Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[SedentaryJourney]

What's so stunning about the Wii U from a quality standpoint? I still can't believe that it misses even basic things like hard drive caching for games.

 

[ERP]

What's so stunning about the Wii U from a quality standpoint? I still can't believe that it misses even basic things like hard drive caching for games.

It has a flash only SKU, HD caching on flash with limited space can be a problem, games that use the cache poorly do a pretty good job of reducing the lifetime of the drives enough it's an issue.

 

[Urian]

Well, no one is able to answer me about the API performance situation. I suppose that the info is under NDA.

 

[AlNom]

Moved the Apple-Nintendo HW discussion to the Nint HW philosophy thread.

 

[Exophase]

In either case - is that a software issue or rather a hardware problem?

I don't know.. most CPUs made in the past several years have clock gating for idle periods while waiting for interrupts, and Broadway is no exception. But the portion of power consumption taken by the CPU on Wii U may already be so low that it doesn't make that big of a difference.

GPUs, on the other hand, only recently got aggressive power scaling, so it's possible that this generations old GPU has limited power saving capability and consumes about the same power whenever it's on.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

It has a flash only SKU, HD caching on flash with limited space can be a problem, games that use the cache poorly do a pretty good job of reducing the lifetime of the drives enough it's an issue.

I see. I wonder if this will be an issue with the new 12GB PS3 and SSD users.

The better choice for Nintendo would have been to include an internal hard drive bay and replace the 32GB SKU with a 250GB hard drive model.

 

[Arwin]

I hear the disc keeps spinning permanently too once its in the Wii U

 

[TheLump]

I hear the disc keeps spinning permanently too once its in the Wii U

Yep. Not sure if its spinning full speed, but its definitely spinning.
Gets a bit louder when playing the game I think.

 

[GuestLV]

High-res illustration of Wii U CPU and GPU
http://wiiudaily.com/2012/12/high-res-illustration-of-wii-u-cpu-and-gpu/

 

[Gipsel]

High-res illustration of Wii U CPU and GPU
http://wiiudaily.com/2012/12/high-res-illustration-of-wii-u-cpu-and-gpu/

It contains no information or even misinformation (that the tiny chip is the 32MB eDRAM).

 

[DoctorFouad]

I'm very critical about the Wii U's hardware too, as I was about the 3DS' as well, but that's a bit too harsh.

I don't think the people who designed the hardware are a bunch of morons. I think the people who came up with the BoM limits are the true morons.

In some product management 101 classes they teach that, at least during the 80s and early 90s, the westerners designed for purpose first, while the japanese designed for manufacturing cost first, and if they couldn't make the product within the cost limits, the project would be shelved even if it surpassed it for a hundred yen.
This different mentality allowed lots of japanese brands to invade the western markets with much more cost-effective solutions in electronics before the turn of the century.

Of course, that was 20 years ago and now we live in an era where the most successful consumer electronics company in the world are the guys who make people pay 2x more than the competition for having screens with subjectively prettier colors, rounder corners and 1% faster scrolling.

The top guys at Sony have obviously got the message that we're not in the 80s anymore. The morons over at Nintendo didn't get this, yet.

We can guess, from looking at die sizes and BoMs from graphics cards, that having a 3x more powerful GPU and a CPU that runs twice as fast, along with 2/3x the memory bandwidth probably wouldn't cost them much more per unit, while making the console ready for true next-gen ports. The same goes to a capacitive screen, a larger gamepad battery and a higher-resolution panel.

I can't see how a group of engineers that reach the position of leading hardware design at AMD and/or Nintendo wouldn't prefer to have a larger hardware budget and make a blast of its system for showing-off.

I think these guys simply had their hands tied the moment Nintendo established their budget limit, and this was simply the best they could do with a budget of 4 Happy Meals from McDonald's.


Nonetheless, with that kind of power consumption and heat dissipation in a system that's constantly plugged in, it's not like they'd need to implement power saving features.
That would cost time and money to implement, and we all know how Nintendo feels about spending money on hardware.

lol well said, thats exactly resume my feelings about the Wii and especially the WiiU : Unacceptable. I am pretty sure at 350$ per WiiU bundle with zombieU, they are gainig at least 150$ per console. there is no way the cost of Wiiu exceeding 200$. AAs you said they could have spent just 35$ more per console and come up with a console twice as powerful as ps3/xbox360 could ever dream to be. and at the same time accepting next gen ports...I am sure Nintendo will regret in the long run (with the release of ps4/xbox next) ths missed opportunity...it is clearly a short term business vision...they got away with the Wii for obvious reasons, but this time around, the will really regret it....

 

[AzaK]

lol well said, thats exactly resume my feelings about the Wii and especially the WiiU : Unacceptable. I am pretty sure at 350$ per WiiU bundle with zombieU, they are gainig at least 150$ per console. there is no way the cost of Wiiu exceeding 200$. AAs you said they could have spent just 35$ more per console and come up with a console twice as powerful as ps3/xbox360 could ever dream to be. and at the same time accepting next gen ports...I am sure Nintendo will regret in the long run (with the release of ps4/xbox next) ths missed opportunity...it is clearly a short term business vision...they got away with the Wii for obvious reasons, but this time around, the will really regret it....

You know they're selling the units at a loss right and it takes a software sale to hit profit? I agree though, they should have added another 30-50 to their costs. Passed it on to the core, or just ate it for a year or so. This would translate to a better showing and better sales. More ports and overall more money from licensing.

 

[DoctorFouad]

You know they're selling the units at a loss right and it takes a software sale to hit profit? I agree though, they should have added another 30-50 to their costs. Passed it on to the core, or just ate it for a year or so. This would translate to a better showing and better sales. More ports and overall more money from licensing.

No, Nintendo never sell hardware at a loss, its their philosophy from their very humble beginnings with cards in the early 80s, they are like Toys companies, they dont sell their toys at a loss, ever...

 

[Grall]

You know they're selling the units at a loss right and it takes a software sale to hit profit?

Everybody knows this is what they're SAYING. What nobody can believe/understand is how that is even possible, because none of the hardware in the wuu is costly enough to cause them to sell at a loss.

You can literally buy a PS360 + an android tablet at RETAIL prices for the same price as a Wuu. That tells us something is damn fishy when Nintendo says they're selling at a loss. They must be paying down all of their R&D costs over a really short timespan to come up with selling at a loss, it just doesn't make sense otherwise.

 

[milk]

Google says WiiU's BOM is estimated at $180.

 

[ERP]

Google says WiiU's BOM is estimated at $180.

It all depends on how they are doing their accounting though.
There is a startup cost for any manufacturing operation, it has to be written off somewhere.
I have no idea of there is a standard accounting practice for doing this.
I do know that BOM's I''ve seen posted by various online parties are usually much lower than the internal figures I have see for products.

Nintendo claims they are losing money per unit, given they are publicly traded, I'd assume this is not a bold faced lie.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I have no idea of there is a standard accounting practice for doing this.

You can't really factor startup costs into per-unit price as you don't know how many units will be sold, unless they're doing something odd like counting the first 30 million units as recoup units and adding a cost to them based on prior investment. AFAIK investments are written off as expenses from the company. They are done, gone, history. Now you have a product with a cost to manufacture and distribute and a price and a profit margin, regardless of what has gone before, and you show profits in your financials. I've never heard of profit being measured from where your money used to be. XB360 was breaking even when the hardware was breaking even, and not when the $5 billion loss of XB was recovered.

Nintendo claims they are losing money per unit, given they are publicly traded, I'd assume this is not a bold faced lie.

That's the only thing confusing this issue for me. Otherwise I'd take it as untrue. I can't reconcile the hardware in Wuu costing $300, but Nintendo can't be out-right lying. Which all points to a big question mark. Are their licensing costs for AMD's tech just that poor?! Are they sourcing their touch screens from Dodgy Joe's Discount Warehouse? Or are they using unconventional accounting to hide the real markups on their hardware?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

You can't really factor startup costs into per-unit price as you don't know how many units will be sold, unless they're doing something odd like counting the first 30 million units as recoup units and adding a cost to them based on prior investment. AFAIK investments are written off as expenses from the company. They are done, gone, history. Now you have a product with a cost to manufacture and distribute and a price and a profit margin, regardless of what has gone before, and you show profits in your financials. I've never heard of profit being measured from where your money used to be. XB360 was breaking even when the hardware was breaking even, and not when the $5 billion loss of XB was recovered.

That's the only thing confusing this issue for me. Otherwise I'd take it as untrue. I can't reconcile the hardware in Wuu costing $300, but Nintendo can't be out-right lying. Which all points to a big question mark. Are their licensing costs for AMD's tech just that poor?! Are they sourcing their touch screens from Dodgy Joe's Discount Warehouse? Or are they using unconventional accounting to hide the real markups on their hardware?

Nintendo has forecast that they'll ship 5.5 million units before the end of March, so perhaps they have allocated some additional costs to that figure. I also find it very hard or near impossible to believe that the actual price of components would be close to their retail Wii U price.

 

[MrFox]

Any info about the retail margin? Maybe there's a big profit to distributors and retailers, it's a good gamble to steal all the shelf space.

I can't believe this ridiculously low-spec thing can cost a lot more to produce than PS360. They even saved a few dollars by removing bluray playback, and made the drive single layer only, the touch screen is complete crap, no HDD, little flash, everything looks like they cut as much as possible to make it as inexpensive to produce as they can.

 

[HolySmoke]

I'd say it's almost a given that 'sold at a loss' means everything from R&D to marketing to the actual product. Because why shouldn't it?

Whenever you see a 200 million dollar film then that figure includes the marketing budget and which is often up to a third of the total cost. There is no reason for any other product to be different in that regard.