Slashdot Mirror
The Wii's Brain Exposed
Jon Stokes, at the Opposable Thumbs column, discusses a final revelation of the Wii's technical prowess. Though it's been assumed since the early days of the marketing push that the Wii is basically a super-charged GameCube, a post to Acer's Hardware boards would seem to confirm that. Not, as Mr. Stokes says, that that is a bad thing: "I'm no longer nearly as upset about the implications of this move as I was back in August. In fact, thanks in large part to my DS Lite, I've gone from being disappointed at Wii's underpowered hardware to actually anticipating the new console. I plan to pick one up when they become generally available, and I'm even hoping to hook my (nongamer) wife on it."
Enough about its brain. Show us the Wii's pinky.
Where were you when the voynix came?
And my PC is just a supercharged 386. So what?
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
It doesn't support HDTV. I think this will be their fatal flaw for next gen console rave. With lifespan of 5 years, it will start showing its age in 2 or 3 years as HDTV become the norm. Really think this was bad decision on nintendo's part, what would it costs to upgrade the video chip and corresponding bandwidth to support 720p? Even the ps2 supported 1080i output as seen with the grand turismo.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
The Gamecube could produce some stunning visuals and the Wii is even better, but both machines are optimized for 480p. There is no justification or reason to push performance when Nintendo is still firmly in the SD resolution department. Once Nintendo commits to HD, when or if that ever happens, well, obviously they're going to have to make a more powerful machine.
While I absolutely love the visuals from the 360 and PS3, given the still relatively paltry penetration of HDTV sets in North America, the new machines are a bit like driving a Ferrari or F1 race car on a dirt road.
...and I'll say it again. The Wii doesn't need to be much faster to look good.
The difference in required processing power to properly render the larger textures and more detailed models at 1080p versus what the Wii needs to do at 480p is huge. All that processing power that Microsoft and Sony will throw into 1920*1080=2073600 pixel is going to be much more than Nintendo has to worry about at 640*480=307200
2073600/307200 = 6.75. Sony and Microsoft need to be 6.75 times as powerful as Nintendo's console to maintain the status quo.
Now obviously this is likely to be wildly inaccurate. There are all sorts of factors I know jack about. However, the point remains that Sony and Microsoft's consoles have to go to a much greater effort to keep those framerates up.
On an HD TV, the Wii's graphics will look worse than what Sony and Microsoft offer. I have an Xbox 360 and an HDTV, I've seen the eyecandy and it's delicious. One thing I did notice was despite the fact that my Gamecube was only running at 480i via an S-Video cable, it still wasn't bad at all. The games that were beautiful before (F-Zero, Crystal Chronicles, and that beast of masochism Ikaruga) are still beautiful and I wasn't even using component (which I look forward to on the Wii). You can tell the difference between 480i 6th generation games and 1080i/p 7th generation games, but it doesn't mean the old games burn your eyes.
Even if the Wii is marginally better than the Gamecube remember how incredible games like Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime looked. Even a mere 50% to 100% increase will be more than enough to make the Wii awesome.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
They're taking one chip design and making it smaller, faster and lower power. Somewhere in the article it mentions that the 90nm version of this CPU takes about 2W at GC speeds. For reference, the DS is rated at 1.6W. You can probably predict where this is going.
Aw, now that's just plain mean to put this right after an article about babies' brain stems. The opportunity for misinterpretation is just too high. Sickos.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
First off, let's recognize that this still isn't confirmed - while it's a supposition with some good reasoning, it's not like the Big N has come out and told us the specs for the hardware. But, assuming that Hannibal is right, I have one complaint about the Wii: $250 is too much.
Yes, I know that I paid $400+ for my 360, and I know that the PS3 is going to be $580. I also understand that there was a ton of R&D on the Wiimote, that Nintendo's business plan includes profit on the consoles themselves, and that the price is determined by the market, not by the cost to produce.
But I also know I've paid $200 for each previous Nintendo console (except the NES...I didn't pay for that one, so I don't actually remember what it cost). I also know that technology gets cheaper over time - particularly microchips. A process shrink is neat, but shouldn't make the thing cost more, it should make it cost less. So the $250 is more than I've ever paid for a Nintendo console on the one hand, and an increase where there should have been a decrease on the other.
All that being said, I'll still probably pick one up at launch, or as soon after as I can manage. So in that sense, it's clearly not a problem from Ninty's point of view. But I'm vaguely irked by the price (again, assuming this supposition is accurate), and I don't think Nintendo's in a good position to withstand ill will.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I'd be a lot more (excited about the XBox360 or PS3)/(upset about the Wii design) if I believed power were the thing holding back games.
But I think to make that argument would take some serious rhetorical gymnastics. The problems with gaming clearly lie in the ideas, the general difficulty of executing complex ideas (programming complicated things, gaming or otherwise, is hard), the overemphasis on 3D graphics, and the stereotyping of controls.
All of these interrelate; in particular the emphasis on 3D graphics to the point that they are a requirement has resulted in the destruction of any number of good ideas from the old days, and who knows how many good ideas have been aborted because they wouldn't work in 3D? For an example of such an idea that luckily wasn't aborted, look at Viewtiful Joe. As graphics get harder, more of the projects programming superstars get dedicated to making them work, because it's hard. How many beautiful games have we seen with unbelievably bad pathfinding, a simple AI problem barely worthy of being called "AI"?
And of course there is the general monetary drain of good 3D graphics.
The DS has proven a safe haven for many of these older genres, and much new experimentation. Kirby: Canvas Curse is really fun, couldn't possibly work in 3D with a conventional controller (and it'd take some serious work with the Wii controller to make it work; I can envision one possibility but it'd still basically be a different game), and probably couldn't even work with a mouse interface. If you think good Sonic games died with the Genesis, the GBA and DS have had quite a few good old-school Sonic games. (I'm really enjoying Sonic Rush; using the stylus for the half-pipe Chaos Emerald stages is awesome, I wish there were twice as many. My favorite Sonic 2D ever, so far.) How many good ideas are never even thought of because console controllers can't support them?
A console with more RAM and more CPU, but the same graphics as the Gamecube and with an innovative new controller would still get my interest, because it attacks several of the real problems in gaming right now. (The rest of the problems will probably be solved the same way they are solved in all other programming domains, the slow but steady accumulation of ever-better libraries, and that's independent of console hardware.)
But I just don't see "power" as our big problem right now; we've got so much to spare that we can make grass wave realistically and make water sparkle and all kinds of other things that are nowhere near as important as the amount of development time they consume would seem to indicate.
True of the GBA, but Nintendo DS uses a subset of OpenGL, similar to the "GX" API used by the GameCube.
Nintendo is focusing on what they've always focused: the family. Microsoft and Sony are targeting the power user who are easily blinded by the "ooh and ahh" factor.
The power users are the ones who need the bragging rights of "more power" and are the ones who put emphasis on flash over function.
The family only cares about having fun together as a family. My daughter and I still have fun with Diddy Kong Racing on our oh-so-dreadfully-inferior {/SARCASM} Nintendo 64. We don't care that it doesn't look nearly as good as the newest PC game on a high-end video card. We have fun with the game together because the game is fun. That's what really counts. We don't give a shit that it's a 10-year-old, Nintendo 64. Hell, we sometime go back and play Commodore 64 games through an emulator! Why? Because the games are fun!
The people who put such a ridiculous focus on graphic prowess clearly have no concept of what a game console is supposed to be all about.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
My friend has a 52" Sony WEGA that I drool over. Buying a 360 or PS3 in his case makes absolute sense, but for the rest of us the cost of a new machine on an SDTV seems a bit silly.
Okay, I know... you shell out through the nose just to have your plasma/LCD/DLP screen and you want to see the reason you paid so much. It's natural.
Let's say you bought a really nice printer. It costs a lot of money. Your digital camera only gives you 5 megapixel photos, but the printer can go up to 9 megapixel with clear quality. Do you gripe to the camera maker?
Okay, so maybe you do, but I don't.
You get what you paid for. Caveat emptor, peeps. If you get an HDTV, prepare to seek out the content made for HDTV. Otherwise, it's just another TV, now isn't it?
I don't believe Nintendo is ignoring the technology trends, but they are making a smart move in supporting the current status-quo. Make a platform that meets the majority share of the market and you've already beat-out the "next gen" platforms targeted at HD.
As for all of the predictions going on; think again. HDTV is growing, but to beat-out a 60-year established standard in a constantly-saturated market in just a few years? It would take a more competitive pricing strategy than the current reality to do that.
When half the world is watching their daily news in 1080i resolution, then it becomes feasible.
Seriously, I can get a quality CRT television—fully loaded features—for a fraction of what it costs to get a same-size HDTV. On average, the ratio appears to be 10:1 (If I can get the CRT for $50, the same HD model costs $500) and it's not changing very quickly.
If Nintendo has proven anything, it's that they know good business. They made a good business decision with the Wii, and they'll worry about HD when the time comes. (not now)
Besides, what's to stop them from putting out after-market adapters? The first Xbox did that, and they've got plenty of satisfied gamers, even with HD.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
How much has the price of petrol/gasoline increased since 1991 when the Super NES came out? How much has the median price of 2000 hours of labour/labor increased? How much has the price of health care increased?
Which is why you can buy "Plug and Play TV Games" based on NES era technology for 20 USD or less.
For one thing, the GameCube isn't bundled with a motion-sensing remote. For another, the CPU didn't increase between the NES and Super NES as much as the PPU did. The article talked only about Broadway (the Wii CPU) and was silent on Hollywood (the Wii PPU).
Everyone gripes about hardware, but software also plays a big part in the game. Rouge Leader and Rebel Strike hold up immensely well for their age (five years and two years respectively). Nintendo has proven in the past the concept of software versus hardware. I even recall Nintendo's Phil Harrison (in an old EGM) speaking about Pokemon and how crude 8-bit graphics still appeal to people who like the games. It's not all about visuals but how a person can manipulate and immerse themselves to what is presented on screen. It's about control, simplicity, and possibly human addiction (Duck Hunt) Sure, Sony and Microsoft have the specs. Specs = Potential. Same goes for Nintendo and it's controller, it has potential. In reality, it all boils down to whether a person will believe numbers, visuals, and/or how a person can immerse themselves in the challenge in a game. It can even be boiled down to whether people enjoy a game as an interactive movie, or means of it acting as a holodeck. Interactive Movie- Cutscene to Cutscene (Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid Series Holodeck- Where you embody a character through a story (Half Life 2, Zelda, Shadow of the Colossus) There's so many different ways this can be looked at. I could write a paper about all of this. I probably dove into this deeper than I should have.
People seem to forget that this is a SD console, not HD. Isn't it supposed to be twice as powerful as the original XBOX? Why would you need any more power than that for SD games? It's probably going to look incredible on SD TVs.
This is also a social issue. Until men in America start divorcing women en masse for impractical Living Room Design, this is very unlikely to change as well. Until we start seeing a major mass move to true Home Theatre (characterized by LARGE screens, 50+ inches, and really embodied by projection systems) HD will not be that compelling. This isn't happening.
yes, Yes, AVSForum, and what not, these people are a niche, and we're not really seeing that change.
$200.00 in early 1990's money is certainly more than $250.00 in 2006 money, is it not?
What's my incentive to spend $500 if I'm an average-Joe satisfied with my current television?
Ok, so we know Nintendo produces some fun 1st-party games. And thats a great thing. If you love Nintendo's games then you know what you want, definitely a Wii.
The Wii will not be particularly powerful hardware-wise. Some fanboys say, its not next-gen or whatever buzzword you like. Nintendo fans say, that doesn't matter, because art direction trumps graphical muscle, gameplay and plot trump flashy graphics and nice physics. Its a fair argument.
The thing I wonder about is, this is not exclusive to Nintendo. Nothing about the Wii seems 'exclusive to Nintendo' save the 1st-party IP that no one else can produce. In other words, Zelda, Metroid, Mario Whatever.
Everything else about the Wii could potentially end up somewhere else. The controller has been knocked off for Xbox360/PS3/PC already, and is arguable superior. And 'good game design', while happily common with Nintendo's consoles, is hardly unique to them; there are innovative titles for all consoles.
In the end, while it seemed shrewd at first, I increasingly wonder if the cheap route was such a good idea after all. The Wii will look pretty nice at release, but even after 2 years, when they really start to stretch the legs on the X360 and PS3, I'm not so sure. Particularly if that 3rd party Wii Remote is bundled with a hit cross-platform game (ala Guitar Hero).
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Call me when I can turn off in-order writes, and they provide barrier instructions so I can control the ordering from software so hyperthreading becomes more than something the P4 engineers thought of as a "compiler problem", without understanding that you don't *ever* run a single compiler-optimized instruction stream to completion without a context switch in a modern OS. You can optimize the non-interrupt code paths in the OS itself, but for apps running *ont top* of the OS, there is no such thing as a "non-interrupt code path"
The _only_ reason this hasn't been done is to maintain binary compatibility, which could be done by making it an MSR controlled option defaulting to "off for DOS & Windows compatiblity". Of course, then people like Linux, BSD, etc. would start taking advantage of it, and, well, kicking some serious butt.
Yeah, I agree with the GP, and I can point to a lot of other "features" of the hardware that make it a "supercharged 386", which, if they were turn-offable, would make the chips have *much* better performance, particularly with a lot of cores.
-- Terry
Wii will prove again that gameplay trumps flash. Just like the DS is bitch slapping the PSP.
It doesn't support HDTV. I think this will be their fatal flaw for next gen console rave.
Except that the overwhelming majority of US households:
a. don't have HDTV.
b. don't want to pay $2000 plus (add $2000 for stereo system) for HDTV.
c. are perfectly willing to wait until 2009 when we're forced to go to HDTV (we have cable) - and HDTV will cost $300 and we can buy the Wii Plus (next gen box).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Wii Sports isn't bundled in Japan, they're selling it there for half the price of a standard retail game. So, it's probably worth £15/$25 in stores by that measure.
However, the fact that it's a pack-in vastly reduces the value: everybody will trade it in, and it'll be plentiful and cheap in second hand game stores. Chu Chu Rocket got bundled with UK Dreamcasts for a long time, so I can still easily find it second hand for £0.99: greater supply than demand makes it worthless.
The other point is that Super Monkey Ball Wii comes with every minigame in Wii Sports and vastly more besides, making it totally redundant to anyone who gets Monkey Ball, which is probably quite a few people since it's one of the launch list standouts.
So, as far as I'm concerned, Wii Sports is nowhere near justifying $50.
It's probably better to look at that extra $50 as a "Nintendo is finally getting their third-party shit together" tax. Worth it, IMO.
but will it heat my house too? i like multi-in-one gizmos.
No sig for you!!
Changing the microarchitecture would have implications for backwards compatibility with Gamecube software. My personal opinion (as someone who has programmed for Gamecube in the past and is working on a next-gen game) is that they will have made no changes. The new part is just a die-shrunk up-clocked Gekko and there's nothing wrong with that.
To back your more general point up, although people seem to have a low opinion of what the Gamecube hardware was capable of it's unwarranted. It's true that many games didn't get much out of it, but look at Starfox Adventures (from 2002 no less) to see what you could achieve. 480p and 16:9, fur shading, bump mapping, refraction and reflection for water (and ice), realtime environment lighting for the day/night cycle and lots of particles. It's a very pretty game indeed.
Even if no new capabilities are added to the hardware, Wii games will look great and the demos I played at E3 were pretty damn fun for the most part.
Graham
or PowerPC 750CL can do 4 instructions per cycle? http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/t echdocs/2F33B5691BBB8769872571D10065F7D5/$file/ppc 750cl_ds_dd20_5oct06.pdf
i mean specs data tell that it "Fetches four instructions per clock".
afaik,Gekko only fetches two
GC->Wii .18u) -> Tualatin PIII (1.16GHz, .13u)
.18u) -> Intel Banias (1.67GHz, .09u) + "Physics Processor"
.13u, HT enabled)
Coppermine PIII (800MHz,
PS2->PS3
G3 w/Altivec (PPC 7xx, 400MHz,
XBox -> XBox 360
UltraSPARC IIIi -> Dual Xeon MP (Prestonia, 1.67Ghz,
If you want to compare processors in terms of the "new configurations" in terms of 386, that's the best I could come up with.
Since PS2/XBox are switching architectures to PPC (like the GC/Wii), they all end up as i386ISA, but they come from something else (equivalent power in a different chipset line)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
It's not a single pet feature, it's an example.
/dev/random in Linux, BSD, et. al. is an Abomination Before God, mostly because there is no real hardware generator backing it, and so none of your interrupt processing gets done in bounded time because it "harvests entropy" during interrupt processing and other critical tasks
...let's start with those.
If you want a laundry list, I can provide one, but we can start with this small list of things, which were also true of the i386 as well, making the current CPUs hopped up 386s:
o Too few general purpose registers (this one's glaringly obvious, and compared to dumping another 2M of cache onto a chip, it's relatively easy to fix, but it's only been partially fixed in the 64 bit implementations, and there it was more or less a matter of maintaining binary compatibility with AMD, who beat Intel to the punch)
o No TLB tags to support cache coloring, TLB shootdown of only impacted pages, reduced TLB flush, reduced IPI's between CPUs (yes, 386 supported SMP, if you used external APICs), and, in general, make memory management easier for OS engineers
o Continued reliance on a single FSB for all MESI transactions, instead of a crossbar bus, like in the DEC Alpha, or a Hypertransport, like in the AMD, limits the number of cores you can add before bus contention diminishes the utility of adding another core; let it be said that AMD only got this right, IMO, because they inherited the Alpha chip design team
o Off-board MMU does not provide the ability to off-load memory page zeroing from the main CPU; this leads to higher power consumption in your idle loop, if you zero pages there, and higher latency for clean pages, if you don't. It is *mandatory* to zeero pages before providing them for most uses, as a security issue; if it's just thee eating my electrons, waiting to be asked for pages, it should be *doing* something to earn its keep
o No hardware random number generators;
o Bad support for high resolution timers; in general, you have to jump through incredible hoops to get real HRT support in the hardware (unlike PPC or SPARC hardware), which end up taking a lot more work then necessary, since you have to mux them
o No vector MMU; SSE is very poor compared to a real vector processor; Altivec on PPC, vector on SPARC, and Weitek (from waaaay back when) all do much better on floating point; even if they didn't, non-compliance with IEEE-754 makes much of SSE a non-starter ("I can make it as fast as you want, if it doesn't have to be correct" - Ed Lane)
o No routing interrupts based on power management when routing is done in Intel MP Spec. "Virtual Wire" model; heck, no decent specific routing anyway (load based, and/or using source quench to implement LRP or other techniques)
-- Terry
Honestly, have you visited an electronics store in the last 3 years?
$2000 for a HDTV? Not likely. You can get a decent 42" HD plasma for under $1500USD.
Don't need so big? You can easily find 32" HD for under $900.
Going smaller, the price keeps getting cheaper.
According to a quick google search, 1 in 6 households has a HD capable TV set now.
Also, I am lost as to why you think you need to buy a new stereo when you buy a new TV. The two are completely unrelated. (Even then you can get a decent DD5.1 receiver + speakers, DVD player for $500.)
Again, another error -- I believe the mandate for 2009 is simply to cease analog signals.... Not necessarily to force HD. (Don't hold me to that though, I'm not even from the US)
Sure many people still don't have HD TVs, but that number is shrinking rapidly.
In actual practice, according to the Wall Street Journal, homeowners spend about as much on audio component systems at the same time or shortly after purchasing an HDTV. This could be due to them being early adopters of course.
However, a good rule of thumb is that prices for electronics equipment rapidly drop in a curve after introduction, with the highest ROI point for a consumer about 3 years after full introduction.
As 2009 is the cut-off date for analog signals, we can use that as a benchmark for 50 percent usage, since HDTV is only in 1 out of 6 US households at this time. Therefore, my comments that the best price point for purchasing a non-buggy HDTV for around $300 that would actually replace/improve my current set with a 1080p HDTV set, gives me an approximate time to buy of around 2009, possibly early 2008 around February/March. At this time we should also see price drops for PS3 units and all first introduction bugs will have been addressed as well.
Of course, in 2009 we should expect the introduction of the replacement next-gen systems to replace the xBox360, PS3 and Wii consoles. So maybe I'll shoot for 2008.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Dell is selling 20" monitors with dvi inputs for $250. I'd expect that price to drop 30% by next year. I figure in two years it will be cheaper to produce lcds 27" than a standard tube tv.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
My TV is bigger than 20 or 27 inches. No reason to replace a functional TV just because I can. I'll wait until I can get them for $300 for a better HDTV. Thus, the Wii works fine for me now and for the next few years.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yeah, good points about CPU/GPU power. We will see how this will turn out. The Wii being similar to the GameCube architecture-wise might be benefical. The developers already know how to program for it.
If you thought they looked fine on your TV, then the Wii will look fine in 480p and 16:9 also.
Here in australia (omg there's ppl outside the US?) i can only think of one person who went out and bought a HDTV LCD beast. Granted its good (was awesome for the world cup) but frankly is certainly not worth the money, i know a few ppl who bought the 360 and they wouldn't even consider a HDTV in the next few years. In terms of games we play the good ol' xbox on the afore mentioned HDTV LCD beast, to be honest i don't really think its worth the hassle when you sit a few meters from the screen anyway, granted you can tell it's not as sharp, but it's in no way ugly. I guess it comes down to benefit vs cost. Personally i see little benefit in spending an extra 1k/2k on a decent sized HDTV just for sharper graphics when we'd then need to get digital tv AND a HD console to get any use out of it. I guess it's each to there own, i think Nintendo are smart in the fact they can sell this awesome console (note: awesome due to games+motion controllers) and charge so much less than microsoft and sony (especially sony!) for it, mostly due to this fact. I've never been favourable to any of those company's, even if i wanted to get a 360/ps3 i still wouldn't buy a HDTV, I'd rather still have my weekends out for the next 3 or 4 months :)
Wiirtual Boy
Actually, the GBA has a few "true" 3D games (some with 2D sprites, but 3D environments). There are even Voxel games for the GBA.
Examples of true 3D games for the GBA include Driver and V-Rally.
The Wii game developers are going to be ahead of the game if it has a similar design, and will be able to focus more on the game than the developing. I am very interested in what is going to come out for the Wii.
I recently read that the Wii actually can output 720p. However, it lacks the processing power to do so decently.
Here are the specifications from IGN, which have been online for several days: http://wii.ign.com/launchguide/hardware1.html
Here's the part about HD: http://wii.ign.com/articles/733/733464p7.html
"Q: Can Wii do high-definition graphics?
A: Technically, it's possible, but it's also implausible. Wii is more powerful than Xbox, a console whose library included a handful of games that ran in 720p HD. Furthermore, Wii features a multi-audio/video port with the option for component out, meaning that 480p through 720p/1080i resolutions are attainable, at least where wiring is concerned. However, due to both a miniscule amount of system RAM and less computing power when compared to HD-ready consoles like Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the chance that most Wii games will break the 480p visual barrier is slim. In fact, Nintendo executives have gone so far as to comment on the record that Wii does not support high-definition. The company wants Wii to be "quiet, small and affordable," and has thus focused its attention on the system's innovative new controller. Nintendo's leaders have indicated that high-definition graphics are the future. But unlike Sony and Microsoft, which believe that the "HD era" has begun, the Big N asserts that widespread HD adoption will take years. The company's successor to Wii will support high-definition visuals. "
Which will be never, as even a 27 inch NTSC TV is still over $300. So it looks like you will continue to use whatever prepackaged shit pretendo will give you as I don't think they will ever go beyond 640p.