Hardware Gamecube 1.5?

[ZeWarrior]

The Wii is like 2 or 3 times more "powerfull" than a Xbox, which was the most powerfull console of last generation. Still.. the 360 has at least 10 times more processing power than the Xbox.. the Wii is missing a lot of good games because of that.. I think Nintendo should have made a hardware in the same price range as the 360.. people would still buy it!
Anyway, like it or not, the money these days is in the casual market, and Nintendo is dominating that, and the casual market don't care about graphics.. so.. I don't think Nintendo is interested in changing this right now..

Not even close. The Wii 2-3 times more powerful then the Xbox? No. Sad truth no. The Wii is really underpowered, and for the price it's really a bad bang for your buck. If they made something around the 360 Price range, I doubt people would buy it. They Wii's have been selling a lot because parents think it's cute seeing their kids play and because it's cheap. You take out the cheap and it would sell a lot less. Say it was 400$, You wouldn't see nearly as many Wiis in Homes as you do today.

 

[iritegood]

The Wii is like 2 or 3 times more "powerfull" than a Xbox, which was the most powerfull console of last generation. Still.. the 360 has at least 10 times more processing power than the Xbox.. the Wii is missing a lot of good games because of that.. I think Nintendo should have made a hardware in the same price range as the 360.. people would still buy it!
Anyway, like it or not, the money these days is in the casual market, and Nintendo is dominating that, and the casual market don't care about graphics.. so.. I don't think Nintendo is interested in changing this right now..


Not even close. The Wii 2-3 times more powerful then the Xbox? No. Sad truth no. The Wii is really underpowered, and for the price it's really a bad bang for your buck. If they made something around the 360 Price range, I doubt people would buy it. They Wii's have been selling a lot because parents think it's cute seeing their kids play and because it's cheap. You take out the cheap and it would sell a lot less. Say it was 400$, You wouldn't see nearly as many Wiis in Homes as you do today.

If the Wii was 400 dollars it would also have very better graphics. There's really no point comparing the consoles, they're meant for totally different markets. Apples to oranges.

The wii is a success because it's cheap and it's fun. What's the problem with that?
Of course the wii wouldn't make as many sales as the 360 if it was the same price. That's because it's hardware can't compare.
If the 360 was selling at 250 it would have to sacrifice A LOT of power. And it wouldn't be able to compete with the wii because a low-power 360 would be horrible.

 

[dsbomb]

People always want to take a little bit of Product A, add in the nice features of Product B, and a couple more parts of Product C, THEN you'd have the super-awesome-totally-insanely-cool Product ABCD! What's the problem with that? I mean, I can write an article, that's the hard part. Companies X, Y, and Z should go ahead and just do it.

It's no different than this bigdick2009 (that's his nick, honest!) at Wiinewz who did all the "hard work" of thinking of an idea, and all the rest of the world needs to do is implement it.

The fact is you have a choice of any of the Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox360. Spend the money where YOU wish to enjoy. It does yourself no good worrying with "if only" scenarios that will never happen.

 

[coolbho3000]

From what I had researched the Wii is 1.5 times as powerful as the Xbox was, although I could be wrong but that's what I researched.  I have to say though when I play some Xbox games there are textures that look much better than most of the Wii games, Mario Galaxy easily looked 80% of the time like a Gamecube game and in reviews it was credited to be the best looking Wii game to date.  But the Wii was never about the graphics everyone knows it is what it is and if it was as good as the 360 or PS3 there would be more competition so it has it's own genre with it's own games and no competition as far as that goes.  I just hope the next Nintendo system is pushed further and built with more quality parts.

There's actually a video on the internets somewhere of in-game footage from SMG compared with in game footage of SMS from the GC and they look basically identical.

No. It does not look the same, and the majority of the gaming press agrees. SMG looks much better, but it's hard to tell from a low res video.

 

[CockroachMan]

True, If the game is fun, I don't care about the graphics.. but the graphics capabilities of the 360 and the PS3 make Wii ports of games coming to these consoles impossible.. well.. that's most bad for companies like EA that like to make games for every possible system out there for greatest profit!!

For the Xbox thing.. the Wii is basicaly a Game Cube with an overclocked processor (the GC had a 485 MHz clock, the Wii has 729 Mhz).. an improved graphics card.. and more memory.. so.. it can make better stuff than the Xbox, but, most developers are just lazy to use the Wii full capabilities..

In the beginning, Nintendo said they didn't want to compete with the other consoles.. and that's what they're doing.. the way I see it.. We had the home consoles, handhelds and the PC markets.. Nintendo created a new market with the Wii.. and it's competing alone there..

 

[GeekyGuy]

...For the Xbox thing.. the Wii is basicaly a Game Cube with an overclocked processor (the GC had a  485 MHz clock, the Wii has 729 Mhz).. an improved graphics card.. and more memory.. so.. it can make better stuff than the Xbox, but, most developers are just lazy to use the Wii full capabilities..

Yeah, but I think the XBox's CPU was still ever-so-slightly faster than the Wii's, clocking at 733 Mhz. Additionally, I believe the Wii's GPU clocks at 243 Mhz and the Xbox is 233 Mhz. So, the Wii, from a power standpoint, is basically an Xbox (give or a take some processing capabilities). That leaves the value of the system (over the Gamecube and any games produced by Nintendo) strictly on the shoulders of the merits of the Wii controller. Again, if most of the games that "work" on the Wii utilize minimal motion gameplay, it really can make you question the value of the system over what we already had.

 

[VmprHntrD]

Mhz doesn't mean shit unless you're comparing the exact same identical chipset which they definitely do not have. Kind of think of it like the old PC vs Mac era with the IBM PPC vs the Intel 80x86/Pentium chips... the PPCs spanked the crap out of them and got much nicer performance at lower mhz clock speeds. To a degree the speed matters, but it's more how the speed is used and how efficient that usage is.

 

[BigX]

coming to the inovative Wii Mote. I don't think the programmer a too lazy. I think the structures of the SW developing companies are to statical to implement an optimal input scheme for the ports.
Its like planing the conversion time for the Game Cube but remember the extra time for the new controll via Wii mote ("hey, Jim how long would you need to implement the button controll for the Wii?" "one week, but if I get two weeks to improve ..." -don't let Jim finish his poitn- "Ok so put in five days for a new controll scheme")
Its like they don't estimate the correct time frame for Wii implementation.
This is just my oppinion as I am not into game developing but into software dev. I don't know how they are doing it over at EA or Ubisoft.... ;-)

 

[CockroachMan]

Mhz doesn't mean shit unless you're comparing the exact same identical chipset which they definitely do not have. Kind of think of it like the old PC vs Mac era with the IBM PPC vs the Intel 80x86/Pentium chips... the PPCs spanked the crap out of them and got much nicer performance at lower mhz clock speeds. To a degree the speed matters, but it's more how the speed is used and how efficient that usage is.

Exactly, the Wii and the GC have the exact same CPU model, the XBox had a Intel x86 type processor at 733Mhz.. which is probably even slower than the GC's PPC at 485Mhz.

 

[Talaria]

[snip]
There's actually a video on the internets somewhere of in-game footage from SMG compared  with in game footage of SMS from the GC and they look basically identical.
[snip]

A video of it won't show much unless it is HD due to the compression and resolution of the video. When playing both games and comparing them you will notice SMG has more polygons the figures are more smooth and motion too. And looks like a big improvement from SMS.

I don't own a wii but i have access to them (quite often aswell) and other next-gen consoles i prefer the wii as it is found it quite fun and i am a huge fan of Nintendo games. The only thing that pisses me off is that in my country the basic Xbox 360 package is $50 cheaper than the wii

. Xbox 360 basic NZ$450 ( US$335.83) and the Wii which is NZ$500 (US $373.15), no price drop since the release at most retail outlets.

 

[sidneyyoung]

Xbox1 has a Pentium3 class procesor (though the celeron type with less cache, i beleive), the GC has an IBM/Cyrix cpu (1st gen pentium class cpu)...

..remember the Cyrix 200mhz rated processors on PC ? The ones that had a real clock speed of 2x75mhz (150mhz real speed) and also the abismal maths co-processor that could'nt even keep up with a 1st gen Pentium-75mhz....

... this is what lurks inside a GC and Wii, ableit heavily reduced in micron size to enable the much higher clock speeds from the original Cyrix 200mhz rated cpu's.

point is the xbox1 processor is far superior

 

[VmprHntrD]

^Uhh wrong...GC is using a PPC chip as is the Wii.

And yah you are right though on the xbox, and going into what COCKROACH said...yes the gc in that type of computing power is more powerful than the xbox, but not by some crazy margin.

This I know as I was in game development when the damn systems came out and did technical standards checks and other junk. GC has the superior main processor...just not vastly superior by any means. And as I said in the end it all comes down to how you use it, and also the quickness of the board, ram you used, how much you did use, buffer sizes, etc.

 

[ZeWarrior]

^Uhh wrong...GC is using a PPC chip as is the Wii.

And yah you are right though on the xbox, and going into what COCKROACH said...yes the gc in that type of computing power is more powerful than the xbox, but not by some crazy margin.

This I know as I was in game development when the damn systems came out and did technical standards checks and other junk. GC has the superior main processor...just not vastly superior by any means. And as I said in the end it all comes down to how you use it, and also the quickness of the board, ram you used, how much you did use, buffer sizes, etc.

The GC had the superior CPU last gen, this gen it's the PS3. The Difference from the Wii, to the 360 to the PS3 CPUs are huge though. The Cell CPU the PS3 has is like literally 15 times more powerful. Probably more. If the Wii CPU really is at only around 7XX Mhz. The PS3 with 6 usable SPU's @ 3.2Ghz each is just a lot more. The Difference from the 360 to the PS3 CPU is also pretty big, nothing huge or amazing though. All in all the Xbox was *overall* the most powerful last gen, The PS3 is the *overall* most powerful this gen.

 

[st0nedpenguin]

...True, most games are nothing more than PS2 ports, with Wiimote features glued on at odd angles, but you should blame developers for that, not the console itself, or Nintendo....


Well, I'm not really interested in playing the blame game at all, but Beyond3D does make one very good point: certain questions should be asked. Like you said, there's ample opportunity with the Wii to make all sorts of creative games, but will publishers invest in those ideas? Will enough Wii owners demand better, more Wii-centric games, or will third parties continue to rake in cash off of less savvy "casual" (ew, hate the term) gamers?

Thing is, if we don't get a satisfying collection of great games that utilize the Wii remote's evolutionary gaming possibilities, well, there's really no evolution that will have taken place here on the system. And thus the big question will again arise: What's the true advantage of the Wii over the best of what last-gen had to offer?

I'm guessing the happenings of 2008 will answer that question, and I'm hopeful that my investment in the idea of an evolutionary gaming approach will pan out. Right now though I think that isn't something that has truly been answered. I also think that, regardless, Nintendo must share in the responsibility of making it "happen" on the Wii. They can simply take their cash to the bank, or they can choose to not take the complacent approach and go on the offensive, actively seeking third-party support.

If you stop looking at the hardware spec numbers themselves, all the current gen consoles are basically offering the same as the last generation but with better graphics.

At least the Wii has a unique controller to go with it.

 

[arctic_flame]

Mhz doesn't mean shit unless you're comparing the exact same identical chipset which they definitely do not have. Kind of think of it like the old PC vs Mac era with the IBM PPC vs the Intel 80x86/Pentium chips... the PPCs spanked the crap out of them and got much nicer performance at lower mhz clock speeds. To a degree the speed matters, but it's more how the speed is used and how efficient that usage is.


Exactly, the Wii and the GC have the exact same CPU model, the XBox had a Intel x86 type processor at 733Mhz.. which is probably even slower than the GC's PPC at 485Mhz.

Blah Blah Blah.

Unless anyone can produce documents showing how many cycles each architecture takes to carry out similar instructions, all this is just speculation. There's also the fact that the compilers in the devkits can be fairly efficient or quite bad.

 

[Issac]

I agree with many posters above me.

I don't see the point of say such negative things about the wii, because it's "underpowered"...

Joy in playing games, or specs? which is more important?

"oooh yeah! I have a five billion gigahurtz processor in my gameconsolex579 and you just have blblbll45 which has far less power! lols"

"So what? I have games to play, which are really fun and something new"

"Duuh, that doesn't matter... it's what's inside the box!"

"whtevr"...

That's basicly what I see in all those "Wii is underpowered" bullshit blogs (aricles, investigations etc.)

 

[GeekyGuy]

Unless anyone can produce documents showing how many cycles each architecture takes to carry out similar instructions, all this is just speculation. There's also the fact that the compilers in the devkits can be fairly efficient or quite bad.

If you're referring to video mem. bandwidth, this site claims the following stats:

360 - 21.6 GBps
PS3 - 22.4 GBps
Wii - 3.9 GBps

 

[ben_r_]

who cares. If I wanted the best graphics I'd just play my PC.

Best post in this whole thread! If you think your video game console has better graphics than a PC, your PC sucks and youve never seen a real gaming PC and setup.

 

[arctic_flame]

Unless anyone can produce documents showing how many cycles each architecture takes to carry out similar instructions, all this is just speculation. There's also the fact that the compilers in the devkits can be fairly efficient or quite bad.


If you're referring to video mem. bandwidth, this site claims the following stats:

360 - 21.6 GBps
PS3 - 22.4 GBps
Wii - 3.9 GBps

No, I'm not - that's nothing to do with it at all... but thanks anyway

 

[Edwii]

Warning: i haven't read through the whole thread at this point however id like to point out one of the things wii dose very well that i just found out. Last night i was invited to a family freinds house, for some reason they hinted around me bringing my wii, i was like what would 40-50yo people care about something like a wii? apparently they were going to be a few young girls thier as well, when it came down to it 4 girls ages 14-18 were eating the wii up, i couldn't believe how much funny they were having(ironicly with wii sports), in a blond giggly kinda way.. that was fun to watch

( and even after that a few of the older people in the crowed wanted in on trying this thing out.

but when it comes down to it, my point is, the wii is the Instant party console for every one, targeted for people that like a little competition but do not like to over think it (like young blond girls) i didn't think hot girls like video games but hey its nice to be surprised once and a while

For the technical / "refined" gamer:
Xbox 360: great when your by your self, great online, and great with a few friends that have game skilled close to each other... but not so much with thos who haven't played much games, know one likes loseing all the time right? if your hawt with halo and you have some one who's never done it before constantly dieing is not much fun right?

PS3: woo it can play blue ray movies heck yes but from what i see its an even more for the technical gamer, and seems to be more for single players.

What do you think?