Wii Hardware Discussion

[pedrocasilva]

^ I think we are in agreement here although my point is how you can maximize the performance of a low spec system to reach the level of the others... and yours is just how inferior is it next to them making the cross platform games dificult, and push the same overall visuals.

 

If it was any other company I'd probably be jumping on the gun over it, but this is nintendo and I think they are very competent in hardware balancing and optimization... obviously have a lot of faith in them, in my eyes it'll be a great system and the graphics will be good even after a 5 year cycle... but just how much is that compared to X360 or PS3... I don't know, time will tell.

 

As for why the wii games in E3 didn't impress... even if the architecture is similar you won't make a game to push the beta devkit to the bone and then port it into Wii final hardware... you'll just create a engine that runs well and when you switch to Wii you'll have a big ceiling to fill so you can add all that extra candy and optimize it to Wii in particular rather than GC...

 

What I mean is... most games where just running on that upgraded gamecube... not really optimized because it isn't the final hardware so it could be useless. that what i'd do as a developer at least, no point in losing time optimizing the game to a platform that is subject to change.

[Shyguy]

pedrocasilva - you win my vote for person who can describe things best

[wackman]

^

 

As for why the wii games in E3 didn't impress... even if the architecture is similar you won't make a game to push the beta devkit to the bone and then port it into Wii final hardware... you'll just create a engine that runs well and when you switch to Wii you'll have a big ceiling to fill so you can add all that extra candy and optimize it to Wii in particular rather than GC...

 

i hope you are right...

[Hellfire]

I think Mario Galaxy and Metroid showed that the Wii will be capable. We all know it won't be a powerhouse, but Nintendo already stated the importance of short loading times, so doubt that'll be a problem.

[goku21]

@ system_error

 

ahhm I can tell ya that multicore is not the future!!! It´s hell!!! The very only good approach in multicore-technology is the intel core-duo...everything else is just trash!!! (IBM has invented a similar approach to the multicoreproblem as intel but that cpu was sadly never released)

 

But overall you´ll see the multicore-thing fade away over the next two years

(having multiple cores is more of a marketing-issue than a power-issue)..there are way better things coming, i swear you!! just pay attention to the pc market and how gpu´s will turn out in the future!!!

[system_error]

@ system_error

 

ahhm I can tell ya that multicore is not the future!!! It´s hell!!! The very only good approach in multicore-technology is the intel core-duo...everything else is just trash!!! (IBM has invented a similar approach to the multicoreproblem as intel but that cpu was sadly never released)

 

But overall you´ll see the multicore-thing fade away over the next two years

(having multiple cores is more of a marketing-issue than a power-issue)..there are way better things coming, i swear you!! just pay attention to the pc market and how gpu´s will turn out in the future!!!

 

Well in that case I should stop going to university and forget everything I learned about distributed systems

[SpinesN]

Gonna have to disagee with you on the disk space issue pedro. The 360 is just fine with DVD 9s. If you take PC games as an example not a single game (save for maybe WOW or some other MMO) takes up 9GB of install space. This is when developers makes games for a platform in which they assume space is unlimited and textures are larger than they would be on a console. With the recent focus on shaders (calculation based graphics) over textures (images pulled off the storage medium) I forsee games growing in size much slower than they have over the past few years. That and 512MB of ram can only do so much in loading things off the disc. I shudder to think how the 256MB of system ram in the ps3 will handle the 25GB blu ray disks >_<

 

Edit:

@ the multi core remark.... MULTI CORES = GOOD! Being able to offload operations to another core (say game world on core 0 and AI on core 1) is a wonderful thing.

[DCK]

I shudder to think how the 256MB of system ram in the ps3 will handle the 25GB blu ray disks >_<

It's the main reason why every PS3 has a hard drive. A few hundred megs of the hard drive will be reserved for data caching to prevent loading times. It needs it badly because the PS3 only has a 2x Blu ray drive which isn't very fast.

 

Anyway, I hope this eDRAM is more decent than the old DRAM in the GameCube - that memory portion was mostly left used for sound and to cache data and was too slow to be used for anything else. It couldn't even be directly accessed by the CPU.

 

If NEC puts this in a press release, it has to be impressive to some extent, as otherwise there's no way some company is going to talk about Wii specs. Especially not for a 16 MB chunk of memory that costs $3 per console.

[pedrocasilva]

pedrocasilva - you win my vote for person who can describe things best

Thanks

Gonna have to disagee with you on the disk space issue pedro. The 360 is just fine with DVD 9s. If you take PC games as an example not a single game (save for maybe WOW or some other MMO) takes up 9GB of install space.

I wasn't the one who first complained about space though:

From Software producer Masanori Takeuchi, who's been working on Enchant Arm, a role-playing game slated to be an Xbox 360 launch title, said developers will also be running into issues of storage space in the next generation. While the Xbox 360 is a next-generation console, Microsoft decided to equip it with a normal DVD reader rather than give it HD-DVD or Blu-ray reading capabilities.

 

"The volume of data in Enchant Arms won't fit into a single DVD. It's an RPG, so we're thinking it would be inevitable that we release it on two discs," says Takeuchi. "But to be honest, that's even looking grim."

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/08/30/news_6132218.html

 

Speaking to Japanese magazine, Famitsu, Itagaki (Team Ninja) has expressed concerns over the limited capacity DVD offers in the era of High Definition. He feels developers will struggle to fit High Definition pre-rendered sequences onto the 9GB format, being particularly problematic for Japanese developers who prefer to use pre-rendered over real time cut scenes.

 

"The screen resolution for Xbox 360 games will be in high definition, so the pre-rendered movies are going to be pretty large," said Itagaki. "If we encoded the Dead or Alive 4 trailer from E3 in high definition in a quality acceptable to us, it will easily be about 2GB." This would leave around 7BG for game data, but for games relying on pre-rendered scenes to tell and develop the story, multiple DVDs may be required. Itagaki added how shocked he and his team were when they were told the Xbox 360 would use DVDs.

 

We started development on DOA4 pretty early, and we didn't know what disc format the Xbox 360 was going to adopt. So when we learned about it, we were really knocked out."

Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=60712

 

This is when developers makes games for a platform in which they assume space is unlimited and textures are larger than they would be on a console. With the recent focus on shaders (calculation based graphics) over textures (images pulled off the storage medium) I forsee games growing in size much slower than they have over the past few years.

they may use shaders but still textures are used a lot, they are the basis of the game... and all of a sudden the size of a texture with standard quality went three to four times up, it's a big leap to stay with the same format.

 

You're right though PC games are still on DVD's, but they also used to come out in CD's back when this console gen came out and there's no question that now the CD is insuficient, a console to survive these 5 years needed to support it, or at least feature more capacity.

 

Also, I've been noticing that the games are getting shorter in playtime, most X360 games can be finished in a few hours period and still the discs are almost filled with just that, it's really a matter of disc space as they are pretty easy to fill, and how will you fit a epic adventure game featuring good textures and all? sure, it's possible but not ideal.

 

And like you said WoW and other MMO might fill more than 9 GB, but notice how WoW has crappy graphics... a lot of PC games also take only a few hours to finish.

 

But consoles were always known for epic games, like the FF's and other RPG's... it's pretty easy to fill a DVD in a HD game from that genre, even without voice acting and FMV's in the mix.

 

And although it was aceptable back in Psone days to release a game like FFVIII with 4 CD's it just isn't feasible today. 2 discs is the maximum, I think.

 

but bare in mind that Tomb Raider Legend takes up 10 GB disc space on the PC and it's a pretty short game, 5 hours.

That and 512MB of ram can only do so much in loading things off the disc. I shudder to think how the 256MB of system ram in the ps3 will handle the 25GB blu ray disks >_<

simple... they'll just be allowed to have more variety, they don't have to stream it all at once into one scenario. PS3 has 256 MB for the GPU but has other 256 MB bank who can also be acessed, so I believe it's pretty much the same thing though.

[SpinesN]

I wasn't the one who first complained about space though:

Then my previous comment is directed at who ever complained :p

 

they may use shaders but still textures are used a lot, they are the basis of the game... and all of a sudden the size of a texture with standard quality went three to four times up, it's a big leap to stay with the same format.

 

You're right though PC games are still on DVD's, but they also used to come out in CD's back when this console gen came out and there's no question that now the CD is insuficient, a console to survive these 5 years needed to support it, or at least feature more capacity.

 

Also, I've been noticing that the games are getting shorter in playtime, most X360 games can be finished in a few hours period and still the discs are almost filled with just that, it's really a matter of disc space as they are pretty easy to fill, and how will you fit a epic adventure game featuring good textures and all? sure, it's possible but not ideal.

 

And like you said WoW and other MMO might fill more than 9 GB, but notice how WoW has crappy graphics... a lot of PC games also take only a few hours to finish.

 

But consoles were always known for epic games, like the FF's and other RPG's... it's pretty easy to fill a DVD in a HD game from that genre, even without voice acting and FMV's in the mix.

I think shorter play time is due to lazy development teams personally, but, I have no proof of that so it's a moot point. Anyway my argument is that games such as half life 2, far cry, etc... can all fit onto a DVD. These games have textures that scale up past 1080p while most HD games will target 720p. Anyway the what I am saying is that the growth of textures is slowing when compaired to what it used to be. Shaders are the new gods of graphics. I have no statistics of growth but I base this on the idea that games such as HL2, fear, far cry, etc... fit on a single DVD and with the rate of growth slowing for textures I am saying disk space will be fine for this round of consoles. Though I do agree that FMVs in HD are out of the question.

 

And although it was aceptable back in Psone days to release a game like FFVIII with 4 CD's it just isn't feasible today. 2 discs is the maximum, I think.

 

but bare in mind that Tomb Raider Legend takes up 10 GB disc space on the PC and it's a pretty short game, 5 hours.simple... they'll just be allowed to have more variety, they don't have to stream it all at once into one scenario. PS3 has 256 MB for the GPU but has other 256 MB bank who can also be acessed, so I believe it's pretty much the same thing though.

I seem to recall the PS3 is limited to the 256MB for it's main CPU (I could be wrong) but if it can access the GPUs ram as well it will take a preformance hit in doing so.

 

Sorry if I missed any of your points and/or didn't explain myself ver well. I am VERY tired.

[DCK]

9 GB DVDs will be more than enough for the Wii at any rate. 6 times the disc size for a console only half that much powerful (at best if we're very lucky) means that developers could fill the discs with good quality FMVs and more orchestrated music than they could before.

 

I seem to recall the PS3 is limited to the 256MB for it's main CPU (I could be wrong) but if it can access the GPUs ram as well it will take a preformance hit in doing so.

Sony has said the both the Cell and RSX can access both memory chunks. That'd probably mean the textures of the disc can immediately be loaded in the VRAM.

[conzer16]

Loads of deadly mock ups for Wii camparison with laptops, and bottles of ketchup and the like!

 

 

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/06/23/nintendo-wii-mockup-next-to-stuff-lots-of-stuff/

 

 

 

Some Examples:

 

 

 

 

 

[DCK]

I hope the real thing is as shiny as that one :awesome:

[Guest Stefkov]

that looks pretty well made. might make myself one....

[Dante]

New Wii facts?

 

The Big N has been relatively hush-hush about the details of its innovative new Wii console and controller, choosing to release information during major events and then going quiet on the subject. But in official Wii developer documentation obtained by IGN, the company defines many of the hardware specifics and functionalities for its upcoming Wii controllers. We have some of those revelations below.

 

One of the big questions about the Wii-mote has remained how it will be powered. Official documentation on the topic offers some answers. The pointer will accept two AA alkaline batteries, which will keep it going for a considerable amount of time. If the precision aim functionality of the pointer is being used in games, the device will run for approximately 30 hours. If only the accelerometer functionality is being utilized, the Wii-mote will operate for 60 hours on two AA batteries.

 

The controller communicates with the Wii console via Bluetooth technology on a 2.4GHz band.

 

 

The Wii-mote features 6KB of "non-volatile" memory, whose exact purpose remains a mystery. IGN Wii speculates that this throwaway memory could possibly be used in conjunction with the Wii-mote's recently revealed internal speaker. It's also possible that this memory could enable players to store custom settings for the controller. However, official documentation does not specify one way or the other. In fact, Nintendo is currently offering developers no means to interact with the controller's internal speaker despite showing off games such as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which spotlighted the hardware feature at E3 2006 in Los Angeles.

 

Recent photos of the Wii console's front flap showcase a button called SYNCHRO, whose purpose seems fairly obvious. The SYNCHRO button is, according to documentation, used to identify Wii controllers that can be used with the console. It assigns each controller a wireless ID number. Evidently gamers first press the SYNCHRO button on the console itself and then find and press another SYNCHRO button located inside the battery compartment of the Wii controller. Documentation also suggests that gamers can hold down the 1 and 2 buttons on the Wii-mote to accomplish the same task.

 

All of the buttons on the Wii controller are digital in nature. This includes (obviously) the D-Pad, as well as A, B, 1, 2, -, +, Power and SYNCHRO. The C and Z buttons on the nunchuk unit are also digital.

 

The sensor bar that interacts with the Wii-mote must be placed "above or below" the television set. The bar itself is about 20 centimeters in diameter and features two sensors, one on each end.

 

 

The Wii-mote's LEDs serve two roles. The first is to show which player is communicating with the console at a given moment. Player 1 will light up on the far left, Player 2 the next over, and so on. The second purpose is to illustrate battery life. Upon booting up, four LEDs blink when the controller has between 75% and full power. Three LEDs blink to show 50% and 75% power. Two LEDs blink to show 25% and 50% power. And one LED blinks to illustrate anything below that.

 

The Wii-mote features a built-in rumble motor that can be turned on or off. It does not offer varying degrees of rumble sensitivity. However, according to documentation, more intense vibrations can be simulated if developers rapidly trigger the motor on and off.

 

Light sources from fluorescent and halogen lamps, plastic, mirrors and more may occasionally interfere with the pointer, based on official documentation. To eliminate this interference, the pointer must identify the sensor bar and mark its two coordinates. When pointing with the Wii-mote, the unit is actually interacting with the sensor bar, which then translates data to the television, in effect simulating a direct aim to the television.

 

 

Interestingly, according to documentation the Wii-mote is able to act as something of an eye, measuring coordinates between 0-1023 on the X axis and 0-767 on the Y axis, which means that it is more or less seeing a megapixel image. Whether or not this data can be interrupted into visual information remains unknown, but we're not ruling out the possibility that the pointer could sub as a camera. This is, of course, purely speculative on our part, but stranger things have certainly happened - like, for instance, an internal speaker.

 

Developers tell IGN Wii that they are expecting to get classic Wii controllers in early September, which suggests that Nintendo is serious about providing this third input alternative for Virtual Console endeavors.

 

We contacted Nintendo of America for comments on our latest findings.

 

"There are many details that we've divulged about the console, but there is also more to learn," said the subsidiary's PR manager, Matt Atwood, in a telephone conversation. "However, Nintendo does not comment on rumors or speculation."

 

Nintendo's new generation console is officially set to launch sometime before the Thanksgiving holiday. However, rumors persist that the machine could debut as early as late October. Nintendo is expected to hold a briefing in September to reveal price and release date. IGN Wii will have more on the system as information becomes available.

[Fierce_LiNk]

Oooo, nice find.

 

Particularly pleased with the battery life of the Wii-mote.

[djamb3]

The batery leds is a great idea. 30hours of battery will be fine but I'd still prefer a real battery instead of AA ones...

 

September is still so far away. We need more info fast...

[Fierce_LiNk]

The batery leds is a great idea. 30hours of battery will be fine but I'd still prefer a real battery instead of AA ones...

 

September is still so far away. We need more info fast...

 

Somebody on this forum suggested using rechargeable AA batteries. Would that be fine? I think everyone would be happy then.

[djamb3]

But those probably can't last more than 10 hours... (I had a bad experience with them).

[Fierce_LiNk]

But those probably can't last more than 10 hours... (I had a bad experience with them).

 

Hmmm, damn. I really don't know about these rechargeables, as i don't use them myself.

[Hellfire]

They can last as long as normal batteries, unless they're crappy, so in my opnion AA batteries are the best choice.

[djamb3]

Everytime you recharge them? How many time they last working fine?

 

I gave up when I had ones I had to recharg 2 hours to play 30 minutes...

[SpinesN]

Hmmmm me thinks the wii controller memory will be used to remember controller order (1st, 2nd, etc...) along with what console it is tied too.

[Dcubed]

It'll probably store personal info. I reckon that the character you create for Wii Sports will be used for other games as well (This would be a character that would represent you and would use your picture as a face like at E3)

 

As for this "camera" I'm almost certain that this will be used to give the Wiimote direct pointing (Light Gun style) capabilities since it currently can't be used like a light gun as it can't be used to directly point at, and interact with, objects on screen. It'll probably also be used as a camera since it's already been confirmed that you can put your face on you character in Wii Sports.

 

Great news on the battery life, I'm not too bothered about the AA batteries myself but it would be nice if Ninty brought out a battery pack. Still, AA batteries are better than internal rechargable ones since non gamers will feel much more comfortable putting in new AA batteries into the Wiimote (Just like they do with a normal TV remote) than they would be plugging it into a wall socket or a charging pod.

[nkarafo]

Dcubed, do you like the short usage of the batteries? Only 30 hours? Wavebird lasts around 60 - 70 hours and we don't have to change them all the time. Now, we have to buy rechargables batteries and a recharger.