IBM Announces Wii Chips In Nintendo Hands

simoniker writes "IBM has announced that the 'Broadway' CPUs created for the Nintendo Wii have been shipping from the company's East Fishkill, N.Y., fabrication facility since earlier this year. Nintendo, it would seem, is ramping up for the launch of their next-gen console in a month or two." Joystiq and Kotaku have the news as well. From the article: "Nintendo has also confirmed their reception of IBM's chip: 'The first chips are in our possession,' said Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director/General Manager, Integrated Research & Development Division, Nintendo Co., Ltd. 'Today's milestone marks the final stage of our drive to reach both core and nontraditional gamers with an inviting, inclusive and remarkable gaming experience.'"

Comments

Re:Digitizers?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wii will work on any kind of TV, because the TV has nothing to do with the controller. There is a small (about the size of a couple pencils glued together) sensor bar you place near the TV. It doesn't matter where you put it, but that general area is where you'll be pointing the remote. So put it near the TV, and it seems like the distance you are from the TV affects the sensitivity of the controller. The closer you are to the bar, the higher the sensitivity.

Re:Digitizers?

[Bombcar]

The Wiimote doesn't work like the light guns of the past; it uses the two bars you sometimes see in the pictures, one goes beneath the screen and one goes on the side.

See this.

Re:Digitizers?

[Anonymous Coward]

It works by determining its position relative to the sensor bar. For all the Wii cares, you could play a game and have the TV behind you.

Broadway

[dualmoo]

Here are the only details we know about the Broadway processor : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_(microproces sor)

Re:Wii, PS3, Xbox360

[ZakuSage]

Do you not understand the point he's trying to make? IBM is manufacturing the CPUs for 360, Wii, and PS3, thereby making a killing irregardless of who "wins".

Re:Digitizers?

[mad_minstrel]

Actually - the "sidebar" in the picture is the Wii...

Not quite...

[GFLPraxis]

"The closer you are to the bar, the higher the sensitivity."

Opposite, actually. Getting too close (within a couple feet) of the TV tends to make it hard for it to get exactly where you are pointing. I tried putting the Wiimote close to the TV to see if it helped me aim when I was playing it at E3, and when it made the pointer go nuts the representative told me that it loses sensitivity when you get that close and to stand back.

I could aim better from a distance.

Re:Digitizers?

[QuantumFTL]

According to the Wikipedia article, the Wiimote uses a 1 megapixel imaging sensor to detect (what is most likely) IR light from the "sensor bar" that's placed at the bottom of your screen. To see how that works, try pointing a remote control at a digital camera or a camcorder - if you press buttons the remote, it will light up brilliantly, yet not be a distraction to humans.

To be honest, I'm not sure how they plan to get full positioning information from a horizontal bar, as I don't think any of their other sensors are absolute, which could lead to serious drift problems. They likely use Kalman filtering or some such to minimize the error, but I really do want to know how they stabilize this.

I suppose it would be theoretically possible for the Wiimote to also lock on to the display (the frequency would not matter, just the overall size and shape) and use that to reduce uncertainty, but for now we can only speculate on the inner workings. I for one can't wait to get my hands on one!

Re:Queue the East Fishkill jokes here

[novus ordo]

It's no joke that the IC industry is dirty. Just ask the people who live there.

Re:Fishkill

[Y-Crate]

Their manufacturing plant, which no doubt produces some toxic chemicals, is in a town called East Fishkill? There's gotta be an interesting story behind that name :)

"Kill" means "Fresh Water Channel" in Dutch. Since New York City was once called "New Amsterdam" for a good reason, you can understand why the word "kill" pops up all over the place. It was however, a cringe-worthy experience hearing about all of the World Trade Center debris being taken to the Fresh Kills landfill five years ago. I could imagine how people all over the country were reacting to hearing the name over and over again, without any explanation from newscasters as to what "kill" meant in this particular context.

To those unknowledgeable about the origins of the word, it sounded like New Yorkers had particularly horrific taste.

Re:Interested in performance.

[masklinn]

Dude, these numbers have been debunked, no one has any info on either the CPU, the GPU or the RAM, even Wikipedia doesn't use these numbers for god's sake!

Graphics aren't everything but I have become used to beautifully rendered worlds immersive worlds and effects and it will be hard for most consumers to purchase a 'next generation' console with visuals from the pong era.

Remember that the Wii only needs to go up to 480p/60fps (well all games are supposed to be 480p/60fps stable), the Xbox360 and the PS3 will range between 720p and 1080p. You need a lot of processing power for the rise in pixels alone. And the GC probably had the highest power of it's generation, only the lack of RAM made it extremely hard to reach it's best potential (just check RE4/GC).

I really doubt the Wii will be underpowered.

We'll just see, though.