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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."
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Does this mean that Linuk might be able to run on them?
-- Slashdot sucks.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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