ports (compared to Cube)
5 - This is a maybe, MAYBE better cooling technology by its release.

 

[EndR]

I still think that the size of the machine will be an obstacle for Rev to match the competitors tech-wise. There are reasons the 360 and PS3 are bigger than Rev, and some of those reasons are the cooling-stuff for the cpu and gpu.

With Rev coming out a bit after PS3, maybe there is a possibility that they can use 65nm for the stuff, but it seems not very likely.

I still think that Rev will be able to muster out some nice gfx but it will be some noticible differences between Rev and 360/PS3

 

[Ruariâ„¢]

I think Nintendo are being dumb, just to make the console small. They throw away graphics.

 

[Farid]

With Rev coming out a bit after PS3, maybe there is a possibility that they can use 65nm for the stuff, but it seems not very likely.

That remind me that I didn't keep up with the rumors about Nintendo chip production for next-gen. Do anyone knows the latest hearsay, is it TSMC, UMC, East Fishkill, NEC?
PC-Engine?

I still think that Rev will be able to muster out some nice gfx but it will be some noticible differences between Rev and 360/PS3

Indeed, especially when one consider the fact that Nintendo's game artstyle. Except for Zelda (not all Zelda's, see WW), most Nintendo game have a cartoon/SD artstyle. A style that doesn't require incredible graphic capabilities to be close to perfect.

 

[EndR]

With Rev coming out a bit after PS3, maybe there is a possibility that they can use 65nm for the stuff, but it seems not very likely.

That remind me that I didn't keep up with the rumors about Nintendo chip production for next-gen. Do anyone knows the latest hearsay, is it TSMC, UMC, East Fishkill, NEC?
PC-Engine?

I still think that Rev will be able to muster out some nice gfx but it will be some noticible differences between Rev and 360/PS3

Indeed, especially when one consider the fact that Nintendo's game artstyle. Except for Zelda (not all Zelda's, see WW), most Nintendo game have a cartoon/SD artstyle. A style that doesn't require incredible graphic capabilities to be close to perfect.

I think that Nintendo will do the same as they did with Gamecube. NEC produces the GPU, IBM the CPU.. it worked for them before, I don´t see them change that...

Regarding gfx, I agree! NIntendo will probably continue with their "cartoonish-fairy-tale" esque gfx (at least for their zelda and mario games) but this is also something that hurts them. If they lack the gfx that are more real and focus more on "cartoony"-stuff, this dosen´t give people some choice. We will find cartoony-games in both PS3 and 360, but also a great wealth of the realistic-looking games.

Nintendos most important feature will be their "revolution"stuff, what difference their innovation will make for games, if the controller is something that enhances game experience and makes it "more fun"...

 

[PC-Engine]

Do anyone knows the latest hearsay, is it TSMC, UMC, East Fishkill, NEC?

Good question, but I doubt it really matters who fabs the CPUs/GPUs. Logically if the GPU has Mosys eDRAM then most likely NEC will have some part in the fabbing. The CPU will most definitely be based on a variant of the PPC ISA for backwards compatibility so logically IBM will be the one fabbing that part. I doubt Nintendo will go back to a MIPS architecture of old, however if they do then NEC would be a good candidate to fab that version.

 

[Ruariâ„¢]

Can someone tell me why Nintendo made Revolution SOO small when it only constricts graphics and future upgrades? Is it because a smaller console is more likely to sell in Japan?