It's technically neither and both - of course they didn't just get some leftover Gamecubes and up the clock speeds in them, but it's closer to being an "Overclocked gamecube" than simply being compatible with the Gamecube. It's not literally overclocked, but the processors inside are of the same type as in the Gamecube, just clocked slightly higher. Go have a read here if you don't believe me:
Hollywood, the Wii's GPU, also contains the southbridge and a DSP for audio processing. It is based on the GameCube's GPU, Flipper, and has no notable increases in programmability. However, it is clocked 50 percent higher (243Mhz versus 162Mhz). Most of the chip remains unchanged; for example, it still sports the same 3.1MB of embedded memory, distributed into separate pools for the frame buffer and textures. Similar to Flipper, Hollywood still sports a fixed-function pipeline, with no programmable vertex shaders. However, like in the GameCube, it is possible to emulate some pixel shaders by using "texture environment stages (TEVs)."
I've worked with the Wii on a professional level, Nintendo's OWN programming guidelines literally say something like "Develop your game as if it were a Gamecube game, then add in some nicer effects for polish". I'll dig out the manual if you still don't believe me.
Your DS was never compatible with GB games, only GBA games. You COULD play GB games thanks to some homebrew stuffs (and/or the good ol' flash carts) but since this isn't official support, I don't think it really counts.
One word: Greed. The best description I heard of it was when DVDs were the new thing. They were deliberately region locked because "Sometimes a film would come out on DVD in the USA while it was still in cinemas in other parts of the world and thus would hurt ticket sales". It never used to be a problem for VHS because the US and most of the rest of the world used 2 different TV systems (NTSC and PAL). Games don't have a "cinema" release, obviously, but they do tend to have staggered releases (i.e. The US will often get a game weeks, sometimes months or even years, before Europe gets it), which can mean that a game has already dropped in price by maybe 10 or 20USD before another country gets it, thus making it more worthwhile importing it and cutting into the profits of the publisher. I'm from the UK and I know plenty of people who can import DS games for half the price they are here, usually weeks before they're even released, too. If it's half the cost than here, publishers will see that as loosing half the profit on a sale. This is also one of the reasons why Blu-ray got more support than HD-DVD - HD-DVD was region free, BR was opt-in regioning. At least Microsoft did the sensible thing on the 360 and also made it opt-in. What's more, games can have multiple regions locked to them (so a game might be region locked to Japan only, but then the US release a few weeks later can be US AND Japan) and since it's up to the publisher, it pretty much keeps Microsoft in the clear from both consumers AND publishers who want two different things.
The DS is basically a GBA "with extra bits". Kinda like the Wii is an overclocked Gamecube with a few chips thrown in (Bluetooth, wifi, etc.). Even though the GBA slot on the DSi may be missing, the hardware is still there so it could easily play GBA games if it simply had access to them. I'm betting you're spot on about the SD card thing, or more than likely, downloadable titles that are probably little more than repackaged ROM files. I give it a few months before someone has any ol' GBA Rom working on this thing, particularly as the DSi seems to be a "DS with extra bits" and the DS homebrew scene are extremely familiar with the hardware as it is.
I couldn't honestly say if it's taken off in the UK much at all, all I know is that I've yet to see a TiVo box in any of the big electronics stores we have and I don't know a single person that owns one, but I know plenty of people with Sky (Pretty much the ONLY people who do satellite TV in the UK) and Virgin (Pretty much the ONLY people who do Cable TV in the UK) boxes that have recording functionality built in (they're both highly original names, too - Sky has their "Sky+" boxes and Virgin has a "V+" box). Another good comparison, albeit a highly objective one, is the state of the respective websites. The US TiVo site looks all fancy and modern, what you'd expect these days, but the UK version looks...well...lets just say 10 years ago I made a site in FrontPage 97 that looked about as good.
I suppose so, it's hard to gauge the importance of the brand because I'm from the UK and TiVo doesn't really have a significant market here that I'm aware of (Our Cable/Satellite TV companies supply their own boxes that do the same sort of thing).
TV tuners are by no means anything new, the only difference this really has is that it has the TiVo name. I dare say that most people who want to plug a tuner into their PC already know this and can probably install software that does everything this does, except for free. I can't see it changing anything, as far as I'm aware, there isn't a teribly big market for TV tuners (there's a market all right, but it's nowhere near as big as say graphics cards or even sound cards, I'd bet - most people simply don't like being hunched over their monitor to watch TV and those that want to watch it on their actual TV would be better off with a standard TiVo box, or similar, anyway).
I remember walking past the Games Workshop once and a (very geeky) friend of mine said "You know what, no matter how ashamedly geeky I am at times, at least I've never been in there". He has a point, a bit like D&D, warhammer is one of those things ubergeeks love to do. World of Warcraft and MMOs in general are another. Who's bright idea was it to combine the two? Can you imagine how greasy the hair of the game's top players is going to be? Can you imagine the amount of Acne that will consume their faces if they sign up to this? Think of the Children!
I have an awesome home theatre system! But the only way I could afford it is by not going to the cinema or buying any DVD's/Blu-ray. But I tell you this, the latest version of Ubuntu looks and sounds AWESOME on it!
NOTE TO THE MODERATORS: Subtle amounts of sarcasm are present within this post. Before you mod troll or flamebait, please refer to the first two lines of the post for "the joke", if you missed it.
Lets say the PS3 retails for £300 (it's less than this, but what the hell, this is slashdot, we don't need to be accurate. Or impartial for that matter...let me start again) Lets say the shitty PS3 costs £300, which is far too bloody much, but once you take away the shitty Blu-Ray drive, the shitty Hard drive, shitty controller, shitty case, etc. the price for the shitty fully-fledged CELLs (7 of them, remember) can't be more than £100 and that's a safe overestimation, with added money for the Lube Sony will use to anally violate you with their shitty cocks. This chip has only 4 shitty cores of the shitty CELL and it's not even the full CELL, it's a shitter version of it so I'd say it's a safe bet that it SHOULD cost no more than £50-70, but since the company that makes it is so shitty, they'll probably triple that price. Cunts.
It's kind of obvious that the answer to the question really depends on "It depends on how much you use", but for curiosity's sake, what happens on a modern day linux system (Say it's the latest version of Ubuntu or whatever) when you run out of System RAM and don't have a separate swap partition? Will things just stop with an "out of memory" error as days gone by? Will the OS ask you to close some programs? Will it create/manage a good ol' swap file for you? Or will your computer explode in your face?
I think you missed my point, I wasn't saying that the SNES wasn't powerful (At the time) or anything, I was just saying it wasn't really all that innovative. Sure, Mode7 was cool and some people made great use of it, but it's hardly a system-selling advantage in the market (In the same way that a CD-Player sold the PS1, a DVD player sold the PS2 and a Blu-ray drive is currently selling the PS3, or alternatively, a Hard drive sold the original Xbox and so on).
There was actually a C&C MMO in development at one point. I don't think it even had a name, but this was back in the day when Westwood were still around (albeit overshadowed by Evil Arts). Details were always a bit sketchy, but it was purported to play like the N64 Zelda games, only in the nitty-gritty tiberium universe. Apparently, it would have been pretty revolutionary at the time, but EA was skeptical of the idea. A few years later, World of Warcraft was released, earning Blizzard millions in monthly revenue, while being only half as innovative. Or so the legend goes.
Renegade definitely had that "unfinished" feel to it (when you killed someone, you heard a "boink" sound....ehhhh?), there were all sorts of game modes left out and promised features that never seen the light of day. Hell, they had to patch in flying vehicles later on (which needed you to redesign the levels so they'd work right, so only a certain few actually got them), but the real sad thing was that even in it's unfinished state, the multiplayer was pretty damn fun. I'd even go so far as to say it's the most fun I've had in a multiplayer game outside of Quake 3 and you don't get much more fun than that. I always begrudged EA for shipping it in the state they did. I've played just about every other game that purports to having the same kind of RTS/FPS multiplayer appeal (Tribes, Savage, that really popular mod for HL1 that I can't remember the name of, etc.) and none of them even come close to what Renegade was. And now what remains of the renegade Community is just filled with idiots, it's not worth playing anymore =\
Re:Sounds disappointing so far
on
HD Wii By 2011?
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· Score: 1
When you think about it, Nintendo was never really "innovative" in the home-console field before. The SNES was just a more powerful NES by most counts (Hence the name) and the N64 was, yet again, another Cartridge system when everyone else was using optical media, it was just a bit more powerful. Then you have the Gamecube, the only real innovations they made there were the odd pad (That many people loved, but personally I couldn't stand it), the "box" shape with the handle so you could carry the console around and the Miniature-sized disks that also didn't really affect the games on the system. The Wii was the first time they'd actually went out and did something truly different from the competition. Considering Sony and Microsoft haven't jumped on the same bandwagon just yet (The SIXAXIS? Don't make me laugh! I've yet to play a single game where it actually has a useful/good purpose), they don't really need to do much other than up the visuals a fair bit, which is exactly what it seems they are doing.
Nintendo loves their postfixes, that's for sure, so why isn't it feasible that they wouldn't just call it exactly what it is - the "Wii HD"? Anyone who looks at it, even "Casual" gamers, will know exactly what it is thanks to all the marketing both Sony and Microsoft (and to a lesser extent, Toshiba) put into the whole "HD" thing.
Slashdot Mirror
It's technically neither and both - of course they didn't just get some leftover Gamecubes and up the clock speeds in them, but it's closer to being an "Overclocked gamecube" than simply being compatible with the Gamecube. It's not literally overclocked, but the processors inside are of the same type as in the Gamecube, just clocked slightly higher. Go have a read here if you don't believe me:
Hollywood, the Wii's GPU, also contains the southbridge and a DSP for audio processing. It is based on the GameCube's GPU, Flipper, and has no notable increases in programmability. However, it is clocked 50 percent higher (243Mhz versus 162Mhz). Most of the chip remains unchanged; for example, it still sports the same 3.1MB of embedded memory, distributed into separate pools for the frame buffer and textures. Similar to Flipper, Hollywood still sports a fixed-function pipeline, with no programmable vertex shaders. However, like in the GameCube, it is possible to emulate some pixel shaders by using "texture environment stages (TEVs)."
I've worked with the Wii on a professional level, Nintendo's OWN programming guidelines literally say something like "Develop your game as if it were a Gamecube game, then add in some nicer effects for polish". I'll dig out the manual if you still don't believe me.
Your DS was never compatible with GB games, only GBA games. You COULD play GB games thanks to some homebrew stuffs (and/or the good ol' flash carts) but since this isn't official support, I don't think it really counts.
How on earth are they going to keep compatibility with DS games, then?
One word: Greed.
The best description I heard of it was when DVDs were the new thing. They were deliberately region locked because "Sometimes a film would come out on DVD in the USA while it was still in cinemas in other parts of the world and thus would hurt ticket sales". It never used to be a problem for VHS because the US and most of the rest of the world used 2 different TV systems (NTSC and PAL).
Games don't have a "cinema" release, obviously, but they do tend to have staggered releases (i.e. The US will often get a game weeks, sometimes months or even years, before Europe gets it), which can mean that a game has already dropped in price by maybe 10 or 20USD before another country gets it, thus making it more worthwhile importing it and cutting into the profits of the publisher.
I'm from the UK and I know plenty of people who can import DS games for half the price they are here, usually weeks before they're even released, too. If it's half the cost than here, publishers will see that as loosing half the profit on a sale.
This is also one of the reasons why Blu-ray got more support than HD-DVD - HD-DVD was region free, BR was opt-in regioning.
At least Microsoft did the sensible thing on the 360 and also made it opt-in. What's more, games can have multiple regions locked to them (so a game might be region locked to Japan only, but then the US release a few weeks later can be US AND Japan) and since it's up to the publisher, it pretty much keeps Microsoft in the clear from both consumers AND publishers who want two different things.
The DS is basically a GBA "with extra bits". Kinda like the Wii is an overclocked Gamecube with a few chips thrown in (Bluetooth, wifi, etc.). Even though the GBA slot on the DSi may be missing, the hardware is still there so it could easily play GBA games if it simply had access to them. I'm betting you're spot on about the SD card thing, or more than likely, downloadable titles that are probably little more than repackaged ROM files.
I give it a few months before someone has any ol' GBA Rom working on this thing, particularly as the DSi seems to be a "DS with extra bits" and the DS homebrew scene are extremely familiar with the hardware as it is.
I couldn't honestly say if it's taken off in the UK much at all, all I know is that I've yet to see a TiVo box in any of the big electronics stores we have and I don't know a single person that owns one, but I know plenty of people with Sky (Pretty much the ONLY people who do satellite TV in the UK) and Virgin (Pretty much the ONLY people who do Cable TV in the UK) boxes that have recording functionality built in (they're both highly original names, too - Sky has their "Sky+" boxes and Virgin has a "V+" box).
Another good comparison, albeit a highly objective one, is the state of the respective websites. The US TiVo site looks all fancy and modern, what you'd expect these days, but the UK version looks...well...lets just say 10 years ago I made a site in FrontPage 97 that looked about as good.
I suppose so, it's hard to gauge the importance of the brand because I'm from the UK and TiVo doesn't really have a significant market here that I'm aware of (Our Cable/Satellite TV companies supply their own boxes that do the same sort of thing).
TV tuners are by no means anything new, the only difference this really has is that it has the TiVo name. I dare say that most people who want to plug a tuner into their PC already know this and can probably install software that does everything this does, except for free.
I can't see it changing anything, as far as I'm aware, there isn't a teribly big market for TV tuners (there's a market all right, but it's nowhere near as big as say graphics cards or even sound cards, I'd bet - most people simply don't like being hunched over their monitor to watch TV and those that want to watch it on their actual TV would be better off with a standard TiVo box, or similar, anyway).
I remember walking past the Games Workshop once and a (very geeky) friend of mine said "You know what, no matter how ashamedly geeky I am at times, at least I've never been in there". He has a point, a bit like D&D, warhammer is one of those things ubergeeks love to do. World of Warcraft and MMOs in general are another. Who's bright idea was it to combine the two? Can you imagine how greasy the hair of the game's top players is going to be? Can you imagine the amount of Acne that will consume their faces if they sign up to this? Think of the Children!
I have an awesome home theatre system! But the only way I could afford it is by not going to the cinema or buying any DVD's/Blu-ray. But I tell you this, the latest version of Ubuntu looks and sounds AWESOME on it!
NOTE TO THE MODERATORS: Subtle amounts of sarcasm are present within this post. Before you mod troll or flamebait, please refer to the first two lines of the post for "the joke", if you missed it.
Lets say the PS3 retails for £300 (it's less than this, but what the hell, this is slashdot, we don't need to be accurate. Or impartial for that matter...let me start again) Lets say the shitty PS3 costs £300, which is far too bloody much, but once you take away the shitty Blu-Ray drive, the shitty Hard drive, shitty controller, shitty case, etc. the price for the shitty fully-fledged CELLs (7 of them, remember) can't be more than £100 and that's a safe overestimation, with added money for the Lube Sony will use to anally violate you with their shitty cocks. This chip has only 4 shitty cores of the shitty CELL and it's not even the full CELL, it's a shitter version of it so I'd say it's a safe bet that it SHOULD cost no more than £50-70, but since the company that makes it is so shitty, they'll probably triple that price. Cunts.
Michael Jackson will be pleased.
It's kind of obvious that the answer to the question really depends on "It depends on how much you use", but for curiosity's sake, what happens on a modern day linux system (Say it's the latest version of Ubuntu or whatever) when you run out of System RAM and don't have a separate swap partition? Will things just stop with an "out of memory" error as days gone by? Will the OS ask you to close some programs? Will it create/manage a good ol' swap file for you? Or will your computer explode in your face?
AHAHAHAHAHA! You left your system open to hacking! HAHAHAHA! Look at all this animal porn you have! HAHAHA I'm deleting your OS's Kernel right n
I think you missed my point, I wasn't saying that the SNES wasn't powerful (At the time) or anything, I was just saying it wasn't really all that innovative. Sure, Mode7 was cool and some people made great use of it, but it's hardly a system-selling advantage in the market (In the same way that a CD-Player sold the PS1, a DVD player sold the PS2 and a Blu-ray drive is currently selling the PS3, or alternatively, a Hard drive sold the original Xbox and so on).
Yeah, some stupid user deltree'd the whole site!
What, that the brand power/name of the Wii isn't big or good enough to launch a revolutionary new system?
Oh, wait...
Slightly on-topic:
There was actually a C&C MMO in development at one point. I don't think it even had a name, but this was back in the day when Westwood were still around (albeit overshadowed by Evil Arts). Details were always a bit sketchy, but it was purported to play like the N64 Zelda games, only in the nitty-gritty tiberium universe. Apparently, it would have been pretty revolutionary at the time, but EA was skeptical of the idea. A few years later, World of Warcraft was released, earning Blizzard millions in monthly revenue, while being only half as innovative.
Or so the legend goes.
That Sims2 expansion, "Sims 2: Sims go dogging" is still on track for release next month, then?
Renegade definitely had that "unfinished" feel to it (when you killed someone, you heard a "boink" sound....ehhhh?), there were all sorts of game modes left out and promised features that never seen the light of day. Hell, they had to patch in flying vehicles later on (which needed you to redesign the levels so they'd work right, so only a certain few actually got them), but the real sad thing was that even in it's unfinished state, the multiplayer was pretty damn fun.
I'd even go so far as to say it's the most fun I've had in a multiplayer game outside of Quake 3 and you don't get much more fun than that. I always begrudged EA for shipping it in the state they did. I've played just about every other game that purports to having the same kind of RTS/FPS multiplayer appeal (Tribes, Savage, that really popular mod for HL1 that I can't remember the name of, etc.) and none of them even come close to what Renegade was. And now what remains of the renegade Community is just filled with idiots, it's not worth playing anymore =\
When you think about it, Nintendo was never really "innovative" in the home-console field before. The SNES was just a more powerful NES by most counts (Hence the name) and the N64 was, yet again, another Cartridge system when everyone else was using optical media, it was just a bit more powerful. Then you have the Gamecube, the only real innovations they made there were the odd pad (That many people loved, but personally I couldn't stand it), the "box" shape with the handle so you could carry the console around and the Miniature-sized disks that also didn't really affect the games on the system.
The Wii was the first time they'd actually went out and did something truly different from the competition. Considering Sony and Microsoft haven't jumped on the same bandwagon just yet (The SIXAXIS? Don't make me laugh! I've yet to play a single game where it actually has a useful/good purpose), they don't really need to do much other than up the visuals a fair bit, which is exactly what it seems they are doing.
Nintendo loves their postfixes, that's for sure, so why isn't it feasible that they wouldn't just call it exactly what it is - the "Wii HD"?
Anyone who looks at it, even "Casual" gamers, will know exactly what it is thanks to all the marketing both Sony and Microsoft (and to a lesser extent, Toshiba) put into the whole "HD" thing.
I think it's more interesting that he couldn't actually spell the word "Fuck" (Hint: It's a four letter word, not F**).
There is actually a term for that, it's called a Cartel.