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New Nintendo System to use PowerPC
An anonymous reader wrote in to tell us that
"The new Nintendo game system is going to be made with the
PowerPC architecture, as well as DVD and networking from
Matsushita.
Next Gen has a story up."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I find it really amusing that the first comment that is posted is regarding wether linux will run on some new platorm....
So will it also run "natively" on a MacOS???
That way we don't have to "buy" another piece to clutter up space!!!!!
That way you could get slower performance and more hassel. Hell, I might as well run Window98
>:-)
>QUICK! Is Slashdot a news site? A nerd site? A
>Linux site? A tech site? An OS site? A rant and
>rave site?
It's Rob's site. Read the faq.
Did anyone else notice the 3.2GB/s graphics bus speed? I seem to remember SGI advertising this in their line of Intel based workstations - as a 2x AGP slot - is this correct? In that case, it seems that it might just be a bit easier to emulate, if it's using standard hardware (slightly standard) like that.
:-(
Jezzball, who wants his password
News for Nerds... Stuff that matters. How much more explanation do you need?
I really don't understand why they bother with this. There are people out there who are going to crack it no matter how much time they spend making it "crack-proof". They could save time and money by implementing some basic scheme to stop the general public from doing it.
I agree with you, but I think nintendo probably realizes this as well. The real concern is making it difficult for people to make media that will run on unmodified hardware. Not much you can do against the chip-and-solder crowd.
Actually, this is Nintendo we're talking about, one of the most rabidly IP hording and controlling co's out there. I wouldn't be too shocked to hear that they spent some rediculous sum on developing the next great "unbreakable" copy protection.
Oh well, more fun for the reverse engineering hackers out there then...
it's high time somebody started an alternative site to this fanciful wandering site of taco's madness.
i used to turn to this site for technical news and cnn, reuters for other stuff of importance.
now i will not turn to this site at all.
Ya'know, the processors in those machines are not all that bad. The N64 uses a ~90MHz MIPS chip (64-bit)...at the time the N64 came out I had a 90MHz pentium. Interesting....I suppose these machines would make good internet toasters, among other things. Then again, I don't think nintendo would like the new machine to be used for such purposes.
As I understand it, the console is sold at a (big) loss. Money is made from video game sales. If people are buying up the hardware without purchasing any software, that'll be bad news for Nintendo and Sony. From the perspective of these companies, having a bunch of linux-geeks buy up their hardware is not something to look forward too. Expect some kind of serious resistance (what form it will take, I dunno) from Sony and Nintendo.
Linux users are still a fairly small minority of computer users, and Linux users who have enough free time and the inclination to run Linux on their game system are smaller still..I don't think they'll even be a blip in the sales of this thing.
Daniel
it should be interesting to see what processor they use. I doubt they would go from 64-bit back to 32-bit so i don't think they will use ppc 604's or 750's. the only 64-bit power pc processors i know of that ibm makes are the ones in the as/400 and rs/6000 machines. the power3 processor is 64-bit with two fpu's, i think. so maybe the new nintendo system will essentially be an rs/6000?
Its laugable that a game machine will use copper technology before Intel will have any processors with it. If only intel would spend more on R&D and less on bunny suits......
Hello,
You failed to read the article closely. (Next Generation) Yes it can produce (6.4 gflops) with it's Vector engine but it also syas in the same article if you were to use this chip for generic computer usage it would be equal to a 486.
Ergo lots of math no much on the general work.
Leslie Donaldson
Wow, I like it. Thanks for the tip!
(No, I don't have any affiliation with Techdirt.)
For one, the subtitle of this site is not "News for Linux Users..." Nerds and geeks don't just use and love Linux. It's quite misleading. If this site was maintained by redhat and said to be a Linux news site specifically, it'd be completly understandable of course. I don't write complaints to Apple's news site, or Microsoft's or Linux specific news sites.
My main point however was the fact that producing a competing site is not really an option due to the great stupidity of this website's readers.
I'd love a site like this, but instead of like-minded Linux zaelots running it, it was group of "nerds" with different tastes. But that won't happen. And it's sad.
The thing I like about Slashdot is that no other site allows me to make comments on articles (and the messageboard style Slashdot uses is better than any other one's I've encountered). No other site offers this great of a mixture of news in one place.
I think what you meant to say is: "don't buy any of Sega's add-on equipment"
The genesis was supported for 5+ years and the Saturn for 3, at least (95-98). Just b/c the PSX came out the winner, doesn't mean that the Saturn doesn't have a ton of great games (sega rally, shining force 3, panzer dragoon series, virtua cop, virtua fighter 2, etc.). I still play it (and the PSX, N64 and the genesis occasionally) to this day.
The 32x and Sega CD were flops, though.
You really want your PSX2 dont you Ellis?
6.4 gflops, yes that would enable you to do ground braking stuff like, oh say, play gran turismo 3.
One game I can think of - Half-Life II. That game blows any Quake game away, especially the single player game. It is incredible.
Yes, id is already planning to move development of future games to the PSX2 platform. How did you know this? The thougth only popped into my head, like, 3 minutes ago man. Amazing!
JohnC
"and on the eigth day, God created me. "My work here is done." He said."
Half-Life I blows Quake away. But I'm sure HL II will also ;) .
Aww..dont let them put you down Ellis, you da man!
I GOT ONE O THEM THAR DIAMOND PUTERS A-RUNNIN IN MAH BACK YARD.
Its a sad sad saga is it not my friends?
There is far to little assmaking here on slashdot. Maybe i shold get a login an help you out?
Thats 160 bucks PER COLOR mind you.
The problem with tech-related sites in general is that the material is too, well, technical for most people to relate to. You will notice that stories with hardcore technical content get the least comments here. Where as "what's your favorite beer" polls and "high school was awful" stories get oodles of traffic.
Slashdot is not a technical news site. It puts in enough technical terms to make the typical college/highschool 'geek' (who often doesn't know very much) *feel* like it's technical. That's why Slashdot is so popular. A truly technical site would fail because nobody would know what to say. And the few who did know what to say wouldn't feel like saying anything because let's face it, sounding off is much more fun when you've got a big audience.
http://ww w.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/biztech/articles/ 12videogame.html
Will it run Linux?
For Mac fans, there's the Macsurfer.com tradition.
Shamless plug: I also operates a site at http://www.macopinion.com/applesurf/ that allows the readers to post Mac news items. However, no room for comments yet.
Heng-Cheong Leong
applesurf@yahoo.com
I sorry, even though the Quake series and other such games from id software are the only ones w/ decent ports to linux, the games suck. id software has never impressed me with gameplay (they flash a lot of technology, and they make it somewhat portable, but that's it). Gameplay sucks. One plus that I give credit to id for is allowing mods, mods actually have made the game pretty fun, but ONLY w/ the mods. Out of the box, the quake series sucks tremendously, especially single player.
Here is an example: I still prefer Duke Nukem 3D, especially in multiplayer (even w/ it's crappy "build" engine). It has cool DukeSpeech, really neato weapons (pipebombs, laser tripbombs, shrinker, freeze ray), and neato inventory (holoduke, jetpack, medkit). All this out of the box, because 3drealms actually cares about gameplay. The environment of Duke Nukem is also more interactive than quake series (a real use key, light switchs, buttons, breakable glass, cameras, mirrors, toilets). So what if the engine sucks, Duke Nukem 3D is an awesome game, and still more playable than the quake series IMHO. Okay, so duke doesn't do alot of physics modeling and has a crappy engine (technology issues, something id is really good at), it was designed to run in dos, and is still a kick ass game.
Another example: Rainbow Six. A very buggy game, but much better gameplay than the quake series. REAL team cooperation required, and integrates 3d action, strategy, and simulation.
So I WON'T be buying quake 3, even though it runs in linux. I keep windows for games, because that's where the most gaming support lies. I'm not gonna limit my choices in gaming area buy destroying the windows partition.
Oh, it will come out. The question is when and what.
Nintendo announced "Project Reality" (the N64) in September of 1993 and initally promised a 1995 launch. The launch date, of course, slipped until summer '96 in Japan and fall '96 in North America. The games still seem to just trickle out, and the graphics have never looked like the early demos and promises.
So it may be Christmas 2001 before you get to play Super Mario 128 and Pilot Wings 128.
Here's a good one: www.softastic.com
Lots of tech news and reviews. Updated regularly and pretty quick site.
I might be wrong but doesn't Nin64 have a serial port. Or was that the sega dreamcast. Anyways, that would probably be the best way of getting linux on it
its just a gaming system. Linux belongs on a computer. I mean linux works good as a computer and a gaming center, but how about the other way around.... BTW that sega dreamcast has windows CE on it I hear.... and the specs on that make it look just like a computer.... but CE, I mean come on..... I wonder how long till the regression kicks in.....
Linux is a many beautiful things but is it needed on a n2000?
thank god someone has gotten it right.
But arent consoles pretty "closed" systems?
How are you going to hack it?
With the desciprion of the system, its hardware, and targets. There is one system that for a minimal amount of money would make the machine all that with no real software needing to be written. BeOS with its next generation OS will have both video encoding and decoding for free. It's ran on the PPC for a long time, and they've recently introduced a rather large number of new gaming apis.
This would allow end users to take videos and stuff and send over a network with the included codecs for all popular formats. Plus it supports opengl, among other and support for other popular game kits is on its way.
It would be the match made in heaven. Nintendo, ArtX, and Be. And would be hugely beneficial to all involved. Especially Nintendo.
Hmmm...
I hope I'm not the only one who remembers this.
Back before the N64 came out, The 3DO Company was making noise about the next generation of 3DO called M2, which had a DVD drive and a PowerPC processor. Matsushita bought this technology from 3DO and I hadn't heard anything else about it.
It looks like this project is very similar to the PlayStation, which grew out of the CD-ROM attachment for the SNES.
We dont how much of the Playstation2's 6.4 gflops are pure hype. AFAIK the 'emotion engine' is based on the MIPS RX000 series, and I don't think that Sony is able to produce RX000-CPUs that are so much faster than MIPS's or SGI's... Perhaps they have geometry processors or similar custom logic that achieves this performance, but certainly not in a general purpose CPU.
I'm not so sure that you're right about the 'emotion engine' being a MIPS based chip. There will be a R3000 in the PSX2 as I understand it, but it's there as an I/O controller and to provide compatability with the PSX.
But the main cpu isn't the chip that makes or breaks a console, it's the graphics and sound processors that do all the work...
That's what is strange about PSX2... That big honking CPU. That and all the expantion options on this pupppy really makes me think sony is making a run for wintel with that thing...
Most extant "classic" Amiga systems use a heterogenous dual CPU setup, in which a 68060 runs alongside a PPC 604e. Basically, a memory protected kernel called WarpOS runs on the PPC side, while the AmigaOs 3.1 runs on the 68k.
Very wierd.
Future "classic" amiga designs will use warpos with a 68k kernel emulation for legacy apps, running on single or dual G3s or G4s
Note that the "classic" amiga is not to be confused with Gateway's "next-gen" amiga project, based on QNX, which has about as much in common with the original amiga as the C64 Web.It has in common with the C64 i.e. they've used the same trademark for a completely different product.
The PPC is a very good microprocessor architecture, much better than x86 (It simply is - ask anyone who knows anything about CPU design, even if they work for Intel) Do not dismiss the PPC simply because it's main use in the non-embedded field is running that pile of crap called MacOS. LinuxPPC very good - I used to run it on my Amiga PPC box. It is a shame that there are not many clone PPC motherboards out there that one could just run Linux on, with no Mac stuff.
The PowerPC chip is not so power hungry, sure they use more power than the ARM stuff, but they have an FPU, and run at higher clock speed. The 400MHz G3 uses between 5.8W and 8.0W only, and i am sure IBM and Motorola have some very low power version arround (the MPC8260 consumes only 2.5W, not far from the about 1W of the ARM cpus ...)
...
Also consider that Apples latest laptop can run 5hours on one lithium battery
Friendly,
Sven LUTHER
If it's a G* making use (granted, this wasn't IBM's baby, but still) of the AltiVec registers, then it's basically allowing extensive general purpose operations on effectively 128-bit general purpose registers. The application to anything 3D is quite obvious, and there could easily be other applications (the _compilers_ get to use these registers anytime they want to, and there aren't really fancy rules apart from the sheer word (sentence? ;) ) size of the registers, so compilers don't have to be superlatively fancy to do stuff with this. At the least it's free parallel operations in a basic way, and there are some very big win situations as I understand it- some guy got (I think) a matrix blur going several _hundred_ times faster than non-Altivec.
A game console _would_ be the ideal introduction for this. I wonder if Nintendo are expecting Altivec. Certainly the most obvious use is 3D graphics- particularly with respect to complicated geometries- what with modern cards stuff isn't particularly fill-bound, it's all more and more complicated and fluid geometries now.
Its style is a bit "tabloid" and thoroughly biased(anti-MS, anti-Intel), but you can pick up some useful snippets of information.
;D
Biased against Intel and MS?? Noooo, not the Register! They call Intel 'Chipzilla', and MS 'Evil Empire' cause they like and admire thier superb corporate practices.
hehe
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
Does this mean that Linuk might be able to run on them?
-- Slashdot sucks.
Consider this: Linux has ben ported to PowerPC. Not only that, but I believe I heard somewhere that Linux has also been ported to N64. With these in mind, I'd consider a Linux port to this new system (N2000?) not only likely, but probable.
We dont how much of the Playstation2's 6.4 gflops are pure hype. AFAIK the 'emotion engine' is based on the MIPS RX000 series, and I don't think that Sony is able to produce RX000-CPUs that are so much faster than MIPS's or SGI's...
Perhaps they have geometry processors or similar custom logic that achieves this performance, but certainly not in a general purpose CPU.
Well, if this is going to be a customized PPC chip, how hard is this really going to be to emulate, especially from a Mac. Processor speeds are getting up there, and I'm pretty sure by the time its out, it will be conceivable to run an emulator at full speed at this rate. Of couse you still have to look at the speed of the bus, but this would still be possible, right? All I'm saying is, remember when the N64 first came out? Everyone went on forever about how it would not possible to emulate it? Well, you never know with this :)
....cluster of playstation 2s.....
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
A lot of people are not buying either Nitendo
...
or playstation for games and their game market
is slowing being taken over by PCs. Check the
sales of computer games and you will be very
surprised. Because of the growing interest in
the internet more and more people are having
computers in the house. Often people choose
between a computer and a nitendo game machine.
As the computers get cheaper and cheaper nitendo
is likely to get in trouble, being superior in
quality doesn't mean, you have to remember that
kids don't buy the equipment but the parents
who often know little except that 2 is more than 1.
Assume for the sake of arguments that Linux does
become a strong contender in the computer area,
the desktops that is. Nitendo would succeed in
an area that Apple has not with some custom
hardware. Nitendo could eventually flush apple
out of the desktop area and give a good challenge
to Microsoft.
People would write games for Linux that would
run much better and faster on Nitendo than any
other platform. Nitendo could actually make
profits with the Nitendo PC.
Nitendo could be used for the internet, word
processing, etc
Techdirt is another computer news site that's more from a professional viewpoint than Slashdot. It uses the Slash engine to run the site.
Worth checking out, though not many people read it yet.
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
From the talk that was given at GDC, it's a 300Mhz MIPS-based processor with two vector floating point units added on, which makes it about as good as a PII for integer performance. As far as floating point performance goes, it's got closer to the power of 3 PIII's...
Then came polygons. So while Sega of Japan was working on the Saturn, Sega of America launched the ill-conceived 32X add-on that was too underpowered to compete with newer systems and too overpriced to be a cheap accessory.
Of course, Nintendo is trying to forget the Virtual Boy. And the Super Game Boy SNES add-on. New and different? Sure. Marketable? Not hardly.
Then Sega releases the Saturn. Virtually equivilant to the PSX in capability, but the dual processor architecture made development difficult and the powerful 2D capabilities were used only by Capcom and a few others. The Saturn was the unfortunate victim of the catch-22 of consoles. No games mean no consoles sold. No consoles sold mean no developers. No developers mean no games.
Meanwhile, Nintendo was hyping the n64 as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Babylon 5-quality graphics, was the rumor. In the end, the cartridge format forced the system to make heavy use of blurring to hide the fact that its polygons were so poorly detailed. Like all of Nintendo's systems, it had little more power than any of the competition, came in years after they did, and resulted in even more loss of Nintendo marketshare.
Another new Nintendo system announced on the heals of the PSX2 and Dreamcast bodes ill after the relatively new n64 and the long delays in getting it to market. But at least there's hope they'll be getting out of the cartridge business in favor of optical media.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Sharkey Extreme's "news" section is also good. The URL is http://www.sharkyextreme.com/news.shtml .
I'm mainly interested in chip news and graphics news, though. For more general news or for specific news on other topics, you'd have to check other sites.
"I think we need a few restaraunt reviews here. Everyone knows nerds like to eat, right?"
Well, you can get free saltines and ketchup at Wendy's--two out of four food groups ain't bad.
My memory is a little hazy on this, but I seem to recall that the Sega Saturn was built with mostly off the shelf components, which improved time-to-market and initial cost but increased their costs in the long run.
Usually, being the first to market gives you a big advantage (Zip vs. LS-120, for instance), but looks like the trade off bit 'em in the rear that time.
Looking around Nintendo's site, I found this press release that talks about the new chip. Apparently, the chip is being called "gekko." Mozilla, anyone?
Dysprosium
So what If the site is heavily biased towards Linux? Every site has biases. Do you see us complaining about the slanted "Microsoft Daily News" articles appearing on Microsoft's site? No, we've got better things to do. I suggest you get a hobby.
And as for Rob's commentary on most of the stories, now what is that really hurting? Its basically just a short editorial. Considering that this is his site, I think he's certainly entitled to do what he wants. He's under no obligation to serve our every need.
Price wars are hurting Nintendo, the lack of RPGs in Japan is. But they show that with a non standard product that they can still kick ass, unlike Sega. And don't go around praising one system over the other, since the Playstation has some good games and the N64 has good games too.
Loading response....
Nintendo hates load times, so I'm sure that they will figure something out to minimize that.
And finally, since I'm not buying Quake 3, I'm going to buy other games.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - F. Voltaire.
I'm primarily a Mac user, but I don't mind this site being a watering hole for Linux users. Learn what it's like getting along in a mixed community.
This is unrelated to the story, but what other news sites are there like Slashdot? Slashdot can only provide so much, and the computer joke site, segfault is not updated enough. Any ideas guys?
-Nicholas Blasgen
If the new Nintendo console comes out with DVD player support for a decent price, it might make Sony backtrack on their plan to offer DVD movie capabilties only with an add-on. That would be nice, I hate to buy peripherals for consoles, it kinda defeats the whole purpose of having a single unit that provides everything in one neat package.
8 Comments and NO "Man, gemme a beowolf cluster of these puppies" comments?!?!
We must be lagging around here...
Boy they are not going for power are they?
The new playstation will have an FPU rate of a small super-computer (6.4 gflops).
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I can see it now.. I was playing the Mario game and I lost all my data for todays transactions....
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Well if you read my statement above, to mix the archs. you can get on hell of a system.
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Give me silver!
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Well, i'm not much for owning my own game consols. But I do own a TG-16 and TG-Express...
The only reason why I would by a PSX is to play the games for a couple of days, and figure out how to make a clustor of them for my pc game usage and seti stuff.
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
To bad they cant do original NES games and SNES..
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Ummmm. What does that have to do with my post..
I'm saying I wanted silver as my medium..
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
PSX2 is supposed to have Firewire and USB I think!
That should be nice to interface a pc w/ it.
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
"The new Nintendo game system is going to be made with the PowerPC architecture, as well as DVD and networking from Matsushita."
Sure, and the SNES was supposed to have a CD-ROM addon done by Sony, and now we have something called the PlayStation instead... Heh heh
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
The N64 DD will only be released in Japan. There's VERY little chance of it being released in America.
I emailed this link to my friend and he sent this back to me in an email, I thought it was funny
Here it is:
I checked out the system, big deal. The Playstation 2 will be backwards compatible and have mature themed games.
But, I can see Nintendo's first generation line up for the system.
Year: 2002 (It's nintendo.. vapor ware)
System Price: $600
Actual system at release: a Cartridge based system at $120 a cartrage, because the Nintendo staff couldn't figure out how to open a CD jewel case.
Nintendo will, after business conflictions, make their own 3D hardware that will get an amazing 4,000,000 polygons a second at 120 FPS, but only displays in 256 colors. But extra color will be available after buying a $160 add on chip.
To cut the cost $200 per system (acording to the nintendo financial department) a 1 watt internal fan won't be available, hence, play time will be limited to three daily sessions of 45 minutes each.
Due to Nintendo's commitment to quality, saved games can only be stored on special $400, 20 GB Western Digital/Nintendo hard drives that must be replaced every two weeks.
And because of Nintedo's merger with Divix in 2000, All games must be re-purchased at full price, on-line (over MSN, of course), every 15 minutes.
Packaging: No controllers, No games, No memory hard drives. To cut the cost $525 per system (again, says the Nintendo financial department) the plastic casing must be custom made by the buyer.
Also, Due to Microsoft's and Nintendo's purchase of the American Government from the Chinese in 2001, Emulating, copying, or saying "Nintendo" without expressed written consent from god will result in execution without trial.
Misc: Rumble pack sold separate. All other extras will require 9 AAA bateries.
Games: "Mario 4K", "Mario Kart 4K", "Lame Snowboarders 4K", About 23 different driving and baseball games, "WCW 'We Look and Play Like Hell Wrestling' 2002", and about 14 variations of "Pusssywillow Meets the Stinky Footed Fary" pussy kid games.
And after 4 years of being on the market, there will be a whopping selection of 8 games to choose from!!!!!!
But, inspite of these amazing projections, it will fail because it hase the name IBM on it.
I thought it was pretty funny...
-Aaron
----------------- Who is Jesus?
There's a difference between a "techincal news" site, and a site which publishes articles which technical people are likely to enjoy. Slashdot is the latter. I, for one, enjoy the coverage of diverse topics such as Quake 3, Star Wars, MP3 distribution and Linux kernels. I don't find every article to be of interest, but that's okay; I just don't read them. They are guaranteed to be of interest to others.
Treat Slashdot as an eclectic medley of all things nerdy, not as a purely technical site.
Maybe Nintendo have realised that spending truckloads of cash on hardware doesn't really pay off if the game developer base isn't all there to support it. The console price wars must be hurting Nintendo [with their designer internals courtesy of the 'we don't get out of bed for less than $5K' SGI team] a lot more than Sony.
And in any case, at least those smug techno-eliteist Nintendo users are going to have to wait for their games to load [DVD -- hehe!] like the rest of us Playstation devotees...
I just want to know if anyone out there will ever need to buy another game after Quake 3 Arena is released?
--
Rare Window - free your photos
Also, "Enhanced Counterfeit Protection" points to an increasing concern in the software industry -- rampant piracy.
I really don't understand why they bother with this. There are people out there who are going to crack it no matter how much time they spend making it "crack-proof". They could save time and money by implementing some basic scheme to stop the general public from doing it.
Oh well, I don't plan on getting one anyway.
ESC:wq
I noticed when they compared the all powerful next gen Nintendo system(which software developers haven't seen demonstrated yet) to the next gen Playstation(which software developers have seen demonstrated), he seemed to leave out the fact that Sony's system is backwards compatible. Also stated was DVD movie playback would be available in the future, which sounds like it won't be available out of box.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes -- Douglas Adam -- Life, The Universe and E
oops. After reading another faq apparently the new Nintendo system will feature DVD playback out of box. The DVD is developed by Panasonic, Panasonic also sells DVD players. The new Nintendo system is supposed to be real cheap. Sounds to me like Panasonic may lose it's low end DVD player market if it will be cheaper to buy the Nintendo system. They better hope they get a good chunk of Nintendo's profits on this system
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes -- Douglas Adam -- Life, The Universe and E
All of these game system companies thrive on vaporware....just so they can say they're "coming out with this or that" next year.
The only company that doesn't do this is Sega. It seems they think something up one week, the next week they announce it, and the next week they release it....so what if it's slapped together and basically an underpowered piece of shit (the Saturn, 32X, CD-ROM for Genesis, Game Gear...), they get it out there!! Just take my advice and don't BUY any of Sega's equipment, because they'll just abandon it in like 6 months.
Remember when Nintendo said they were going to have a special removable add-on drive similar to a Syquest for their N64? They were going to debut it with Zelda...but it was pure vapor and never came out. Now they're talking about all the new specs and technology that's going to be on their NEXT game system...but I'll bet that a lot of it get's dropped before it's shipped.
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
Next-Generation Online had a great article on the 10 things you must know about the Dolphin. Lots of interesting stuff in there. Also some other Dolphin stuff from IGN64. http://ign64.ign.com/news/8035.htmlh tml
http://www.next-generation.com/jsmid/news/6618.
Hook, line and sinker...