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Nintendo Spokesman Talks Next-Gen and MS
Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for an article outlining comments made by Nintendo VP of sales and marketing Reggie Fils-Aime. His comments confirm that Nintendo's next console will release around the same time as the PS3, and bashed MS for rushing to the next console generation. "Our focus is this: we will bring Revolution to the marketplace roughly at the same time as the competition," Fils-Aime told US website IGN. "We are driving our timetables based on what we believe Sony will do."
I've only ever heard that from Sega and/or Sony fanboys. :)
Fanboyism aside, what makes you say that Nintendo traditionally has the weakest hardware? Please don't try to explain how the PS2 is actually a supercomputer but developers haven't been able to unlock its huge potential.
I'm sorry *, but whenever people use the term "have to" as relates to video gaming purchases, I just have to laugh.
You can play any of those games that uses GBAs as controllers in single-player mode with regular controllers. It's where the multi-player aspect of the games requires GBAs, because the games are designed such that the GBAs make sense. Second, private screens are best acomplished with GBAs. And you are not required to buy 4 GBAs, rather, your friends are expected to have one at their disposal (be it owned by you or them). You think I bought 4 GBAs so my friends and I could get through Zelda Four Swords? I and another friend bought the game, and we all used our own GBAs, which we all had before even hearing about the game.
If you are buying GBAs for your friends to use at your house, something is wrong with you. Let them buy their own damn systems (which is what GBAs are, not "$80 controllers"). Get your perspective out of whack, or don't play games that require hardware for which you'll unreasonably misinterpret the system requirements and the logical means of acquisition thereof.
* Note: I'm not really sorry. Sorry. Well, not really.
Give me a break. While the N64 didn't do as well as the Playstation One, the 'cube is far from a failure.
"Please don't try to explain how the PS2 is actually a supercomputer but developers haven't been able to unlock its huge potential."
Thank you for saying that! As the happy owner of a GC, I am very fed up with annoying PS2ers going on about the brilliant architecture of their machine, but when faced with the fact that overall while the PS2 is indeed a nice system, cross-platform games on the GC and XBox just tend to look better, they then go on to denounce pathetic devs who are incaple of realizing its true brilliance, and harp for the day when the programmers will finally catch up the PS2. Please. Before that would happen, guess what, PS3 will be out, and people will stop developping for it.
Alright, enough ranting for now...
You're talking fill rates while I'm talking the texturing and mapping abilities of the consoles.
The PS2 can't bump map well, can't mip map well, can't normal map at all, etc. When we talk of textures in games and such, it mainly involves the ability to use different maps and effects and such that allow for games to look better. The PS2, in this regard, simply can't handle it.
Actually, it's 4MB of VRAM, but that's compared to the gamecube's 1MB of VRAM.
So I overestimated the PS2's VRAM, but you are assuming the embedded RAM on the Flipper GPU is the only VRAM the GC has. The 1 MB you speak of is simply texture buffering RAM, embedded into the GPU, and is in addition to a 2 MB Z-buffer that is embedded into the GPU as well. Like the Xbox, though, the GC can use it's main system RAM for graphics as well.
Technically, the GC and Xbox have no dedicated VRAM set aside just for main graphics memory, the PS2 does, and only uses that VRAM for graphics, and doesn't utilize any of the rest of the system memory for graphics ability.
The gamecube's architecture allows it to get more "free" special effects, but the PS2 has much more raw power.
The GC has a faster CPU, faster GPU, and more main system RAM (which is also more efficient RAM than the PS2's).
Your source of IGN for the GC's max polygon perfomrance is the only site that seems to magically have the numbers that Nintendo has never released to the press, and game developers would have NDAs against giving it out unless Nintendo gave them out, so I call them more of IGN's bullshit.
And, as has been said before, raw power alone isn't enough. Somemone might be able to put a F-16's engine in a Pinto for tons of raw power, but it won't mean shit if the Pinto can't move under the weight of the engine.
And, as per your other comment: if you aren't a gamer, why are you so adamant about touting the PS2's raw power? It's been shown that the PS2 is the WEAKEST console in this gen many times over. Hell, AnadTech showed it before, as has Tom's Hardware, and other reputable sources; which I'll say I can trust more than you and your listening to IGN's magic numbers on things that have never been released to the press/public.