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Wii U Faster Than 360 Or PS3, No Blu-ray Or DVD Support
jdkramar was one of several readers to write with news of the Wii U hardware information that's been trickling out since E3. The new console will run a multicore IBM processor based on 45nm architecture (technology currently underpinning Watson), and will have an AMD R700 GPU chipset found in the Radeon 4000 line of video cards. Apparently it will, in fact, run Crysis. Nintendo has confirmed that the Wii U will use a proprietary 25GB disc format, and won't support DVD or Blu-ray playback. A spokesman said, "The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, such that it didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies."
I'm pretty sure it has very little to do with the patents and more to do with the same reason they used those awkward, little, inverse-reading GameCube discs: fear of homebrew and fear of sharing backups.
But as we know from both the GameCube and the Wii, it's only a matter of time before people work around those limitations.
Disagree != mod troll.
They're not trying to distribute movies on it, just games. Nintendo consoles have always used proprietary media.
That's a leap, how the hell did you read that out of it.
I read it as "if we can keep construction costs down we can have a larger profit margin or offer it cheaper". I don't reckon they're interested in making a massive loss per unit like Sony did in the PS3s early years.
TFA says that it will run CryEngine (which PS3 and X360 also are capable of). It says nothing of Crysis, the PC game that didn't make it to consoles due to their less powerful hardware.
When they said only one player gets to use the fancy new controller at a time. I understand the limitation, but it just makes the whole thing seem half baked to me. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to spend my money on a PC to run Battlefield 3.
I don't really see this as a shady move. Practically everything plays DVDs and the price of a standalone DVD player has dropped to practically nothing. If the proprietary format boasts extra compatibility or features that's always a plus, but I don't really see the downside of this decision.
Eh? Pretty sure the Wii disks are just DVDs aren't they?
I know all the rest have been console specific, mostly because they were carts up until the gamecube, but I had thought they went with the standard last time.
Maybe the ease of piracy for the Wii made them change their minds.
Nintendo has always enjoyed being the only people who can duplicate media for their consoles. They've been doing it since the NES days.
It lets them set prices they feel comfortable with.
No sig today...
So... you don't think economies of scale would make blu-ray players cheaper than building a whole new disk player and new disk pressing plants to go with it...?
No sig today...
Nintendo makes and sells millions of consoles per year. At millions of units, economies of scale don't change much if you use common parts or proprietary ones.
The console business model depends on volume and technological advances to drive prices down quarter after quarter.
Patents, on the other hand, do not scale with volume, nor do they scale with technological advances. They can stay consistently high for the term of the patent, or even go UP year after year (as the h.264 patents do).
In other words, expensive video player patents are incompatible with a pure console business. Don't be surprised if the "25GB disk" is very Blu-Ray like in all mechanical, optical, and electrical ways. But the encoding skirts patents.
An upcoming console is supposed to be more powerful than 5 year old hardware?
I'm shocked!!!!!!111eleventyone
It doesn't say the drive doesn't use DVD or BluRay technology.
It says the machine won't do DVD or BluRay movie playback.
At 25 GB per disc, it's probably a single-layer BluRay disc. They're just not paying the license fees for the software to play back BR movies.
My understanding is that DVD player and BR player license fees are roughly ten bucks each, so if your console plays DVDs and BRs, it costs $20 per unit more to ship.
The 360 may be easier to call, but I'd hesitate to say from those specs alone that it's outright faster than a PS3. When you compare an x86 to a cell... which is almost apples to oranges you have to take a lot more into account than simple clock speed, cache, memory, etc. SPE's aren't like cores. They're not even similar. Benchmarking will be necessary surely. Without it I don't think it's fair to say one way or the other.
they were DVDs but did not adhere to the standard data frame format (more info here: http://hitmen.c02.at/files/docs/gc/Ingenieria-Inversa-Understanding_WII_Gamecube_Optical_Disks.html - awesome reverse engineering done by hacker xt5). However, modchips enabled standard DVD functionality back.
I bet they went with a proprietary optical disk format in order to prevent piracy. If no one can burn the disks, then piracy will (hopefully for them) be less rampant.
That is, of course, until someone figures out how to run disks from whatever disk or flash drives they support, which is much more convenient anyways ;)
Are they really trying to claim that developing a proprietary disc format, and having the hardware used to read it custom made is going to be cheaper than just using a format which already exists, and for which drives are already being mass produced cheaply?
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Also, they don't seem to be targetting the disc format for anything except delivering it's own games to it's own platform.
It's not much different from the incompatible-with-anything-else game cartridges used in the past.
If you don't care for compatibility, why pay license fees to be compatible?
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The disc format is probably almost identical to BluRay, but just different enough to not require licensing the patents. Also different enough that the discs won't get recognized by a standard BluRay drive.
From here, the royalty fee for a BluRay player is $9/unit. Each data disc has a $0.0725 royalty fee. You're looking at hundreds of millions of dollars in royalty fees over the life of the system, even if it only sells at the level the GameCube did. If the system is a Wii level success, you're in the ballpark of a billion dollars. Oh, and tack on another few dollars/unit for DVD royalty fees as well.
Not a new player, just a firmware tweak to the cheapest single-layer bluray-type drive mechanism they can source.
Likewise, no new pressing plants - any existing plant that can press a single-layer BluRay disk will be able to press these...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
So what cost are they talking about? A couple of dollars in licensing? Well sell the DVD playback from the online store and that's that.
Perhaps they have more of a case for not implementing Blu Ray but absolutely not for DVD.
For media distribution, it is getting to the point where some form of memory card may be the answer.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I have 10+ devices that could play a DVD and several that can play Blu-Ray. I didn't "intentionally" buy any of them with that express intent. If it *actually* lowers the price on the thing, I am all for this. I do not have the desire to pay for functionality which I do not need.
I hope that all the naysayers that said nay about the Wii (myself among them) have finally grokked that there's - demonstrably - a huge market for a small, relatively cheap games console that:
Rail against it if you like, but you'll have to shout: Nintendo are way down there at the deep end of their Olympic sized pool full of cash, blow and hookers.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Even if the Wii U was able to play movies, most people wouldn't know about it anyway. Ars Technica did a survey back in 2007 where they found most people owning a PS3 don't know it plays Blu-Ray. I doubt that has changed much.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Sure worked for Sega with the draemcast and GDROM. /rolls eyes. When will they learn.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
What's with all these specs? That keep ending in question marks? And don't form complete sentences? And aren't even questions? But end with question marks anyway?
Program Intellivision!
That can't be true, as the goodguys had DVD players at ... $9 each !!!
THAT'S THE PLAYERS !?!?!?
I guess the NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, DS, Gamecube, and probably other consoles' of Nintendo will fail too, because of the proprietary formats.
I read it neither as "We want a new disc format to compete against Bluray" or "We can keep construction costs down".
Instead I read it as, "We want a non-standard format like we had on the Gamecube which was impossible to copy, and was not cracked by pirates for four years." It makes sense to me. Were I Nintendo I'd probably do the same.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The Wii shipped without DVD playing capability (yes you can hack it to do it), and that didn't seem to slow down sales to any appreciable amount. Besides, look at the remote for your blu-ray player (any blu-ray player you have; you probably have more than one by now) at your home. Compare the number of buttons on that remote to the number of buttons on the Wiimote or the buttons show on the remote for the Wii U. People are already mocking the Wii U remote for being too big; do you really want them to an another 40 buttons to it?
And you can't honestly tell me that the PS3 controller is a great blu-ray remote. If you think it is a good remote then hand it to a senior citizen and ask them to start a movie.
While originally when I bought a Wii and found it couldn't play DVDs, I was disappointed, this time I agree. We don't need the Wii U to play DVD or blu-ray. The old ideal of an all-in-one media center device for the home just didn't happen, and doesn't need to.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Only because the Dreamcast also let you boot off of CD-Rs. I doubt Nintendo will let you burn a Blu-ray and play it, especially if it isn't capable of reading one.
Actually I'm fine with their decision. My media setup involves a dedicated Blu-Ray/DVD player, the media PC which has a Blu-Ray drive in it, and the PS3 which has a Blu-Ray drive in it. All of them hooked up to my home theater system and my 40 Inch LCD HDTV.
I really don't NEED "yet another Blu-Ray player".
Redundancy is nice and all but really.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
More like:
"Hey, check out this copy protection scheme..."
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Yeah the wii was really screwed over by doing the same exact thing.
Somehow I think we will see a new security approach this time around.
Who knows, it might even work
25 GB?
The disks themselves are probably going to come off of the exact same assembly lines as blu-ray disks. The difference being that they won't have right software to read them. They don't have to make the data on their disks conform to the blu-ray standard, because they only want them to run in their own devices anyway..
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The point is that the general public sees these type of devices as pure gaming machines. So they might as well deliver exactly what most people already expect they're buying in order to keep the price down (or the margins up).
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
If no one can burn the disks, then piracy will (hopefully for them) be less rampant.
People will just figure out how to make it load games off of a USB hard drive.
Again.
Sony sold the PS3 with the promise for a superior blueray player and they won the war agains toshiba for this next gen format, and it si now marketing ps3 as a media machine besides a game console. It is a selling point. And "Selling" is way more important here than the actual capabilities. I can agree that the PS3 is not a good media machine (it is beaten by Utra cheap HD players if you ask me), it might have sold them a lot of consoles just for the feature points.
Patents might prevent innovation here. For some reason i can buy a DVD player for 25 euro, but nintendo fails to secure a proper license for this.
The Wii could read DVDs from the beginning. The SDK even had DVD functions and the graphics chip has the requisite Macrovision crap to legally enable DVD playback. The system firmware has a flag for enabling DVD mode. They could've released a "DVD Channel" on the WiiWare store to enable DVD playback. If they didn't, it was a business decision, not a technical one.
Newer Wii hardware nixed DVD playback because it was being used to pirate games (if you can read DVDs, you can read DVD-Rs; if you can read DVD-Rs, you can patch system firmware to make games transparently read DVD-Rs as if they were originals).
>>>At 25 GB per disc, it's probably a single-layer BluRay disc
That's essentially what the Gamecube disc was: A single-layer DVD-3 that recorded information in the opposite direction (from inside-to-outside). Also it recorded on layer 2 not layer 1.
The disc stored 1 and a half gigabytes (basically 2 CDs) and allowed Nintendo to use the basic commodity technology, but without paying DVD royalties.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Nintendo will not start peddling NintenDVDs, they just don't want to pay SONY for the rights for blu-ray or DVD playback.
The only reason that SONY made UMD was because they already had a foot in the door with the content providers seeing as they are one.
~Syberz
Unless it doesn't have USB ports. Which wouldn't be surprising at all.
Why would you think that? The Wii is the only console of the current generation not able to play movies without hacking, yet it's also the best selling one. Clearly people buy these devices because of their gaming capabilities, not because of their other functions.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Walmart, among others, has periodically run into legal trouble over exactly how adherent-to-patent licensing some of their cheaper DVD offerings are...
Given that DVD, in particular, is sufficiently well understood that licensing patents/paying your CSS protection money, etc. are purely legal matters, not technological issues, you can indeed get the new-brand-every-week DVD players for more or less the cost of mechanics, silicon, and box. That doesn't really help Nintendo, though, who will have lawyers on their tail faster than they can blink if they try anything.
>>>Sega GDROM
The 90s is a long time ago but if my memory recollects, it took pirates *3 years* to crack the GD-ROM and figure out how to squeeze the 1000 MB games onto a 700MB CD. I consider that a success, since it prevented Dreamcast piracy for most of its lifespan.
Ditto for the Gamecube. Eventually it was cracked, but it protected the unit from piracy for four years. That's why Nintendo continued using the proprietary GC-ROM for its Wii (with modifications). It achieved its goal.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
But then why not just license someone else's codec for dirt cheap or free, like WebM or Theora? Hell if the thing sells Wii numbers Hollywood WILL put out movie discs for it, maybe a double sided with BD on one and "WiiMovie" on the other. Hell I'm sure Google would give them WebM for free to get the boost and it just seems like a waste to have all that space and no way to play video.
I do like how their chip will be two generations behind, as the HD4850s go for like $60 so that means we PC gamers will still be able to game on the cheap. That is the nice thing IMHO about the consoles now, they last so long and it takes so long for the R&D that we PC gamers will be enjoying dirt cheap gaming for a long time to come. I know my customers like I can build them sub $450 HTPCs that play nice on their 1080p sets with lots of purty, so keep it up Nintendo, Sony, and MSFT!
But compared to the current gen and especially the Wii this thing ought to be a monster but then of course the question becomes "Will anybody make serious games for the Wii?" since Nintendo has been courting the casual gamer crowd for so long. I just don't picture the loyal Nintendo fans really caring that much about Crysis, it just isn't a Nintendo style game experience.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No it wont die. It will be as successful as the platform... Take a look at the special disc format for the GameCube.
It's a physical form of DRM. which is funny, because nobody is copying the discs to other discs.. they are simply playing from a hard drive.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And that $20 would go straight into the pocket of one of their biggest competitors (Sony) per unit sold. Its very easy to understand why they don't want to pay it,.
First, those could have been unlicensed devices. No law of nature prohibits placing the DVD logo on an unlicensed player.
Second, those could have been devices made by some company which went out of business and thus hit the market below cost. I wouldn't be surprised to see them selling hardware on which you had no reasonable expectation of support; if it's that cheap they can afford to replace it several times.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nope the licensing to Sony is actually expensive. Take defunct HD-DVD tech and tweak it so you dont have to pay any royalties and suddenly... cheaper drive. even more cheaper as you can use dirt cheap red lazer assemblies instead of blue.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Meh, doesn't matter, services like Netflix are going to completely dominate the movie market in 5 to 10 years anyways. Movies on media are quickly becoming a thing of the past.
China knock offs that are grey market and dont pay the royalties can be cheaper.
look at the brand, and "goodguys" is notorious for buying B grade junk that a company is trying to offload from china.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Discs aren't fast anymore. Solid state drives/cartridges are cheap now, and much much faster.
Besides patents for various hardware inventions incorporated into DVD's, you'd also have to pay for software decoding licences (e.g. MPEG licenses).
Quite often, both types are charged depending on the number of devices you intend to sell. A 10,000 run of a cheap DVD player won't be subject to the same fee as a 10,000,000 run of a big-selling console. And, yes, they basically make those fees and sliding scales up as they see fit.
That said, even 10 Euros per unit is a hefty chunk of a "fee" on a multi-billion dollar console (basically, 5% of Wii U income - NOT profit - would be sent to a licensing authority and patent holders).
Nintendo could have a license if it wanted - I think it's just proved with the Wii that it's really not necessary (for every person WITH the DVD hack - when it used to work on the drive firmware - I can name 100 who have a Wii and *don't* have the hack) and thus that 5% can be put into, say, licensing decent displays, touch-screen patents, motion-control patents or whatever else instead.
It's a games console. It doesn't need to play MP3 (proven by its removal from Wii's Photo Channel), doesn't need to play DVD's or Blu-Ray (proven by the absence and later "blocking" of DVD capabilities on the Wii drives), etc. It just needs to load and play a game. Too many other devices let you do everything like that if you really want, and to worry about a new one not supporting it is silly. Take out the gimmicks, you take out the patent licensing and instantly get less hassle and more profit that you can use to make the GAMES side of the device better.
Dreamcast piracy happened because there were bugs/loopholes in the firmware that allowed booting off CD-Rs.
Sony sold the PS3 with the promise for a superior blueray player
But how many people buy a PS3 to play blu-ray? You can get a very capable blu-ray player for half the cost if blu-ray is all you want. And the blu-ray only device is much easier to use for playing blu-ray than a PS3 with a regular sony PS3 controller.
and they won the war agains toshiba for this next gen format
It is open to debate whether or not the PS3 had any impact on the blu-ray/hd-dvd battle...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It does.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
The article says the Wii 2 will have four USB ports. But if you have 25 GB of game data, the throughput from USB 2 might be too slow for you to run a game off it. That's just my wild guess, though. (Granted that 98% of Slashdot posts can be suffixed with, "That's just my wild guess, though.")
If not having Blu-ray and DVD playback allows Nintendo to produce hardware that is cheaper and/or more profitable and possible harder to pirate software for, have they really lost anything? As long as it has Netflix support and maybe even media extender ability, most consumers will be happy.
So in other words, it will play Blu Rays once it's hacked.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But compared to the current gen and especially the Wii this thing ought to be a monster but then of course the question becomes "Will anybody make serious games for the Wii?" since Nintendo has been courting the casual gamer crowd for so long. I just don't picture the loyal Nintendo fans really caring that much about Crysis, it just isn't a Nintendo style game experience.
Return to the Gamecube era? Wasn't too long ago that you could buy a console, get the best of the cross-platform releases and still enjoy the Nintendo classics. Most of the people I know with a Wii have multiple consoles or a gaming computer. They still play "serious" games, but the Wii just isn't powerful enough to run them. If it could, I'm sure no self-respecting publisher would think twice about pushing their games onto a platform with around 80 million consoles.
Nonstandard movie formats just don't fly. People don't want movies that can only be played on one particular gizmo.
Seen many UMD movies lately? No? There's a reason for that.
There were TV show cartridges for the Game Boy, but I've never seen a movie released for the DS. You could fit a feature film on a DS cart.
It is probably just a backwards disc, like the GC and Wii had. And it will not die like UMD, because Nintendo is not trying to sell music or video on it, just games for their own system.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
Maybe Nintendo is looking into the future to see how traditional DVD content will be delivered. Personally, I rarely buy movies any more. I do get newer releases from Netflix, but otherwise, it's streaming content.
I doubt that has changed much.
Surely it has since in 2007 almost no one knew what Blu-ray was and the average consumer did not care. It wasn't until 2009 that Blu-ray adoption took off. So the same survey done today would yield a very different result.
No, translation: "Try to pirate THIS, motherfuckers!"
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Actually since it will be backward compatible with the Wii, it will have to have them.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
We want our own so we can try and be filthy rich but it'll probably die on it's arse just like UMD.
Yeah because if it's one market that Nintendo's been trying to break into, it's movies.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, such that it didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console"
I was expecting to whine about the fact that they left out this feature again, but this is a damn good point.
Most people at this point either have a way to play discs or don't care.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Now go find the price of a single blank blu-ray disc (or a pack and divide by the number in the pack).
Duh!
Software manufacturers don't order a stack of blank discs from NewEgg, sit down and start copying (unless its a small run of beta test versions or something) - they get them stamped out from a master (same general principle as vinyl records - just higher precision). The structure of mass-produced optical "ROM" discs is completely different to recordable media.
What you need to do is go and get a quote for bulk, pressed optical discs (CD/DVD/BR-ROMs not recordable discs) - you'll usually find it will consist of a fairly steep, fixed, mastering/set-up charge plus a few tens of cents per disc. For small runs (a few hundred) it will be cheaper to use recordable media but once you get to 1000+, pressed discs are way cheaper, per unit, than recordable media.
In the olden days, there were things called "mask programmed ROMs" - read-only memory chips with baked-in data which were cheap to produce in large quantities - I guess they still exist but AFAIK they haven't kept up with Flash RAM in terms of density, or with optical ROM discs in terms of cost (big market for bulk CD manufacturing "micro" plants - ROMs need a chip fab).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Yet every console since the NES days has still had some way to pirate games. Back in the cartridge days you had to buy special hardware, but the reality is that pirates are resourceful. Heck I don't even think some of them are in it for the games/media anyways. Seems like many spend as much in order to pirate games as they could have on games themselves. I think to some degree its just an anti-authority streak and a desire to be able to say you've done it.
I will admit that I chipped both my Xbox and my Gamecube. The Xbox I used extensively - mostly for XBMC. Between the two though I have never actually played through a pirated game though. It was more about just messing around with those systems.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I was thinking this as well. As access to HD-DVD is disappearing it would make more sense to me to use this technology INSTEAD of blu-ray. They can probably get the drives at commodity prices as well since they're defunct (essentially).
What I don't understand is why they don't just release the system like this, and offer the playback software for $10 in the Wii Store? Plenty of the casual market would love to not have 2 or 3 boxes sitting in their entertainment center. Plus, this would be great for people with kids. They could watch kids stuff on the Wii-Pad without having the family TV on lock down.
How many patent fees can this avoid? They're still going to be using patented optical media technologies. They might not have to license the DVD or BluRay names but the actual technologies will be the same. This is certainly about piracy (which is well within their right). The GDROM didn't help Sega because they allowed CDROMs also but the Gamecube proprietary format did a pretty good job of stopping piracy if I'm not mistaken.
It didn't? I thought then, as I do now that its just shitty third rate hardware dressed up with a "revolutionary" controller that isn't.
Heh. "I declared this thing non-revolutionary, and even though it was highly successful and caused the other major players to dance to their tune, I still say it's non-revolutionary".
Not goin down without a faight, aintcha?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Some of your optimizations for the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series won't carry over to the 5000 series. Some of your optimizations for Windows XP won't carry over to Windows 7.
By this, did you mean that some things will run noticeably slower on a 5000 than on a 4000, or that some things will run noticeably slower on a PC that shipped during the Windows 7 era than on a PC that shipped during the Windows XP era?
The console is a fixed target
So is any given generation of iMac.
Anti-piracy measures are not intended to be absolutely impregnable (which, realistically, is not possible), any more than the lock on your front door. The idea is primarily to make piracy inconvenient, so that most people don't bother.
Yeah but the sound and graphics suffered. 1G to 700MB? That's a big loss of storage space.
Blar.
Not entirely correct.
Although the Wii may be technically capable of DVD playback, it is not equipped with a drive that is capable of sustaining prolonged and continuous use, such as what is needed for a DVD. People who had hacked their wii and added a home brew "dvd channel" to their console soon found themselves with a device that could not play any disc games or movies, as the DVD drive on the wii overheated after only playing a handful of movies, and burnt itself out.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Actually, the PS3 is an extremely good upscaling DVD player, better in this respect than most low-cost dedicated DVD and blu-ray players.
But while it made sense for PS3 to incorporate blu-ray as a strategy to promote the system, it also slowed the adoption of the PS3 as a gaming system due to its high cost.
At the present time, I agree with Nintendo. Most customers can already play DVDs and many can already play blu-ray, so lower cost will bring in more customers than adding this capability.
Playing DVDs isn't measurably more stressful than playing games. In fact, quite the opposite: DVDs play linearly and at a lower data rate than games. I've heard this myth several times but never with an actual report of it happening. As far as I'm concerned, it's an urban legend.
They have an optical disk drive. A newer one that can hold 25GB. How can they possibly have a new drive and not be licensing the same patents as everyone else?
Course, it would be different then (though, in their defense, some of the formats WERE good):
Betamax, DAT, Minidisc, MemoryStick, UMD
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
As far as I'm concerned, it's an urban legend.
Maybe an urban legend coming from Nintendo, to discourage hacking :)
Rail against it if you like, but you'll have to shout: Nintendo are way down there at the deep end of their Olympic sized pool full of cash, blow and hookers.
(Emphasis added.) I can't really argue this assessment ... Nintendo has been making cheapass hardware, selling lots of it, and surely raking it in. However, having grown up during the NES/SNES era, I have to ask: If it's just supposed to play games, where are all the damn games? If it's low-end, easy-to-dev hardware, then why is Nintendo lucky to release a game a year for it? Even if they can't convince third parties, surely they can, with their "Olympic sized pool full of cash," afford to have more than one dev team churning out high quality games. Other first parties, which are presumably not sitting on such funds, are making a solid showing of high-quality first-party titles.
This isn't just a problem with the Wii, either, it's been that way since then N64. Nintendo's excuse then may have been "new technology" and "lack of resources," but now they have no more excuses. None.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
You can also get the pressing machines for pennies on the dollar as well. so manufacturing ramp up for the making of the disks will be significantly cheaper.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But in those cases you are dealing with serious capital expenses where what i'm talking about at most would add a dime to the BOM. The Hollywood presses already know how to do BD, they'll still be selling the discs as primarily BD but this would give them a new market simply by re-encoding the movie once to WebM or Theora and having that on the flip side.
Again it seems like a trivial thing to add that would give value to Nintendo customers (like how you could include the Dark Knight or a Batman documentary on the flipside of Batmann:AA) give retailers a reason to reserve extra shelf space for the Wii U (since it could sell movies and games) and give Hollywood a second console with which to further sales of BD by using a "back door" and having WiiMovie on the flipside of BD discs.
So I don't see a downside here. it would cost Nintendo practically nothing,hell I bet it wouldn't be hard to write a WebM accelerator for the HD4xxx series, give people one more feature to sell your machines, its a win/win. And as I said Google would probably be more than happy to hand them a free license to WebM, would probably be more than willing to write the accelerator and player as well for free to boost the codec, so in terms of BOM you are talking about pennies at most and in all likelihood Nintendo could get this feature for $0.
So even if your argument was correct and eventually it fails as a movie format, if it costs Nintendo zipola so what? It is still one more bullet point to help sell your console to retailers and customers and in a three way race all the extra bullet points you can get is of a good.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Fast forward to 2011, where most PS3 owners use their machines exclusively as media centers.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Your memory fails you, in both cases. Dreamcast was had the highest launch sales of any console to date, and sold well for the following year. It was killed by Piracy and the hype around the upcoming PS2.
And the Gamecube was basically flat in sales with the X-Box (with the PS2 far in advance). It certainly made more money for Nintendo than X-Box did for MS. The fact that the PS2 could play DVDs certainly did hurt the Dreamcast, but it wasn't because of any problem with the GD-ROM format; most early PS2 games would have fit on a GD-Rom. It was purely because of the lack of movie playback, and at the time the Dreamcast was designed, putting a DVD into it would have been flatly impossible.
It does not matter if it is a good dvd/blueray player. It is japanese, it is check the features:
WiiU HDMI yes PS3 yes
Wireless controller Yes, yes
DVD play WiiU: No PS3: Yes.
Bluera play WiiU no, PS3: yes
extra screen in controller WIIU Yes, PS3 (vita?) No
Color of console WiiU White only, PS3 Black only
Points: WII U: 3 points , PS3: 4 points.
It would be better to determine what you actually need, and read the reviews if it is good dvd player, but if big game studio make some AAA titles for all major consoles, then those little features list might be what tip the scales.
It is VERY hard to determine if the PS3 is a good BR player before buyingi it, specially if you have all those reviews that declare thing could get better if a firmware is released.
PS, actually i barely play DVD's anymore, most of it is streamed to a NMT player nowadays.
The last numbers I saw in 2010 stated that the license cost for Blu-Ray was US$4.50 per player. That is over and beyond any hardware costs. So when you are talking about many millions of units shipped that becomes real money saved.
Being backwards compatible doesn't always mean with every single game. I mean, the 3DS is backwards compatible with the DS, except for any game that utilized the GBA slot.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Has process become the new megahertz? I can appreciate the advantage 45nm might allow, but on it's own it's meaningless.
And Intel already offers i3s and i5s with 32nm process. So what's the big deal?
As it stands 45nm means nothing to me.
As is the case with every console introduction, a few numbers are thrown around in an attempt to impress us. They show us a few impressive looking demos where the consoles are doing nothing but rendering a scene. Then the console hits the market and it turns out to not be as impressive as promised, from a graphical standpoint anyway.
I guess all that's called marketing.
Mythbusters are on the case!
I have seen a few machines in which have been hacked to play dvd's and the machine is still working today. Only when the dvd playability has been abused (constantly running on DVD mode - non stop for days) has it really burnt out on it. Than again, how many really have the time to constantly play dvds only on a game console and at that, why spend 200+ for the use of a regular dvd player?
Do you have a source for that statement, or are you just making facts up as you go along?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
The Wii can at least play DVDs. I bought the PS3 in large part because it can play BluRay disks, the only HD disk format in use. It's easier to justify paying ~$100 more than a stand-alone BluRay player and get a high-end gaming system. Without that, the Wii U has to completely stand on its own as a gaming system, taking up more space in your crowded cabinet. Maybe they have better data than I, and know that everybody that would want a BluRay player already has one.
I hope they'll at least play nice with Netflix streaming, Amazon On Demand, and such. I could buy that a large chunk of the population might skip BluRay disks altogether and just watch streaming movies and shows.
It is still a licensing issue and not patent as I see it. Does anything stop them from using the BluRay spec while not using the name and not reading BluRay movies/discs as long as they are paying the patent fees (which I'm fairly convinced they already are for the most part)? There may be an issue there that I don't see but doing this would allow them to use off the shelf parts and manufacturing ie. cheaper.
So being as they specifically quoted patent fees as the issue and not licensing (perhaps them just simplifying for the masses) and the fact that they are most certainly still paying patent fees leads me to conclude that this is mostly about piracy and not patent fees. Especially since patent fees just get passed on to the consumer anyway.
Yes, this DRM scheme won't prevent pirates from downloading torrents off the Internet and playing them on their own consoles, but it will prevent them from downloading them off the Internet, burning them to discs and then selling them at reduced prices (as often happens with DVDs.)
>>>Dreamcast was killed by Piracy
A common myth but a false one. It took a few years for pirates to figure-out how to copy the 1GB disc onto a file, since no CD drive could read it directly. (Same with the Gamecube disc.) Besides the most heavily-pirated console, the PS2, wasn't hurt at all by piracy so that negates the argument.
>>>most early PS2 games would have fit on a GD-Rom
Oh definitely. Most early games fit on a CD and were sold that way, to reduce costs.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Well, of course. It's not as if there are any compelling games for the PS3. It's just a noisy Blu-ray player. On the other hand, my Xbox 360 gets used about 50/50 for media (ie, Netflix, Hulu) vs. gaming because Microsoft actually cares about providing its customers with a diverse ecosystem of entertainment for its living room platform. The fact that XBox Live is a subscription platform (compared to the free and apparently cracked PSN...is that even safe to use anymore???) also proves that MS's customers are willing to put their money where their mouths actually pay for a quality experience.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Unless the markup on a Wii was less than $9 that's still coming out of profit. And as others have said, compare that to the costs of designing and tooling factories to produce your bespoke disks and the difference is certainly going to be even less.
But I suspect Nintendo would happily prefer to spend that $9 on themselves (or on their factories), rather than giving Sony a cut of all their products.
Sony, on the other hand, would love to be able to make a profit on every console Nintendo and Microsoft makes.
So, a proprietary optical disk drive will be cheaper to manufacture than the $20 (retail) DVD writer that I can buy at Fry's? I don't believe a bit of it.
The "scene" has long since moved from direct copying discs to loading from hard drives. There is plenty of space on a $60 2TB drive...
The Wii can at least play DVDs.
No it can't.
Still not very cheap to distribute that on a chip.
From the 'specs' it seems like it will only be marginally more powerful, though probably powerful enough for 1080p for the next 10 years or so. The fact that it can only support one tablet is also a bit discouraging. They should redesign it to support multiple tablets ( at least 2) by adding more power to each one or perhaps adding a second BT channel.
Not out of the box it can't: DVDX
Even if that is the case why go with a shitastic 8Gb of flash instead of a HDD? Aren't HDDs cheap as dirt and just as plentiful? Considering how many complaints they got from people having to delete and redownload games they bought for lack of storage on the Wii this seems like a serious 'WTF?" moment in console design. WTF are they thinking?
They could have put in an 160Gb 2.5 inch and given the customer plenty of room and thus plenty of reasons to buy games from their online market. This is a seriously bonehead move IMHO. The price of HDDs especially at Nintendo economies of scale just make sticking with a lousy 8Gb of flash a real head scratcher.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I also suspect that because it is neither DVD or BD, then no one will be making copies of the sw disks either. They may be avoiding licensing costs for dvd/bd and at the same time making pirating very difficult unless you have your own stamping facility.
It will die, but not like UMD.
It will die like the Gamecube mini-discs, and the N64/SNES/NES carts. It will die at the end of the lifetime of the console.
This isn't about trying to create a new format in the format wars. It's not like if they used BluRay or DVD that you'd be able to play the games on the 360 or PS3; this is a completely different situation than the BluRay/HDDVD situation was 4 years ago.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
I love the power-glove. It's so bad!
Every one of your "I can build a sub-$450 gaming PC" (yesterday it was sub-$300) completely misses the point. I can't say I blame you though, because like most other graphics whores, I doubt if you have much appreciation for good presentation and think that more pixels = more prettier.
Since the Gamecube/XBox era, we have had hardware powerful enough for a good art director to get their vision onto a TV or computer screen. Games like Resident Evil 4, Killer 7, Viewtiful Joe, Metroid Prime, and *many* others showed that you can have a gorgeous game that stands the test of time if you have good art direction.
The point is, you don't need an expensive gaming machine to have amazing looking games. You just need to buy the amazing looking games instead of worrying about whether it runs in 720p or 1080p. What I find particularly funny is that people who care about hardware typically choose the blandest, ugly looking games to hold up as an example of how great the hardware is -- things like Military-themed FPS Of The Week.
So good for you for building HTPCs for people for under $450. The rest of us will keep enjoying our $200 units that work better, use less power, and have a more task-specific interface without worrying that a HD4850 is only $60. And for those that want them, we'll also have a PC that is as souped up as we want it.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Sony has been periodically introducing new formats ever since VHS stole their thunder. There's a definite business advantage to being the company that creates the new standard. The hard part, which they've always failed at, is getting people to use your new proprietary format when there are perfectly good existing ones that do the job, and as we saw with VHS, they don't even need to be as good.
I guess the Memory Stick was Sony's one format that was half successful, although it's rare to see a non-Sony device that supports them (besides those all-in-one card readers, that is).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Please tell me that you are joking.
If a game only uses 200MB of the 1GB disc then shoehorning it into a 700MB CD isn't going to be much of a problem. Most games were well under the size of a CD; those that weren't had extraneous stuff like demos removed to fit. I've been told that sound (simple audio streams) and graphics (really, how the hell would this suffer?) were spot on with a retail release.
I played around with the Utopia disc for homebrew purposes only. Looking back I find it funny (although not so much at the time) as I bought a mod chip that would make my Dreamcast region free and the boot discs basically gave that functionality with the ability to play CD-Rs. Yes, the mod chip wouldn't even play backup discs on it's own.
It doesn't play DVDs. Perhaps there's some homebrew hack to get them working because the discs are similar but out of the box it doesn't do that. The Wii has a flash (lite) enabled browser and a netflix application so I'm sure the Wii U will have at least that and probably more.
"It was killed by Piracy and the hype around the upcoming PS2."
:), and the Utopia Boot Disk allowing booting from CD-Rs was released June 2000, only 10 months after the Dreamcast came out. Many claim piracy had nothing to do with death of Dreamcast but I disagree. The fact that the dreamcast could run cracked games without a modchip is what did it. Playstation had modchips but it required soldering chips yourself or finding someone to do it for you, both of which was difficult for many average consumers.
^------------ this
Dreamcast came out in 1999 in US (9.9.99, remember?
But it wasn't just piracy and PS2 hype. It was also the lack of high quality games and Microsoft stealing from Sega to make the Xbox (they teamed up for Dreamcast for it to run Windows CE).
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
" It took a few years for pirates to figure-out how to copy the 1GB disc onto a file"
Wrong, took 10 months, Utopia BootCD came out 10 months after Dreamcast US release
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
...they want their proprietary format back. Another GD-ROM style abortion? Hopefully they don't think that the awkward size will prevent piracy. Sega made the same mistake, until pirates just reduced video quality on FMV and fit it the games on a standard 800mb CD-ROM (old, I know).
For conversation's sake, I am really pissed off that this is the new Nintendo system. I really hoped they would step up to the big boys in console gaming, instead they re-release what is essentially the Wii with a controller gimmick...which is essentially the GameCube with a motion control gimmick...again! I really have to say that this is the first Nintendo home console I won't be buying (it took me a year and a handful of months to even warm up to buying a Wii, but my girlfriend really wanted it). I was the hardest core Nintendo fanboy, I have shelf upon shelf in my gaming room with my mint condition NES, SNES and N64 games from back in the day, but seriously, I've been let down one too many times. It reeks of desperation to sell to the popular market. I guess thats to be expected, sales are what drives any company, but being an over 30 gamer (still dedicated), I feel like the bastard child of the REAL Nintendo.
I'm fully aware that the plural of anecdote is not data, but to provide another point, I know a number of people who've bought PS2s with the intent to use them as DVD players, with the ability to play games as a happy bonus. I've also heard stories of people doing the same with PS3s for bluray, although I don't think I actually know anyone who cares about Bluray in real life.
You know, that bet worked really well for them with the Wii since the console sales beat up all the other consoles.
David
I always thought it was hysterical that Sony pushed Memory Stick SO HARD all through the late 90s and 2000s, yet their two flagship products - The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 supported different proprietary memory card formats INSTEAD of Memory Stick.
IIRC, PS3 supports it, but by now the point is moot.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Your link doesn't say what you claim:
First it says it took almost 2 years from initial console release to first pirate cracked game. Second the article says piracy did NOT cause the dreamcast's demise.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Wii sold a lot of consoles simply based on price and Mario. VHS killed betamax too - number of units moved does not equal "revolutionary".
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
A lot of consoles sold because people wanted to play games that way. Revolutionary. Sorry, Sony and Microsoft declared that for you.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Logic fail. Just because the Wii lacks one feature and sells better doesn't prove that people don't want that feature. The Wii was the most affordable and it had a catchy new controller that appealed to non-gamers. If they allowed it to play movies it may have sold even better.
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Sure, it may have. But being at #1 already, I can't blame Nintendo for thinking this feature is not as important as some make it seem. Especially since most people already have a device to play movies with, which is Nintendo's primary reason for not implementing movie playing capabilities in the Wii U.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice if the Wii U could play movies. But I think Nintendo's strategy of focussing on games and cutting costs by not doing other things is the way to go.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.