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Nintendo Revolution Details Emerge
Pyrohazard writes "Nintendo has posted some details on the Revolution to their official site, finally giving us some insight into what the console will be like. From the site: 'It will be about the thickness of three standard DVD cases and only slightly longer.' This makes it the smallest Nintendo console yet! It will also be able to stand up, similar to the PS2, and the Xbox 360. It will be backwards compatible, and it will also play '12cm optical disks in the same self-loading media drive'. It also states that it will have a very quick start-up time, and be very quiet. It finishes by stating 'Get ready for the Nintendo Revolution in 2006!'" C|Net has an article up arguing that Nintendo is making an error in missing the 2005 Holiday season.
http://onefed.com/media/NintendoON.wmv
I'd love to see a quote on that. There was an interview on IGN with one of the Nintendo VPs who said they were losing a few dollars a unit after the price drop to $99. This was, by the way, according to IGN, the only time Nintendo ever lost money on console hardware.
With great power comes great fan noise.
Yes, because the absense of water cooling in the Gamecube meant the XBox was faster, too.
In all actuality, there is every indication to show that the Gamecube is for the most part every bit as powerful as the XBox, with the only real advantage the XBox has over the Gamecube is more memory, and arguably the hard drive (though since it's largely underutilized the fact that it isn't standard in the XBox 360 should speak for itself).
Anyway, when we start talking PowerPC instead of x86, the whole rules on heat and power as well as size totally change. It's entirely possible that the Revolution and Xbox could be more alike than unalike. Though with Revolution having Gamecube compatibility and the Xbox 360 not having much of anything, the XBox 360 could be more powerful and it would still have an uphill battle.
A large backlog of games to play can make or break a system. Anyone who doubts this needs to compare PSP and DS sales figures. (For those who haven't been watching, the DS is killing the PSP globally.)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
gmail was staggered invite not to build buzz, but because they couldn't handle the load
It's apparently to be based on the same IBN PPC970 processors as the Xbox 360, as well as a custom graphics chip from ATI.
First.. Xbox 360 is most certainly not based on PowerPC 970
Second.. There's been absolutely no credible rumors about the specifications of Broadway (Revolution's processor)
Third.. Of all the Power PC-processors out there, 970 is one of the least suitable for a game console.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
Back when the N64 was in development, Nintendo kept saying that the controller was something amazing and revolutionary, and kept it really hush-hush until they decided to unveil. They're pretty tight-lipped about stuff like this, so don't expect to see anything until Nintendo actually WANTS you to see it.
On the plus side though, the N64 controllers were revolutionary in a number of ways... it was the first major console to use analog sticks (Well, since the Atari 5200 I guess), it had slots on the back for memory cards and rumble packs (an idea later adopted by Sega and Microsoft), the odd three-staved design allowed it to be held in a number of different configurations (an idea which never really caught on), the C-buttons sort of led to the Gamecube's C-stick, and the system did four-player out of the box (although I suppose this is more a feature of the system rather than the controllers). I know a lot of people didn't like the N64 controllers, but they did have a good amount of influence after all.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The processor's that these consoles are using are not similar to the G5s that Apple uses. They are simplified, and as a desktop processor they would perform terribly. And the games will be written to the console specific specs, not the CPU, so this won't affect Apple's games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_On
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
The earlier versions of Dreamcast uses heat pipe for the processor even thought the SH4 processor was very low power.
or my xbox.
Well maybe before saying something like "...are the days of the X86 platform numbered?..." you do a little research, because XBox was the only console that is/was x86 based, others have been MIPS, RISC, MC68000, Super-H 3, Super-H 4, ARM, etc.
They only real difference between PowerPC processors and x86 is the amount of registers they have. PowerPC has quite a superior Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) instruction set, where x86 processors have a rather limited amount SSE and MMX.
market share of consoles compared to computers is a rather benign comparison! they are two totally different markets, aimed at totally different people. I very much doubt AMD and Intel are even remotely worried.
Apple will be delivering a Dual Core PowerMac next year, maybe multi-core a year after, but like I said previously, they are pretty much two different technologies.
and I very very much doubt it will lead to more games being ported to make "first" due to the measly "5%" market share, where is the economic sense in that??
If you want to play games, get a console; for everything else, get a computer, PC or Mac..
/. is good for you.
"No, this video is very much in line with something Nintendo would generate and potentially show at a press event, and the fact that it appeared on the net last week is either a testament that Nintendo is attempting to execute a buzz kill on it's competitors announcements... or a very serious security breach has happened within Nintendo."
:P
Or, simply, as it's been reported on numerous news sites, it's a hoax.
On another note, I apologize for my comma abuse.
"Derp de derp."
You are very clearly wrong. What have we gotten out of these 9 Gigabytes of space? Prerendered full motion video?
.net programmers may disagree, but anyone who's actually dealt with C++, Assembly, etc. will tell you how big there execs are.
Boring.
FMV does not make a game.
Mario 64 was a whopping 8 Megs (64 Megabits), and Star Fox 64 (with a couple of hours of voice acting) was something like 16 Megs.
Code, believe it or not, once compiled is very small. Now some of you java or
Now, how does a game like FFX fill a DVD? Ahhh. FMV and Bloated Voice Acting files... The textures are (for the most part) pretty small. Light shading, polygons, light mapping, etc. is all done using mathematically formulae.
Now Star Fox 64... with that much voice acting, how did it manage to stay under a Gig? Nintendo has some of the best compression methods around. If I remember correctly, the voice acting from SF64 was done using an algorithm similar to MP3.
And the sound tracks? Nintendo has historically used an encoding method similar to the MIDI format for their music. Luckily, Nintendo has had decent sound processors (or extra available clock resources to process sound tracks)
We can play games... or we can watch movies. I'll enjoy my games when I play my games, and I'll enjoy my movies when I watch my DVDs.
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.