SpinesN

As I see it in the event the WiiHD is true, it will either be a completely new development platform, but not the exclusive development platform for nintendo. That is to say, a "Third Pillar". Or it will be a cosmetic update to the wii ie. hardware scaler, more storage, or any other change that doesn't affect the chipset. Reason being is that nintendo has built a fanatic market with the wii platform, they are still bringing in tons of money with it and creating a new platform would incure more cost on the buyer and thus you get less demand.

Any hot girl would be perfect for samus if you catch my drift :p

link for proof? Many thanks

No.... if you rewrite every block on your console ~274 times a day it will last for about 10 years. Reading does not cause any degradation of the memory. I write to mine a few times a week (mainly due to having wario ware and wii sports). I can foresee writing 20 times a day when more games come out. Maybe upwards of 50. This would not be writing over the entire 512MB however and thus only small bits would die off over ~56 years (at 20 writes per day). If those parts die off the system will simply use another part of the memory. I haven't seen this tested so I'm not sure if the "dead" sections are readable or not so you may lose data. At any rate you have nothing to worry about. A hard drive will die off before your flash memory goes.

Yes... each memory cell can only be re-written some 1 million times. Lets say you use the same card for 5 years 1 million / 5 = 200,000 rewrites a year or ~548 (547.945...) a day for 5 years. at 10 years you get ~274 rewrites per day That limitation is nothing to worry about. Also don't forget the 512MB in the wii itself has this same limitation.

My 4GB OCZ SD card (fat32) does not work in my wii (specifically the wii cannot read it, however it does know there is a card poresent). My 128MB card (formated in FAT). Can be read. While I have not personally used my 4GB in FAT format friends of mine have theirs working.

4GB SD cards WILL work in the wii. You do have to format them (to the FAT file system) but they WILL work. Most come with the FAT32 file system as the standard format but just like a floppy disk they can be reformatted.

I want Mii support

Wow... in 3 months the wii has sold ~1/4 of what the gamecube sold in it's lifetime. I can't wait for the next financial report out of nintendo

Fixed that for ya It's harder to type out the bible in a language for which it has never been translated :p

Perhaps. However it's a moot point unless we get source code out of it. Nintendo would have the source regardless of the OS on the wii so we will only be seeing features they show us.

The wii is NOT linux based. If it were nintendo would be legally bound to release the source code to the operating system and simply invite piracy onto the wii.

Haven't we known this for some time now? Being HD is not just some "switch" (for lack of a better term) that is either on or off. It draws power off the chip which could be used to render geometry and raster images. IIRC the wii has a fillrate that would sustain a 2560 x 1600 resolution (1080p is 1920x1080) and frames would be just fine if devs planned for that amount of taxation on the chip. Problem is you would be playing n64 games at that res.

Hadn't actually thought about that but no. Since DirectX is just a render path, I would think less code would need to be changed for a change in render path as opposed to a change in cpu architecture (all other things being equal).

Heh if you call that a port we have different meanings of the word "port" :p As for the source engine that got on the xbox real quick because the xbox had an x86 architecture (same as computers that run windows). Yes the engine is very scalable, however minimal code change was needed due to the architecture. Now if there is a 360 source game out now then yes it will probably be easy to get a wii source engine. We shall see what happens won't we?

This man gets it

The unreal engine doesn't have to be used for FPS you know :p Splinter cell is unreal based. Yes a UE 3 on the wii would be nice for ports but it simply would not work well with the limited GPU ram on the wii. Textures and res can be scaled back in any engine but the U3 engine is largely based on static meshes and shaders. Both of which are RAM intensive. Removing what makes the U3 engine big would leave a less desirable package than the unreal 2 engine in it's current state. Now if they were to make a wii centric unreal engine there is no reason it couldn't be (mostly) compatible with the U3 engine while simply rendering the world and running the AI/physics/events in a more wii friendly way. IMO this would be a better path to getting unreal 3 games on the wii while lossing as little from the games as possible. That said anyway you look at it we won't be getting the same games unless they are designed for the wii and built on to make 360/ps3 games.

"we beat the wii" High praise for the wii actually.

I see epic developing a wii specific engine actually. The unreal 3 engine is designed for high end computers and those that will come out in the next 4-5 years. The ps3 and xbox306 happen to be in that category while the wii is simply not. I imagine that trying to strip down the unreal 3 engine to run on the wii (smoothly and with enough features to draw developer interests) would be a more complex feat than creating a new engine altogether. Epic will see the console numbers jumping and the unreal 2 engine may or may not hold developer interests on the wii. If it doesn't then epic will most likely roll out a wii specific build.

When can I buy it? (or a damn wii for that matter >_>)

A few of you seem let down in the same way I was when wind waker came out. You might want to try a media deprivation therapy for the next zelda title (not knowing a thing about TP made the game that much more special when I played it).

I agree. I was being facetious in order to show that the paying of money to ati for a die shrink/overclock was an illogical idea. :p

As it stands the gpu probably has some new functionality, but, until nintendo releases some info on the thing we are shooting blind. On a logical level ATi did have a years to work with the thing and only had to maintain backwards compatibility which I would imagine is not that hard. Maybe nintendo payed ati that money just for a die shrink and up clocking and maybe not.

I think that sums it up rather well actually.