The Next-gen Situation discussion *spawn

[AlphaWolf]

LOL I told you so, Nintendo will surprise a lot of people in this forum,

I bet my prediction is true (we will see this E3, but the WiiU BOM rumored 180$ total cost already gives an indication) : the priority of Nintendo for WiiU is to achieve at least parity with ps360 hardware in terms of performance but with the cheapest possible way (it means a less expansive console to produce than the ps3 slim or xbox360 slim).

And I reiterate the challenge : if anyone in this forum could face this challenge better than Nintendo engineers, It would be really something !

I very much doubt the 4GB xbox costs $180 to make at this point so I'm not sure what you're saying.

 

[ninzel]

If it is true about the controller being $50 that leaves $130 for the console itself.
A much larger share of the cost compared to standard controller.

 

[Megadrive1988]

So with regards to Wii U, are we saying not to expect much in terms of processing power and rendering performance? What about RAM? I hope it's still at least 1 GB.

Anyway, the Zelda demo was fairly impressive. If Nintendo can make a full Zelda game at that quality, I'll still be happy.

 

[DoctorFouad]

I very much doubt the 4GB xbox costs $180 to make at this point so I'm not sure what you're saying.

we are talking hardware costs, not controller costs, if you want to compare total bundles (for a fair comparison), you should use xbox360 + kinect as a comparison to wiiU+ tablet.

the rumored estimate for WiiU hardware (without the tablet) is 130 $. If this was already the cost of xbox360 slim than Microsoft wouldnt loose the opportunity to offer its console at 149$ in shops. which is not the case. So if my prediction is true, Nintendo engineers did a wonderful job creating a console comparable in performance to ps360 but even cheaper to produce and most probably easier to program for due to more RAM.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I just hope Nintendo hasn't actually downgraded the graphics processor, from what we saw of the Zelda and Bird demo, I thought the graphics capability was pretty decent. Maybe on par with PS360, maybe a little better. Again, I hope Nintendo hasn't actually downgraded the GPU. They've done this before, at least twice, with the SNES graphics chip and the Flipper's clockspeed. I wouldn't be surprised if they have.

Come on guys, there's got to be hope, right?

<feeling pessimistic>

 

[DoctorFouad]

I just hope Nintendo hasn't actually downgraded the graphics processor, from what we saw of the Zelda and Bird demo, I thought the graphics capability was pretty decent. Maybe on par with PS360, maybe a little better. Again, I hope Nintendo hasn't actually downgraded the GPU. They've done this before, at least twice, with the SNES graphics chip and the Flipper's clockspeed. I wouldn't be surprised if they have.

Come on guys, there's got to be hope, right?

<feeling pessimistic>

Honestly, I dont understand why a lot of people feel disappointed with the WiiU being on par with ps360 those were very powerful consoles at their time of release, costing a lot of losses to their manufacturers, take ps3 for example it still offers great graphical experiences, I was playing this week Uncharted 3 and it is jaw dropping stuff, the naughty dog last of us will end up even more jaw dropping....or look at god of war3, or killzone3, whats the problem with this level of graphical fidelity ?

To achieve tangible better graphics to the normal human eye consumer, it would take far more than 2x ps360 performance.....to run for example uncharted 3 at 60fps instead of 30 or at 1080p instead of 720p, you need a hardware a lot more expansive than ps3.

I believe Nintendo engineers understood that very well. even microsoft and sony are struggling to impress developers with their next gen hardware, higher precision effects take a lot of hardware resources without obvious better results for the avarage gamer...playing crysis for example at high settings and than at very high settings, wont change a lot in terms of visual fidelity, but necessitates a lot more hardware power....

in short, Nintendo understood that its not worth it anyway beating ps360 hardware (unless you do it by really huge margin which is very expansive), for the final consumer he wont even notice the difference on screen....

 

[Megadrive1988]

Honestly, I dont understand why a lot of people feel disappointed with the WiiU being on par with ps360 those were very powerful consoles at their time of release, costing a lot of losses to their manufacturers, take ps3 for example it still offers great graphical experiences, I was playing this week Uncharted 3 and it is jaw dropping stuff, the naughty dog last of us will end up even more jaw dropping....or look at god of war3, or killzone3, whats the problem with this level of graphical fidelity ?

To achieve tangible better graphics to the normal human eye consumer, it would take far more than 2x ps360 performance.....to run for example uncharted 3 at 60fps instead of 30 or at 1080p instead of 720p, you need a hardware a lot more expansive than ps3.

I believe Nintendo engineers understood that very well. even microsoft and sony are struggling to impress developers with their hardware, higher precision effects take a lot of hardware resources without obvious better results for the avarage gamer...playing crysis for example at high settings and than at very high settings, wont change a lot in terms of visual fidelity, but necessitates a lot more hardware power....

in short, Nintendo understood that its not worth it anyway beating ps360 hardware (unless you do it by really huge margin which is very expansive), for the final consumer he wont even notice the difference on screen....

Thanks for the encouraging post. I see your point about hardware. I just hope Nintendo hasn't downgraded from what they already showed at E3 2011.

 

[ultragpu]

Honestly, I dont understand why a lot of people feel disappointed with the WiiU being on par with ps360 those were very powerful consoles at their time of release, costing a lot of losses to their manufacturers, take ps3 for example it still offers great graphical experiences, I was playing this week Uncharted 3 and it is jaw dropping stuff, the naughty dog last of us will end up even more jaw dropping....or look at god of war3, or killzone3, whats the problem with this level of graphical fidelity ?

To achieve tangible better graphics to the normal human eye consumer, it would take far more than 2x ps360 performance.....to run for example uncharted 3 at 60fps instead of 30 or at 1080p instead of 720p, you need a hardware a lot more expansive than ps3.

I believe Nintendo engineers understood that very well. even microsoft and sony are struggling to impress developers with their next gen hardware, higher precision effects take a lot of hardware resources without obvious better results for the avarage gamer...playing crysis for example at high settings and than at very high settings, wont change a lot in terms of visual fidelity, but necessitates a lot more hardware power....

in short, Nintendo understood that its not worth it anyway beating ps360 hardware (unless you do it by really huge margin which is very expansive), for the final consumer he wont even notice the difference on screen....

Imagine if wii U is powerful enough, their Mario, Zelda, Pokemon games would look like something out of Pixar. Nintendo definitely have the cash for a monster system, it's a pity they don't prefer to push the tech envelope like Sony and MS do.

 

[IllusionistK]

we are talking hardware costs, not controller costs, if you want to compare total bundles (for a fair comparison), you should use xbox360 + kinect as a comparison to wiiU+ tablet.

the rumored estimate for WiiU hardware (without the tablet) is 130 $. If this was already the cost of xbox360 slim than Microsoft wouldnt loose the opportunity to offer its console at 149$ in shops. which is not the case. So if my prediction is true, Nintendo engineers did a wonderful job creating a console comparable in performance to ps360 but even cheaper to produce and most probably easier to program for due to more RAM.

What proof is there that the 360 doesn't cost less than $130? Microsoft has absolutely no reason to sell a 360 at that price point when sales have increased YOY, and is outselling the competition.

According to these** articles, the basic 360 hardware started out at a BOM price of $525, and dropped to $325 in 2007.

If we assume linear regression of a price reduction of $200 ever two years, then the 360's current BOM is >=$130. No higher than the Wii U. If all they intend to do is match the PS360 as rumors suggest, then this makes a lot of sense.

**http://www.edge-online.com/news/isuppli-xbox-360-costs-continue-decline
http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9822/...ts-IBMs-Dominance-in-NextGeneration-Consoles/

 

[TheWretched]

Linear price decrease? So, next year MS will get money out of IBM or whomever^^

 

[french toast]

http://www.forgetthebox.net/mag/culture/forum-m/rumor-wii-u-price.php

Wii U BOM rumored $180 with controller

Ha ha. I love Nintendo....its like watching the 'office'...game console style.. (british version)

 

[french toast]

What proof is there that the 360 doesn't cost less than $130? Microsoft has absolutely no reason to sell a 360 at that price point when sales have increased YOY, and is outselling the competition.

According to these** articles, the basic 360 hardware started out at a BOM price of $525, and dropped to $325 in 2007.

If we assume linear regression of a price reduction of $200 ever two years, then the 360's current BOM is >=$130. No higher than the Wii U. If all they intend to do is match the PS360 as rumors suggest, then this makes a lot of sense.

**http://www.edge-online.com/news/isuppli-xbox-360-costs-continue-decline
http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9822/...ts-IBMs-Dominance-in-NextGeneration-Consoles/

Don't forget the 360 will probably ship with Kinect 2 in 12 months....Kinect 1 is more advanced than that etch a sketch..
Buy all accounts..the wii u is NOT going to be as powerfull as 360....not taking into consideration 360 hardware has had 7 years of optimisations...

Also Xbox Live..the standout feature of Xbox...is far far more advanced in content and feature set to Anything Nintendo can drum up...

They might spring a suprise..but this just confirms what i thought..more interested about creating profits than building great games.

 

[BRiT]

So if my prediction is true, Nintendo engineers did a wonderful job creating a console comparable in performance to ps360 but even cheaper to produce and most probably easier to program for due to more RAM.

I'd say the WiiU is harder to program for because it does not have the software development tools that the well established MS X360 offers.

 

[wco81]

Indeed. The introduction of SLI means $2000 worth of top-end PC will always beat consoles now. Back in the day when custom hardware could achieve great things, the consoles could hold their own. But now consoles will always be lower spec than a top-end PC rig at launch. The best they could hope to achieve is slightly lower than a top-end single GPU system. And given that the console companies can't beat a PC, it makes some sense to be a little more conservative and chase other features, like an integrated Kinect experience. Providing a unique experience is the best chance the consoles have.

I think the better metric is how the consoles perform compared to PC hardware at the same price point or the price range, say $100-200 higher than the console launch price.

Of course if something like On Live is able to bring higher performance on a wide range of hardware, that could be a problem.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I don't know the details of the performance of how well Bulldozer would fair as a console chip. My only point in bringing it up was more on the manufacturing side of things. It's a fairly high clocked and large chip, but readily available (likewise Llano [and Trinity soon]) so I think 32nm process is the likely candidate for a console chip next year.

When you think about a potential SOC/APU like solution for a console, I don't know how they cannot be an order of magnitude faster then current gen consoles.

The current XCGPU (without edram) is only 372M transistors with a 500MHz GPU. The rumored 6670 GPU for the next xbox is built with 716M transistors and 800MHz. Almost twice the transistors of the entire XCGPU and a higher clock.

Either we're drastically becoming more and more inefficient in designs or people really underestimate how old and dated the current consoles are. I think a console built with an SOC of about 2B transistors and very fast RAM will be easily an order of magnitude faster than the current generation. If they

The 6670 has on paper ~3.5x the shader throughput, 1.6x the pixel drawing throughput and 2.4x the texturing throughput. Add some efficiency gains onto that and you're probably talking around 3-4x the real world performance depending on the scenario.

So with around 3x more transistors it actually makes the 6670 look pretty efficient compared to Xenos, especially when you consider that it comes will all the DX11 goodness as well.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Considering 8 years will have passed, it's unimpressive.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Compared to everything else Joe Consumer sees as reference, it'll look outstanding. Way better than their iPad and Galaxy phone and XB360 and Wii U. Only those who have experienced higher quality PC gaming will see it as anything other than a notable upgrade. Only if one console goes 6xxx and the other goes 7xxx+ will it look bad.

 

[joker454]

Compared to everything else Joe Consumer sees as reference, it'll look outstanding. Way better than their iPad and Galaxy phone and XB360 and Wii U. Only those who have experienced higher quality PC gaming will see it as anything other than a notable upgrade. Only if one console goes 6xxx and the other goes 7xxx+ will it look bad.

I dunno man, I keep reading on forums how some can't see the difference between ps3 games and high and pc games (which totally blows my mind, talk about night and day difference), makes me wonder if some core gamers won't be horrifically dissapointed when next gen rolls along.

 

[tuna]

I believe Nintendo engineers understood that very well. even microsoft and sony are struggling to impress developers with their next gen hardware, higher precision effects take a lot of hardware resources without obvious better results for the avarage gamer...playing crysis for example at high settings and than at very high settings, wont change a lot in terms of visual fidelity, but necessitates a lot more hardware power....

I agree, I think higher frame rates would have much more impact than higher density graphics. But I also think that Nintendo and others (like IW) know this....

 

[-tkf-]

I dunno man, I keep reading on forums how some can't see the difference between ps3 games and high and pc games (which totally blows my mind, talk about night and day difference), makes me wonder if some core gamers won't be horrifically dissapointed when next gen rolls along.

It really depends on who is watching, and what he is wathing on.

Some PC games end up being upscaled on whatever PC they run, not all knows that they have to go for native res mode. Soft look right there, easily competing with PS3 subhd games.

And some people really look for other "qualities" than others. What we might consider fake and bad water in a game, others will look at and proclaim "great graphics"

I think the greatest problem for the one console that chooses weaker specs will be.. PR, not so much the average player. And as we know, it will take something serious to make a real difference when the games come out. A weaker cpu+gpu might get helped by more ram, etc etc..

I can't wait