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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."
But there's already an obscure format that nobody has hardware to play. It's called HD-DVD.
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...
The point is that usually big N was cheap enough to use standard technologies, without the certifications. In this case, the WiiU would use a standard bluray drive (because they are mass produced by ton of factories and it is mature), but the data file format/layout on the drive would be proprietary. By not bundling video bluray/dvd playing capability, Nintendo doesn't have to pay the better part of patent fees.
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...
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.
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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
Didn't Microsoft do that with their first Xbox? Punters could enable dvd playback by purchasing the separate remote and IR receiver, which acted as a dongle to unlock the dvd playback facilities. The royalties for dvd playback were included in the price of the remote, not the console itself. However, many people blamed MS for just looking for an excuse to squeeze more money out of its customers, because the remote was a bit expensive. People might think the same if Nintendo would do the same, charging $10-$15 for a 10KB file that enables their console to do what every other bit of equipment with an optical drive could do since the dawn of time.
And yet PC gamers still end up with shitty half-assed console ports.
I had a lovely big comment but hit reload instead of new-tab when going to check something, so you'll get a much rougher version now. All FLOPS are single precision.
Theoretical Cell: 25.6 GFLOPS (PPE) + 179.2GFLOPS (Cell SPU) + 400 GFLOPS (RSX, not general purpose).
Theoretical Wii U: 1300 GFLOPS (GPU) + unknown GFLOPS (CPU)
So what's the unknown? I am going to assume a 3.2GHz dual-core variant of Power 7 (the architecture can go significantly faster, I'm presuming a lower clock speed for power consumption reasons; full Power 7 has eight cores). That would get 51.2 DP GFLOPS (http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1363413&postcount=2946), hence 102.4 SP GFLOPS. It can also run 8 threads, compared to 2 on the PPE.
So four times the CPU FLOPS and 2.5x the GPU/Computation FLOPS (although a modern GPU will probably be far more efficient).
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).
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.
>>>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.
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>>>gamecube had very little to offer over PS2 or Xbox
First off the Gamecube was in a statistical TIE with the Xbox, so it didn't perform as badly as you claim. Also the cube had a lot to offer, which made me choose it as my second console rather than the xbox:
- Mario
- Zelda WW
- Zelda 1 and 2
- Zelda Ocarina and Masks
- Tales of Symphonia
- Skies of Arcadia
- Metroid Prime 1 and 2
- Super Monkey Ball
- Resident Evil 3,4,0
- plus some others I've likely forgotten. Gamecube still remains my favorite console after the PS2. The used xbox I purchased just collects dust and I'll probably trash it soon, but I plan to keep the Cube forever.
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