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Revolution Horsepower Revealed
Revo writes "IGN.com unveiled leaked specs for Nintendo's upcoming Revolution console today. The system really is about twice as powerful as a GameCube and a far cry from the Xbox 360 and PS3. Of course, the focus is on the innovative controller and the affordable price."
How much can you expect from a sub $1000 USD mass produced, proprietary (not necessarly a bad thing) box? I'm not much of a gamer, but I believe the focus of new generations of gaming consoles is not simply to increase graphics quality. The idea is to provide a computer to play the game that the game designers can be (usually) sure won't play pirated games out of box. This gives companies an incentive to invest in new innovative game for the game console. It is about making companies feel good about investing time to write innovative games, not to provide the latest graphics capabilities.
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Nintendo has a secret... the average 27-year-old gamer is a kid at heart with a lot more money than a 7-year-old punk with tight-fisted parents. :P
That's good enough for me. I'm pretty much still in awe of the gamecube. It's this little f@#%@ing thing that rocks, kinda like my mac mini. I don't have a X360 but will get a PS3, so I haven't seen "incredible, PC like" graphics on a console yet. Hell, I'm still in awe when I fire up Shadowrun on my Genesis! It's all about gameplay, I can live without graphics on consoles.
My name is Wootzor von Leetenhaxor
The company has ALWAYS been about revolutionizing controllers - from the NES, to SNES up through the 64 & Gamecube.
I am not a gamer (no real time for that), but sometimes I want to play a not-to-involved game. There were only two reasons I bought a gamecube:
1) It was cheap (only $100 with controller and a game, if I recall correctly)
2) It had some fun games (Metroid, Zelda, Mario, the usual)
I knew next to nothing else about the thing. I think more about ordering a meal at a resturant than I did about this purchase. Now, my PC is a different story, but consoles are for recreation. Keep it simple, cheap, and fun please.
I thought this was one of the few things we "knew" about the revolution? Nintendo have been quite open about not joining the 360/PS3 horsepower bandwagon, and also quite open about not giving a toss about HD. Between that, the prospect of downloadable titles, significant efforts to make it friendlier to non gamers (hey, I *like* the controller) and Nintendo's history of being the best at producing cheaply it looks like they may be going to make really quite a bit of coin this time around.
Coin? Ha! B'ding! B'ding! B'ding!
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
IGN works with Nintendo on some of the aspects of their online service. Someone at that company knows the truth.
If there specs are real, Matt Cassissippi is endangering people in his company bound by NDAs. It doesn't matter if they told him or not. If the specs aren't real, he appears to be misleading his readers, because someone at his company knows.
I think it is irresponsible for him to report this either way.
They didnt produce a less graphically powered console because they couldnt compete with the 360, the did it on purpose. Real gamers know that better graphics dont equate to better games, but I'm fine with this all, I like indie music and indie movies. Now I get to like indie games and I can have scorn for the britney spears of the gaming world. Halo 3.
"Say you love us like i know you will and that our deaths won't be in vain or in the name of gasoline"
Actually, Nintendo gave dev kits to game development companies, who then gave the specs to IGN.
I think Nintendo probably doesn't want this published, but they can't really do anything about it because they have to give the information to third party game developers. In that sense, it is kind of a "leak", but it's mainly just information that was inevitably going to be released anyway.
Worker bees can leave
Even drones can fly away
The queen is their slave
All the nay-sayers have a serious lack of imagination as to what the revolution controller is capable of. Imagine a sonic-like game where you are controlling the speed of your character by the angle you tilt the controller, as he cascades over hills and obstacles and through turns (--also, tony hawk/snowboarding games). Imagine a soul calibur game which is fully 3d, you control the direction of your attack by "whips" of the axis of the controller, and moves derive from complex curvilinear shapes, but are intutively similar to the motions performed on screen. Imagine any flight simulator/racing/dogfight/war game, all you do is point the direction you want to go. Imagine madden but you pump fake with a whip of the hand, and throw the same way but holding a button. Not to mention whatever Nintendo has in store for mario and such (the revo controller was designed for a new mario concept originally...) So many more things are possible with this controller than were before. (oh yea, of course, FPS's)
**Disclaimer: I am NOT a gamer. I enjoy simple D-pad+four button games.***
My view on this whole Sony/MSFT vs Nintendo war is that Nintendo is trying to be a console, while Sony/MSFT are trying to be full blown entertainment devices. And I think Nintendo has chosen the right niche. Personally, I don't see myself buying an XBox360, or PS3, but I do see myself buying a Revolution. Nintendo has openly said that it will have emulation ability, so that you can play your old games (ie super mario, etc) on the revolution. I see this as the killer app. If the revolution costs 100USD, I'll buy one, just to have the ability to play older nintendo games on my nice tv. I assume they will recompile or do some graphics magic to make it look good on a 16:9 set, and so this is a 'good thing'.
Nintendo has a HUGE library of very entertaining games, and if you look at the demographic, the people who played super mario and had the original NES and SNES are now in the position of making purchases, and they will buy the Revolution. I know that I don't have the time to sit down and play Halo, but I do have the time to sit down and poink around with Mario Cart, or even Contra. The reason those simple Atari games you see at walmart are selling is because people want simple games again.
I guess I'm getting old (I'm 23!!!) but games sure aren't what they use to be.
--sig fault--
Part of the problem with comparing the XBox and the Revolution prices is the fact that they are 2 completely different business models. While Microsoft is content with losing money on their hardware and gaining it back on software, I would presume Nintendo wouldn't have that same 'comfort zone' with their pricing. That being said, I would agree that the best price for this would be around $150... Maybe even $125...
Nintendo systems have always had underpowered main processors, going back to the NES. Then they throw loads of custom chips on top of everything.
The SNES had its unique "color math" capabilities and the famous Mode7 affine matrix transformation mode.
I believe the N64 let you re-write the microcode in the GPU for custom needs.
The Gamecube, had lots of unique graphical capabilities like an indirect texture unit. SGI workstations are about the only machines that had indirect texturing. You can do lots of cool effects like fake light refraction and psuedo-3D geometry.
If they can go with 90nm, this can sell for under a $100, at which point, I'm there. This shouldn't cost more than the gamecube. They might even be able to sell it for $80 if they can fab it in 65nm.
My guess is that they're planning a portable around it as well for the 45nm generation.
That being said, the 360 is built much, much better than the original Xbox. But the Rev has a faster processor, and a GPU based on the GC one that has already proven itself to be superior. Only time will tell how much of a difference this really makes.
just some guy
The fact is that the people who really care about mhz and clock speed have either a) already bought an xbox360 and will not buy a Revolution, or, b) will buy all three consoles anyway. Talking about speed and graphic capabilities is useless. It all boils down to: is it fun?
Well, you can transfer 1 byte over DMA at about the same speed as 1 CPU cycle. With some dirty math, there's about 6810 CPU cycles in a v-blank period so you can transfer about 6.65 KB in a vblank. Of course you're not going to be updating character data EVERY frame. And you don't necessarily need to update any character data at all unless you can't fit all of it in the 32 KB of video RAM. Switching a sprite's character data to point somewhere else in memory is just a 1 byte write.
Genesis specs I'm not too familar with, but I've written an SNES emulator.
If a game performs shitty on one system, poor coding could always be blamed especially if it's a port.
It is easy to say that Sony's library is the biggest, but what does that mean when the games are not available to play? Let's say that you want to make use of that library, is Sony making all those games available online? Is there anywhere you can buy even a fraction of Sony's catalogue? And when I say buy, I mean go out and find a specific title that you remember fondly, not hunt through a bargain bin for some random junk.
The whole Sony catalogue is a false argument. Yes, it is compatible, but no, it is not available. Nintendo is making a huge chunk of their legacy library available for the Revolution, and that is a whole other thing.
I agree. The "performance" number he's quoting are complete crap.
"IBM's "Broadway" CPU is clocked at 729MHz, according to updated Nintendo documentation. By comparison, GameCube's Gekko CPU ran at 485MHz. The original Xbox's CPU was clocked at 733MHz. Meanwhile, Xbox 360 runs three symmetrical cores at 3.2GHz."
Hmm your copy and paste seems to have malfunctioned:
"IBM's "Broadway" CPU is clocked at 729MHz, according to updated Nintendo documentation. By comparison, GameCube's Gekko CPU ran at 485MHz. The original Xbox's CPU, admittedly a different architecture altogether , was clocked at 733MHz. Meanwhile, Xbox 360 runs three symmetrical cores at 3.2GHz."
I wonder what you were thinking when you decided to omit that part?
It is the big screen experience that sells.
This is the sci-fi technology Popular Science has been promising the television audience since the 1950's. Television as The Jetsons know it, televison as The Incredibles know it.
We don't have flying cars but we do have this. In color, high definition and in multichannel theater sound. Interactive and affordable. $1700 at Walmart.
I think Nintendo has badly underestimated what HD brings to the market.
I don't see what's wrong with what he reported. I don't find it hard to believe that a writer for IGN might be close enough with a few revolution developers to be able to get some basic info such as clockspeeds on the revolution.
Besides, if you read the article, he isn't trying to make the point that revolution is likely a POS that can't compete with the other next gen consoles. He's simply making a point about their strategy, which clearly isn't trying to design the most powerful console of the three. Even if the architectures are drastically different, the difference in clockspeeds and available memory is very significant.
I know some of you fanboys might feel emasculated by these specs, but your own assumptions and criticisms of the article are totally off base. I mean, why are those numbers complete crap? How do you know they're crap? Are you a close acquaintance with someone who's working on the revolution? And did the author suggest that the architectures were the same for all the platforms, or that the hardware performance of the system can be perfectly and accurately extrapolated from the clockspeeds? No, he simply gave information that he had, which were the clockspeeds in this case. He leaves it up to the reader to extrapolate what they will by comparing them with the numbers for gamecube, and other consoles, and the author in fact states "numbers don't mean everything."
So don't rip on the author for simply reporting the information that he has. If hearing the specs for the revolution pisses you off, then just don't read articles reporting on them.
I don't think so. It is just that Nintendo sometimes hates risks.
The problem with HD now, is that there isn't one standard. People have lots of different TVs that do HD at different resolutions.
And that just part of the market. About 10% of people now have HD displays. Yes, this can only grow, but the time isn't right for Nintendo.
I'm sure, that, by the time of Xbox 1080 (they jumped 720), Playstation 4 (Sony is boring) and Nintendo Apocalypse Now (People like ominous trademarks!) come, Nintendo will support HD, in whatever form the market has adopted as standard.
I am a games player I like to play games, and thats how I choose whether I buy a console, I have what I call my 3 game rule, if there are 3 games on a console I want to play then I buy it, its that simple. Its not about the MHz value or MBs value its all about the games. Nintendo sees that and I think alot of other games players do also. Its going to be intresting to see how it all pans out.
What a load of smouldering bullshit TFA was.... Twice as powerful as the gamecube, and almost as powerful as XBOX 1???? How could anybody keep reading after coming across that sentence?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
but where most of the spectacularness comes from is the in-game rendered cutscenes, which are by definition on rails.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
doesn't the picture of that console remind you of Apple's recent products? (iPod, iBook, iMac)? I'll call this thing "iNtendo"... or maybe "NI! ntendo"
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
When I get a new system all I really care about is the controller. The graphics can be 8-bit for all I care. Thank you Nintendo for realizing this and making a system geared towards 1% of the gaming population because we feel left out when it comes to playing games on current consoles.
Can I bum a sig?
Speaking as a production game developer (ie, I work on game logic, not engine code) you're pretty much dead on. We've got a game in the pipeline that we're releasing at 30 FPS on the PS2 .. runs on GC at 60 FPS, no problem. The main issue with the GC is that the ram is split between ram and aram, which leads to the requirement of micromanagement of ram use to ensure you're not wasting potential space. On cross-platform engines, its abit of a pain.
I agree with everything else tho. The GC was a shade less powerful than the Xbox, but as we've been shown again and again, its 20% hardware, and 80% how you use it. The Rev is plenty stronger than the Xbox.
"Old man yells at systemd"