Why would nintendo release an underpowered console a year after the release of 360?

[Urian]

For me the key will be the next:

1. The CPU will be a low cost CPU, easy to manufacturate and with Nintendo propietary technology or another variation of an existing CPU for reducing cost because Nintendo will be the only client.

2. The same of the point 1 but for the GPU.

3. In the year 2001 they could sell a console with a 21 milion transistor CPU and a 51 milion transistor GPU for 199$, and if the next console is launched for the same price they could use 84 milion transistors for the CPU and 204 milions for the GPU only for the fact of the jump from 180nm to the 90nm.

4. If Nintendo creates a hardware less powerful than PS3 and 360 but with a significant jump from GCN, with a low price and good features and games I believe that the sales will jump fast.

 

[hey69]

i believe Nintendo plays the underdog here.
i strongly believe they will bring hardware out thats at least comparable to x360

 

[Epik]

I doubt 65nm will be availible that soon or Sony would probably just delay there a luanch a bit to take advantage of it.

http://www.dvhardware.net/article3995.html

Intel says its making 65nm chips in 1Q 2006

and they even said that it will overtake 90nm in 3Q 2006
much less come out by then.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/06/intel_65nm_ramp/

look dual-core.

http://www.osopinion.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3640

 

[mckmas8808]

I don't know anyone over the age of 50 that remotely cares about streaming music and movies from thier pc to thier console unless they are in the industry . Also older people are much slower on the new tech bandwagon . I really don't see 50+ year olds moving out in force needing to get brand new bluray players .

I do see alot of people over 50 that may have had interest in video games as they emerged in thier youth and found the games have become greatly complicated and to hard to play and would like cutting edge graphics with simpler game play

I would think a lot more 50+ people would want to watch HD movies on thier HDTV's with he PS3; while also having little Billy the grandson play games while he's over for the summer. Them buying a Nintendo Revolution just to play a non-game I don't know. I know that some will do that, but I think more people would buy a PS3 or X360 just for the mature things that it can do.

 

[duncan36]

Dont forget China, cost and kid friendly games will be more important there than out and out performance.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

Nintendo will be just fine. As one poster already mentioned GNC and PS2 are not evenly matched and that had nothing to do with the outcome.

I have a PS2 and a NGC and I wish we had games like ratchet and clank on NGC. I paid $100 for my game cube and $40 for my PS2. Overall, I like my game cube better because of the quality of the games, not because of the power of the system. If I want to play mature games that PS2 and Xbox have I play the PC version simply due to the superior power of my rig and graphical quality (not to mention the prices are usually cheaper if you get the games on close out). when the Ps3 and Xbox 360 come out, my rig will still be superior as I will have updated it to more current hardware.

Game quality is where it is at for me and IMHO Nintindo has more family friendly games and that is what I like about it.

 

[JasonLD]

Now it seems that Nintendo was smart to gave away the leadership to Sony since the cost of retaining leadership position is ridiculus high. The amount of money that Sony and Microsoft are investing in this next generation war is simply amazing and I know Nintendo is not really capable of throwing money like Sony and MS are doing so Nintendo is taking different approach ever since NGC.
Revolution is exciting not because of how powerful it is, but how much change Nintendo is trying to bring with console gaming as a whole. I really dont care about how much power that Revolution packs, but how different that Revolution's control compared to today's console gaming.
Also, I don't want to say that Revolution is underpowered...since we don't know anything about it...NGC was lot cheaper console, but wasn't underpowered.

 

[swaaye]

I think they could release a console with a R300 at the core and a souped up G3 and we'd see amazing games for it. Hell, you all know that PC graphics chips don't get taken advantage of very well. At non HD resolutions even an "old" 8-pipeline GPU could make some serious imagery, especially on a closed platform..And it would be crazy cheap to make compared to Xbox360 and PS3.

I hope N wipes the floor with Sony and MS If they can hit a unique pricepoint that consumers see as separate from Sony and MS they can make themselves their own market that their competitors can't touch pricewise.

 

[Epik]

Now it seems that Nintendo was smart to gave away the leadership to Sony since the cost of retaining leadership position is ridiculus high. The amount of money that Sony and Microsoft are investing in this next generation war is simply amazing and I know Nintendo is not really capable of throwing money like Sony and MS are doing so Nintendo is taking different approach ever since NGC.
Revolution is exciting not because of how powerful it is, but how much change Nintendo is trying to bring with console gaming as a whole. I really dont care about how much power that Revolution packs, but how different that Revolution's control compared to today's console gaming.
Also, I don't want to say that Revolution is underpowered...since we don't know anything about it...NGC was lot cheaper console, but wasn't underpowered.

Sony is $61 billion dollars in debt and microsoft lost $1 billion on Xbox 1(Xbox Live)

If Sony can't pay the creditors thier money then sony will go bankrupt.Ipod killed them.

Nintendo as a whole made more money than ALL of Sony Corp.

Nintendo is the 2nd most profitable software developer.

Nintendo has made more money on GC than Xbox( a gamecube costs 75$ to make)

Xbox more powerful than GC? incorrect bad design and bottlenecks rob it of that theoretical performance...

Mister101 from pcvconsole writes...


Raw FLOPS (translates to vertex, 32-bit only) output:
Xbox (twin-vertex shaders), GC (fixed hardware T&L), PS2 (Emotion Engine)
Xbox(10 flops * 2 * 233 mhz) = 4.660 GFLOPS (32-bit, programmable)
GC(w/o lighting) = 3.726 GFLOPS/ (32-bit ops, fixed)
GC(w lighting) = 9.4 GFLOPS (32-bit & 20-bit ops, fixed)
PS2 (VU 1) = 3.08 GFLOPs (32-bit, fully programmable)
PS2 (VU1/VU0/CPU FP) = 6.2 GFLOPS (32-bit, fully programmable)

http://www.segatech.com/gamecube/overview/

But this may be inaccurate, excluding non-programmable XGPU hardware. Lets try total GFLOPS (minus pixel shaders, not including CPU for Xbox and GC):

Ranking (raw, peak, vertex-GFLOPs)
Xbox (21.6 GFLOPS - 2.932 FLOPS (CPU) - 7.456 GFLOPS (pixel shaders, 24-bit)) = 11.2 GFLOPS (32-bit and other, programmable & non-programmable)
Gamecube = 9.4 GFLOPS (32-bit and other, non-programmable)
PS2 = 6.2 GFLOPS (32-bit, fully programmable)

The 21.6 GFLOPS I retrieved from a book (Opening the Xbox), which is Xbox's total system power. For the pixel shaders (3 vector, 1 scalar, * 2 madd * 4 shaders). The rest should be the vertex shaders and related hardware. These comparisons are without any nifty optimizations of course (early z-checks). With CPU (lighting, animation), Gamecube is at 11.3 GFLOPS, making Xbox and GC almost exactly equal in polygon performance, without the XCPU (which isn't contributing to T&L). I'd say GC is better though, because of the aforementioned, probably existing, early z-check, and the fast z-clear (xbox might have fast z-clear as well).

So the ranking (polygon output):
Gamecube (11)
Xbox (11)
PS2 (6)

Xbox and Gamecube are tied, but when Xbox is overloaded with shader effects, like you said, Gamecube wins. With high complexity (requiring lots of z-culling), Gamecube wins. Actual PS2 optimization is limited to VU1, which is at 3.08 GFLOPS. And the Xbox DirectX configuration can slow things down quite a bit, unless push-buffers are used. And I've seen PS2 use good tesselation algorithms. Early Z-checks on the PS2 is hard, but continuous LOD isn't, as well as other software optimization. GC and PS2 will not have the texture resolution on its polygons that Xbox will have.

Ranking (polygons, ingame performance, out of 10):
Gamecube (10)
Xbox (6/7, with pushbuffers)
PS2 (3/4, with VU1 only, assuming good optimization)

Where would N64 be though?
Reality Co-Processor - 4 32-bit ops * 2 (madd) * 62.5 mhz = 500 MFLOPS

Right on the money, as Silicon Graphics told the press that N64's coprocessor could do 500 MIPS.

Ranking (polygons, ingame performance (moderately complex*), out of 10):
Gamecube (10)
Xbox (6/7, with pushbuffers, moderate pixel shader utilization)
PS2 (3/4, with VU1 only, assuming good optimization)
N64 (.5,

Ranking (w/N64, polygons, ingame performance (exception being N64, with no known performance inhibitors; moderately complex), out of 10):

Gamecube (10)
Xbox (6/7, with pushbuffers, moderate pixel shader utilization)
PS2 (3/4, with VU1 only, assuming good optimization - partial VU0 and CPU optimization)
Dreamcast (1.4 SH4 GFLOP capacity - 1.4)
N64 (.5)
PSX/Saturn (<.5)

*complex - many layers of interaction in the 3D scene

I'm not sure about Saturn and PSX...I can't find any FLOP performance for them. If you would like to learn more about these systems, you are bound to find tons of information at any major search engine just using the names of the GPU and CPU of the systems.

 

[Epik]

I think they could release a console with a R300 at the core and a souped up G3 and we'd see amazing games for it. Hell, you all know that PC graphics chips don't get taken advantage of very well. At non HD resolutions even an "old" 8-pipeline GPU could make some serious imagery, especially on a closed platform..And it would be crazy cheap to make compared to Xbox360 and PS3.

I hope N wipes the floor with Sony and MS If they can hit a unique pricepoint that consumers see as separate from Sony and MS they can make themselves their own market that their competitors can't touch pricewise.

Do you really think nintendo will come out with a souped up 6 year chip? That would be a joke not a console.

 

[JasonLD]

I don't remember doing any kind of technical comparison between NGC vs XBOX and PS2....no point of initiating pointless argument.
What I said was that Nintendo can't take losses as well as Sony or MS can so they are taking more profitable approach even though that plan doesn't include market leadership. If they can be profitable without putting too much financial risk, then there is no need to do a same approach like their competitors.

 

[function]

Xbox more powerful than GC? incorrect bad design and bottlenecks rob it of that theoretical performance...

Mister101 from pcvconsole writes...

Who needs actual real life benchmarks and information from repsected developers when you can find a post from someone, somehwere based on pretty meaningless figures that support your arguments!

Hooray for segatech, cutting through the nonesense and giving you the insight that really matters! It's just like 2000 again!

I suppose this would be a bad time to pull out the old EA benchmarks again. Bah, what can they show you that segatech and raw flops figures can't!

 

[mckmas8808]

Revolution is exciting not because of how powerful it is, but how much change Nintendo is trying to bring with console gaming as a whole.

I really don't understand this point really. Do you know anything that Nintendo is doing to change next-gen gaming? I don't think you do. We do know what MS is doing to change gaming. We also do know what Sony is doing to change gaming. But for some reason Nintendo hasn't really told us much.

 

[jvd]

I would think a lot more 50+ people would want to watch HD movies on thier HDTV's with he PS3; while also having little Billy the grandson play games while he's over for the summer. Them buying a Nintendo Revolution just to play a non-game I don't know. I know that some will do that, but I think more people would buy a PS3 or X360 just for the mature things that it can do.

I think u will find that quite flawed. Just look at hollywoods demographs . They are just as skewed towards teenagers and young adults as video games . Fact is that very few movies a year apeal to older audiances which is why there is this market drop as the baby boomers are all hitting the 50-75 range and no longer find block busters amusing .

It might seem nice in theory that they would want a system for thier grand kids to play and they can watch movies on it . However when u look at the movies they are interested in you will find none of them will benfit from hd res . And it will be very hard to convince them to buy a 300+ product when they can get what they want for less money .

Then you ahve to factor handheld sucess and little jimmy might be bringing his own entertainment .

Personaly I never see the market expanding past the 40s . At least untill those of us in our 20s and 30s get to that age . Even then most likely those in the 20s now wihen they hit thier 50s will increase the cap. Its much harder to teach an old dog new tricks than to teach them when they are young and make htem keep doing them as they get older

 

[JasonLD]

I really don't understand this point really. Do you know anything that Nintendo is doing to change next-gen gaming? I don't think you do. We do know what MS is doing to change gaming. We also do know what Sony is doing to change gaming. But for some reason Nintendo hasn't really told us much.

As far as I know, Nintendo is trying to bring totally different kind of controller. I don't really know how revolutionary or how different it would be, but I think it is refreshing to see that Nintendo is trying to bring something different other than high specs..To me, it is bigger change than anything Sony or MS is coming up with, to the end user.

 

[jvd]

I really don't understand this point really. Do you know anything that Nintendo is doing to change next-gen gaming? I don't think you do. We do know what MS is doing to change gaming. We also do know what Sony is doing to change gaming. But for some reason Nintendo hasn't really told us much.

Not for nothing but i don't see either sony nor ms changing gaming .

None of what i've seen from either system changes gaming . It seems like they are both trying to change what we use in our living room . But not changing gaming all the gaming stuff from both companys seems to be more of the same. If you can point me to some info on either of them changing gaming let me know

 

[mckmas8808]

Its much harder to teach an old dog new tricks than to teach them when they are young and make htem keep doing them as they get older

Shouldn't that also apply to Nintendo? Why are they going for the 60+ age? I respect everything else you said in that post though.

As far as I know, Nintendo is trying to bring totally different kind of controller. I don't really know how revolutionary or how different it would be, but I think it is refreshing to see that Nintendo is trying to bring something different other than high specs..To me, it is bigger change than anything Sony or MS is coming up with, to the end user.

I respect them for being different with the controller. But being completely different with the controller doesn't mean that its going to be better. I may though. Sony and MS are doing big things.

Not for nothing but i don't see either sony nor ms changing gaming .

None of what i've seen from either system changes gaming . It seems like they are both trying to change what we use in our living room . But not changing gaming all the gaming stuff from both companys seems to be more of the same. If you can point me to some info on either of them changing gaming let me know

It may not completely change gaming 180 degrees, but do we the gamers want that? I think we don't. The demo that Sony showed with dipping the cup into the water and throwing it across the tub is different is it not? JVD how many games have you seen like Eyedentify? The characters recognize you on the screen and you can have a conversation with them.

That's pretty different if you ask me. Gaming in general going HD is changing gaming right? Something that Nintendo is not taking part in. That's ok for them but lets be honest HD for gaming is good not bad. I don't see anyway that somebody can think that HD gaming is a bad thing.

How about Sony showing that you can play games in a 32:9 (I think that number is right)view. You can agrue that nobody will play a game like GT5 with two HDTVs but at least its possible. How about the PS3 giving people the possiblity to play a game on one HDTV and allow a second TV (It DOESN'T have to be a HDTV) to be use for the game also for things like stats, maps, or talking to people on the internet. Good change if you ask me.

And the way MS is treating Live we should all be glad that they are pushing internet gaming as hard as they are. With every machine they make they change gaming on the internet.

And there will be other things when we know more about the consoles. I know Nintendo will do something that's cool and different, but lets not act like the others don't. If you do think that then you are really just being ignoratnt to what the others are doing.

 

[jvd]

Shouldn't that also apply to Nintendo? Why are they going for the 60+ age? I respect everything else you said in that post though.

It does apply for nintendo. I say as much later in the post .

I do however think its easier to sell 50+ year olds a 200$ console that plays dvds that they have been hearing about these past what 7 years vs a 400(most likely) console that plays bluray something they most likely never heard of . Esp if as I said in another post the games are easy enough for them to play and enjoy and aren't as complex as many of the modern day games

It may not completely change gaming 180 degrees, but do we the gamers want that? I think we don't. The demo that Sony showed with dipping the cup into the water and throwing it across the tub is different is it not? JVD how many games have you seen like Eyedentify? The characters recognize you on the screen and you can have a conversation with them.

Its not diffrent. How is it diffrent than power glove or uforce or activator or a slew of other things that have come before ? Sure it may do things better . But it isn't new .

As for characters recognizing me on the screen this happened with seamen on my dreamcast what 6 or 7 years ago and recently on the ds with nintendogs

That's pretty different if you ask me. Gaming in general going HD is changing gaming right? Something that Nintendo is not taking part in. That's ok for them but lets be honest HD for gaming is good not bad. I don't see anyway that somebody can think that HD gaming is a bad thing.

No because my psone outputed in a lower res than the dreamcast but i don't consider dreamcast changing gaming . I don't consider any systems that mearly increase res as changing anything .

How about Sony showing that you can play games in a 32:9 (I think that number is right)view. You can agrue that nobody will play a game like GT5 with two HDTVs but at least its possible. How about the PS3 giving people the possiblity to play a game on one HDTV and allow a second TV (It DOESN'T have to be a HDTV) to be use for the game also for things like stats, maps, or talking to people on the internet. Good change if you ask me.

How is this diffrent than pcs which have had the option for 2 and even 3 screens for years . Or the nintendo ds that has 2 screens ? I remember quite a few psp supporters claiming a second screen for maps and stats were a waste ?

How is talking to people on the internet changing game play ? Though if you want to get into it i was doing this on my saturn and pc for years .

And the way MS is treating Live we should all be glad that they are pushing internet gaming as hard as they are. With every machine they make they change gaming on the internet.

Really ? To me they are still catching up to sega who with the dreamcast had its own isp , ist own browser and tons of games that you can play against other dreamcast owners and pc owners

And there will be other things when we know more about the consoles. I know Nintendo will do something that's cool and different, but lets not act like the others don't. If you do think that then you are really just being ignoratnt to what the others are doing.

You haven't shown me one new thing sony is doing with gaming nor ms . They are just improving on things that have come before from either the pc or other consoles .

Its been a long time on the console front since nintendo really did something new . The last new things they really did were on the superness and nes . But the ds gives me alot of hope that they will add something to gaming that isn't just an extension but a whole new branch of gaming , mabye even changing gaming for ever . I would be happy if ms or sony steps up to the plate also. I jsut haven't seen anything from either

 

[Rur0ni]

Nintendo has my buy simply for the back catalog. And I am assured the console wont be expensive.

65nm looks possible. :O At the rate intel is going. And during these past few years I always believed IBM was ahead of everyone in this type of field. Im certainly not qualified for such a subject, but I'd say if 65nm was fab-ready by the end of this year, Rev could have it if Rev were launching after E3, which I think you can bet the farm it will.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

I suppose this would be a bad time to pull out the old EA benchmarks again. Bah, what can they show you that segatech and raw flops figures can't!

Strange, you like falling back on those benchmarks when their software doesn't hold up. I take it you haven't seen their top tier franchise Madden'06 comparatively on the GC? Something about those textures Powderkeg.........