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Posted
Eh?

 

Not only have they bundled now bundled Wii Sports Resort and MotionPlus in with the console and Wii Sports, it IS available for less than £179.99 pretty much everywhere...

 

Fair play, the man speaks the truth.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nintendo-Console-Sports-Resort-Controller/dp/B002Q8I13M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1277066842&sr=8-1

 

£149 at Amazon. Wii + Wii Sports/Resort and Motion Plus.

 

Damn you, Pooki! We maked Error!

Posted

I do agree with your earlier point though regarding the 3DS price. I was mortified when I read people musing that they don't anticipate it to be "over £200".

 

Too bloody right! I remember when the beauty of handheld gaming was the inexpense. The DS - for all its revolutionary aura of awesomeness - was gifted to us in 2005 for £99. Ninety-nine quid!

 

I'm afraid the days of consoles releasing that cheap may be over :(

Posted (edited)
I do agree with your earlier point though regarding the 3DS price. I was mortified when I read people musing that they don't anticipate it to be "over £200".

 

Too bloody right! I remember when the beauty of handheld gaming was the inexpense. The DS - for all its revolutionary aura of awesomeness - was gifted to us in 2005 for £99. Ninety-nine quid!

 

I'm afraid the days of consoles releasing that cheap may be over :(

 

I feel that way, too. I guess these days there's a lot more going on with these consoles and handhelds. Better technology, more expensive. In an ideal world, I wouldn't want to pay more than 230 for a home console and wouldn't pay more than 120/130 for a handheld.

 

£99 for the DS was great. A new system, revolutionary like you say, and less than a hundred quid. More of that please.

 

Sometimes people's attitudes to handheld gaming worries me. I see it as an alternative. I don't want to take a portable home console around with me. I want games that are designed for portable or handheld purposes, and they're usually pick up and play. Tetris is still what I think of as the pinacle of handheld gaming. It was pick up and play, but you could play for hours. Addictive. You could get into the game quickly, play, then turn it off later.

Edited by Fierce_LiNk
Posted

I suppose the sliver of hope for us is that Nintendo - especially in recent years - has a record of developing 'efficient' hardware rather than just cramming the best possible tech.

 

What is actually relieving with 3DS is that R&D have shown some self-restraint in terms of GPU. I'm less worried about price as I could be because it's clearly no handheld 360. Sure, they COULD have smacked a HD screen on there and maxed out the visual experience, and I expect that's the sort of strategy we'll see with PSP2 next year.

 

But what I admire about Nintendo, and what helps make their hardware so attractive to so many people, is that they choose to focus so much on making the tech efficient and cost-effective. Sometimes, that even means controversially choosing less-advanced hardware in the face of competitors to ultimately produce a more worthwhile package.

 

Give me 3DS for sub-£150 and I'll consider myself a happy bunny.

Posted

In most retail environments the Wii is still selling at normal price or only slightly reduced (think it's £169 where I work) - throwing extra shit in doesn't count in my opinion, it doesn't make it any less expensive (you still have to pay that amount in order to get the console), but rather it makes it better value for money.

 

Furthermore, those prices are not dictated by Nintendo, as my original post implies.

Posted
Aye, the most annoying thing about Nintendo lately (apart perhaps from the load of crappy casual games that is released for the Wii) is how often they "update" the DS. We've never had a console become outdated so quickly before. Especially since the price of each iteration is exactly the same as the original, and that's quite expensive.

 

But nintendo isnt forcing you to buy every ds model. They did go a little too far however.

 

The 3ds will do very well but they're probably going to have a tough time convincing people that this is the sequel to the ds to casuals for a brief while.

 

i can imagine frustrated shop assistants here lol.

Posted

I remember buying the DS phat at launch and enjoying it for a long time before getting and sticking with the DS Lite until today, which I'm perfectly happy with. I dunno why it doesn't bother me they are updating while it bothers me if I think about buying an Iphone, that they update that.

Posted (edited)

3DS uses DMP's PICA®200 chip. (2008 tech)

 

TThe decision to use DMP’s PICA200 design was made over a year ago and testing and development have been going on for some time; it’s not as easy as it may seem to license a core and integrate it into an SoC and get the costs (die size), power consumption (has to run forever on small batteries), and performance (clocks and memory management) balance. So as you learn more about this device if you wonder why it took them so long, keep all that in mind.

 

DMP first told me about the PICA architecture in early 2005 which was their first IP core based on Ultray architecture. The president and CEO of DMP, Tatsuo Yamamoto, told me then the Ultray allows real-time photo realistic rendering with physically correct lighting and shadowing such as soft shadow casting and position dependent environmental mapping.

 

Ultray is unique in that it uses hardware parametric engines for certain graphics features rather than shaders. With this approach, clouds, smoke, gas and other fuzzy objects can be shaded and rendered at an interactive rate.

 

At Siggraph 2005 (LA) DMP revealed in more detail some of their techniques for hair, skin, and gaseous shapes. Yamamoto said then that the Ultray could boast lower power consumption due to hardware pipelines, and smaller number of polygons to achieve high-quality graphics based on pixel-level shading (Phong, BRDF, etc.) vs. vertex-level and polygon subdivision.

 

So the bottom line is that amazing high-end graphics functions in a low-cost handheld device with stereovision is not only possible, it has arrived. The 3DS graphics has a lot of head room to be further exploited and we’re expecting to be really thrilled to see and play with what Nintendo and its partners have at launch.

 

ws4d3l.jpg

Edited by Dante
Posted
I remember buying the DS phat at launch and enjoying it for a long time before getting and sticking with the DS Lite until today, which I'm perfectly happy with. I dunno why it doesn't bother me they are updating while it bothers me if I think about buying an Iphone, that they update that.

 

I think the secret with this is just to buy it if you think it's good enough. I didn't like the DS Phat, so waited for the DS Lite. The DSi was fine, but not tempting enough to upgrade (same for XL). Personally, I'll buy a 3DS on launch and only get a 2nd or 3rd version if it's spectacularly better (like I thought the GB Micro was).

 

Regarding the special features of the graphics chip, I wonder if it specialises in cel-shading? I'd love to see what it could do with that.

Posted (edited)
I think the secret with this is just to buy it if you think it's good enough. I didn't like the DS Phat, so waited for the DS Lite. The DSi was fine, but not tempting enough to upgrade (same for XL). Personally, I'll buy a 3DS on launch and only get a 2nd or 3rd version if it's spectacularly better (like I thought the GB Micro was).

 

Regarding the special features of the graphics chip, I wonder if it specialises in cel-shading? I'd love to see what it could do with that.

 

It has near GameCube power but with effects like Xbox360.

 

DMP says its Pica 200 graphics core processor is powering the 3DS, along with proprietary 3D graphics extensions it calls "Maestro technology."

 

According to the company, it implements "complex shader functionality" through the hardware to enable high-performance graphics to be rendered on mobile devices that require low power consumption.

Edited by Dante
Posted
It has near GameCube power but with effects like Xbox360.

 

If that is true it is very exciting but worrying when thinking about price :red:, since nintendo always want a profit. I will still get this at launch regardless but depending on how much it costs I might just buy one or two games for it.

Posted
Gamecube games used to be 60€, and Wii games tend to be 50€ or cheaper.

 

Here in Sweden the prices for games have remained static since the N64 era, except for on the PS3, which has 10 euro more expensive games.

Posted

The DSi and DSi XL weren't just the testing ground for new features for the 3DS, they were probably intended to "ease" audiences into a new price point for Nintendo handhelds. If DSi XL receives a price-cut, as is expected, I'm guessing it'll be no less than £150.

Posted
But nintendo isnt forcing you to buy every ds model. They did go a little too far however.

I never said they were. But it has alienated me a bit from the console because I simply felt I couldn't keep up if I wanted to.

 

Anyway, since I've lost my original DS, I hope the 3DS will be backward compatible with the original DS games.

Posted
Anyway, since I've lost my original DS, I hope the 3DS will be backward compatible with the original DS games.

 

The 3DS is backwards compatible with the original DS games.

Posted

So this should look great regardless of whether you have the 3D switched on or off right?

 

Also, is there onboard memory on this thing to store a few games? It would be cool to have , say, SSFIV stored on the 3DS at all times.

Posted
Also, is there onboard memory on this thing to store a few games? It would be cool to have , say, SSFIV stored on the 3DS at all times.

 

On board memory is probably a given, but Miyamoto claimed not to know about the game downloading feature.

Posted
The real-time footage of RE:R is out and it uses Capcoms MT Framework. :o

 

That's pretty darn impressive. I was convinced it was a FMV.

 

Games Utilised

 

Dead Rising

Lost Planet

Devil May Cry 4

Resident Evil 5

Version 2.0

Lost Planet 2

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (Upcoming Release 2011)

Resident Evil: Revelations (Nintendo 3DS title. Upcoming Release TBA)

 

This isn't even on the wii yet( but it's planned too)

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