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More Nintendo Console Rumors
itwbennett writes "Nothing is official and Nintendo isn't talking, but 'industry sources' runneth over with new information about the company's new gaming console. IGN on Thursday said that Nintendo is ditching 'Wii' and will call the new console 'Stream'. And nothing connotes Internet connectivity like the word stream. 'That's an area Nintendo has really been lax on in the past,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'Pure speculation on my part but I just wonder what, if anything, will be streaming to this new console? Video? Gameplay? A strong online multiplayer component?'"
Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has indirectly confirmed that the new console is in development.
Stream? Might as well call it "Golden Shower".
I'm curious to see what kind of hardware this thing has - there's not really a strong candidate for a processor right now. IBM's recent work on embedded PPC cores has been more along the lines of multicore low-clocked low-power designs (the PPC A2 and 4xx), which would be much faster than the 750 core used in the GameCube and the Wii but would still be unlikely to match the single-thread performance of the 970's in the Xbox 360 and the PS3. ARM isn't close to fast enough right now to deliver high-end performance and to emulate the Wii. Maybe Nintendo's building an x86 system, like the original Xbox.
A Stream of Wii
Sony could hype the Dreamcast to death because it was easy to get everyone to transition from the previous generation's most successful system (the PS1) to its successor (the PS2) and bypass Sega's entry entirely.
They won't necessarily be able to get everyone to transition from this generation's most successful system (the Wii) to the PS4 in such an automatic way.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
All the speculation I see in those articles seems far fetched to me. A price between $350 and $400? They're going to court hard core gamers? The controller will have an HD screen?
If they're doing any of those things they're basically doing exactly opposite of what they've done so successfully with the Wii. I assume the console will be able to do HD video, but putting an HD screen on the remote is unlikely given that every portable game system they've ever made has had screens with a lower resolution than TVs.
Cow Cube
I have a Big TV. I want to be able to put 8 people to connect.
I want to be able to do multi-headed out where 1/2 of the players are on separate screens.
Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has indirectly confirmed that the new console is in development.
Really? Does Microsoft need to 'confirm' it's working on another version of Office or Windows? How about Apple working on another iPod, iPad, iPhone, or MacBook?
I can see the headline now:
"Technology company working on next product - shock
Sources say it may be better than last product. Or worse. Either, really."
FGD 135
The Wii let you plug in old GameCube controllers and introduced the new Wiimote. You _could_ buy a new "classic" controller for the Wii, but it wasn't necessary.
Project Cafe (i'm really dubious of the "Stream" name) will probably let you use the old Wiimote and sensor bar while introducing the new high tech "regular" controller. There have also been rumors about upgraded motion controls (Wii Motion++?) that will be even more accurate than the Playstation Move, but they will be entirely optional.
They _may_ even make the new analog stick/touchscreen controller optional as well in order to keep the price of the console down. The Kinect and Playstation Plus (not to mention the Wii Board) may have shown that old wisdom about add-on controllers being dead on arrival is no longer true.
Two things which they really need to fix but i'm not sure if they actually will, there needs to be a way to transfer both save files and purchased Virtual Console games to the new system. And that includes those damn protected save files, one of the worst ideas ever.
And finally, what's up with the "Miyamoto has indirectly confirmed it" bit? All he's done is say that they're always working on the next iteration of hardware long before it gets announced, sometimes even before the previous hardware launches. Anyone who thinks that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft aren't all working on new hardware right now is deluded. The only question is when they're going to announce it and when they're going to launch it.
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I'm not aware of a system that can do that now, from any manufacturer. People complain endlessly about how badly they hate multiplayer anything on the Wii, but for such a complaint to mean much it should at least be based on what other systems can do...
Yeah, god forbid nintendo come out with something no one else has done before.