Hardware Ram predictions

[Rydian]

E.g., Sony has made PSP a portable media center, while DSi's music player cannot even play fucking MP3s.

In order to keep it cheap. MP3 is not an open format, for example the royalties on a player (if you develop your own MP3 decoder in-house) is $0.75 per unit. Multiply that by 2.2 million (and that's just the number of DSi sales up to Oct 2009) and you get an additional $1.6 million Nintendo has to pay to make the DSi units. Add on the licensing cost for other formats and it gets even worse.

Sony's also an "entertainment" company and makes other multimedia products, so likely they're able to work out way cheaper deals with patent-controlling companies.

 

[pachura]

E.g., Sony has made PSP a portable media center, while DSi's music player cannot even play fucking MP3s.

In order to keep it cheap. MP3 is not an open format, for example the royalties on a player (if you develop your own MP3 decoder in-house) is $0.75 per unit. Multiply that by 2.2 million (and that's just the number of DSi sales up to Oct 2009) and you get an additional $1.6 million Nintendo has to pay to make the DSi units. Add on the licensing cost for other formats and it gets even worse.

Sony's also an "entertainment" company and makes other multimedia products, so likely they're able to work out way cheaper deals with patent-controlling companies.

Everything multiplied by 2.2 million looks big. So what ? I've just bought a really simple mobile phone for 25 EUR and it plays MP3s. Just think how much Nokia could have saved by not including this option ! And I'm sure Nintendo, being a giant company, could get a really good deal when it comes to licenses. Besides, if they are trying so hard to save every cent, why the hell are they putting IrDA in 3DS ? Noone asked them, noone wants it, it's piece of crap that should have died in the 90s.

 

[Rydian]

Everything is big when you're making 2.2 million of them, that's why it's important to keep a core goal. If your main goal isn't playing MP3s, why pay $1.6 million dollars to include MP3 capability? If you can trim 10 cents off the price of each machine, that's $220,000 less you have to spend in making it.

Nintendo's consoles aren't aimed at multimedia, they're aimed at gaming at a lower price than the competitors. Thus, no Mp3 or other additional things.

Sony loves to bill themselves as making multimedia devices, thus the PSP and PS3 have the ability to play all sorts of formats... while being sold at a higher price to help make up for it.

Nokia as well bills themselves as multimedia devices, thus their would do a lot more than cheap walmart prepaid phones... while costing more (or requiring a long contract).

As for the infrared, the original PSP model had it, but nothing ended up using it so it was removed from later models. We don't know all the plans for the 3DS so we can't really say if it's useless or not. Remember that heartgold and soulsilver for the DS include IR functionality to use the pokewalker, and that works just fine... so if they're including infrared in the original design they obviously have some plan for it.

 

[Midna]

True dat.

 

[pachura]

Everything is big when you're making 2.2 million of them, that's why it's important to keep a core goal. If your main goal isn't playing MP3s, why pay $1.6 million dollars to include MP3 capability? If you can trim 10 cents off the price of each machine, that's $220,000 less you have to spend in making it.

Nintendo's consoles aren't aimed at multimedia, they're aimed at gaming at a lower price than the competitors. Thus, no Mp3 or other additional things.

Sony loves to bill themselves as making multimedia devices, thus the PSP and PS3 have the ability to play all sorts of formats... while being sold at a higher price to help make up for it.

Nokia as well bills themselves as multimedia devices, thus their would do a lot more than cheap walmart prepaid phones... while costing more (or requiring a long contract).

As for the infrared, the original PSP model had it, but nothing ended up using it so it was removed from later models. We don't know all the plans for the 3DS so we can't really say if it's useless or not. Remember that heartgold and soulsilver for the DS include IR functionality to use the pokewalker, and that works just fine... so if they're including infrared in the original design they obviously have some plan for it.

While I agree with what you're saying, I don't agree with Nintendo's politics in this area. I know that the possibility to connect two Pikachus via infrared to create super-mega-awesome-Pikachu sounds great to some, I am sure that many would prefer a decent media player, allowing at least XviD+MP3 playback. Myself, I don't own iPod Touch, I don't own PSP, and my simple cellphone doesn't play videos; so many times, I used my DS to watch movies while waiting for a plane. If people were not interested in such capabilities, why was MoonShell project so successful ?

 

[BakuFunn]

Everything is big when you're making 2.2 million of them, that's why it's important to keep a core goal. If your main goal isn't playing MP3s, why pay $1.6 million dollars to include MP3 capability? If you can trim 10 cents off the price of each machine, that's $220,000 less you have to spend in making it.

Nintendo's consoles aren't aimed at multimedia, they're aimed at gaming at a lower price than the competitors. Thus, no Mp3 or other additional things.

Sony loves to bill themselves as making multimedia devices, thus the PSP and PS3 have the ability to play all sorts of formats... while being sold at a higher price to help make up for it.

Nokia as well bills themselves as multimedia devices, thus their would do a lot more than cheap walmart prepaid phones... while costing more (or requiring a long contract).

As for the infrared, the original PSP model had it, but nothing ended up using it so it was removed from later models. We don't know all the plans for the 3DS so we can't really say if it's useless or not. Remember that heartgold and soulsilver for the DS include IR functionality to use the pokewalker, and that works just fine... so if they're including infrared in the original design they obviously have some plan for it.

And $220,000 is nothing when you're getting thousands of millions.
Generally, it's very sloppy to cut corners and frowned upon. Half a million of dollars is pocket change for a corporation of this size.
This is what happens with devices with plastic backs or just laziness. They wanted to save those few thousand dollars, and in response, their devices just aren't that good.
In the grand scheme of things, it's bad practice to cut deep corners to save those bucks.

Besides, Nintendo will have another selling point in this modern market of Jacks.

 

[Rydian]

If people were not interested in such capabilities, why was MoonShell project so successful ?The amount of people using moonshell on their DS versus the amount of people that have a DS... it's nowhere close.

QUOTE(BakuFunn @ Aug 30 2010, 02:22 PM) And $220,000 is nothing when you're getting thousands of millions.

Before you've sold a product, you've made jack shit.

As for the formats, it's not only the licensing fees (as some formats are open), but also the licenses themselves, which Nintendo will have to abide by in order to use that specific technology. Many licenses are not compatible with each other (they can't be co-used in a single product as their limits conflict), and some might want to control what Nintendo would rather not have controlled by an outside party.

 

[Painguy]

64mb isnt a good idea. The PSP Go has about that much, and obviously the 3DS is superior in terms of hardware than the PSP. 256mb, hopefully 512mb (but knowing Nintendo they most likely wouldn't do that.) as for phone CPU's being clocked at 2ghz...yes it is possible u can infact overclock the CPU to that frequency. Also RAM has nothing to do with 3D output. some of you are confusing RAM with frame buffer, and video memory.

No reason to compare the PSP's RAM to the 3DS. However if you want to go there the original XBOX had 64 MB of RAM and could output 1080i and it had Halo 2.

There are alot of reasons to compare the two handhelds. resolution has nothing to do with RAM. Every frame rendered by the GPU is stored in the frame buffer memory. did u even read my post, its the last sentence. 64Mb is not enough end of story. this is assuming they dont use something around the area of DDR. The Wii uses T1-SRAM and thats around DDR2 so thats why 88mb is good enough in relation to the other hardware they had. But from the things im reading about the 3DS hardware so far its going to need more than that.

 

[foob]

While I agree with what you're saying, I don't agree with Nintendo's politics in this area. I know that the possibility to connect two Pikachus via infrared to create super-mega-awesome-Pikachu sounds great to some, I am sure that many would prefer a decent media player, allowing at least XviD+MP3 playback.

I must admit the infrared sounds oddly dated, but this is Nintendo here, they are the Master Money Counters don't want to pay for bluetooth or have it draining the battery or possibly causing a security risk. Certain games are very popular for them, too...so I can sort of see the reason here. Who knows what else they will do here? What is funny to me is the infrared isn't even mentioned on Nintendo's 3DS page. I guess they are embarrassed about it too

http://e3.nintendo.com/3ds/ If you click on Features here, infra-red isn't specifically mentioned even though we know it's included.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xvid
"Due primarily to concerns over patents, the official Xvid web site does not provide binary versions of the Xvid codec."

There is no way Nintendo would risk litigation in the area of Xvid; it would cost them too much. They'd be far more likely to contact the MPEG-LA to get their codecs.

If Nintendo do anything I think they will allow 3DS 3D movies and AAC audio to be played but not much else. In other words, I doubt they'd let you open your own movies or pictures and view them on the unit, much like you can't now. I doubt they'd also let you record your own sounds on your SD card, much like you can't now. There isn't even a USB connection to hook up to your PC, so that tells me a lot about how serious they are about loading your own multimedia content easily on the DS. Most people will find it too much of a hassle to load stuff on their SD card and into the unit (lots of people don't even know what that slot is on their laptops or desktops, assuming they have one). Even if a miracle occurred and Nintendo offered broad codec support for our own files, it would be less than ideal dealing with the card.

I would regard it supreme generosity if they offered a world-voltage capable AC adaptor!
Once again, Nintendo know how to save yen! ?

 

[Midna]

There's another reason not to let you open your own pictures and such. I doubt Nintendo wants a file exploit (Think CHICK-HEN for PSP) on the 3DS.

 

[foob]

There's another reason not to let you open your own pictures and such. I doubt Nintendo wants a file exploit (Think CHICK-HEN for PSP) on the 3DS.

Right, exactly. Though it's a bit odd (or maybe not since I've thought it through):

Allowed: read-access to AAC-encoded audio files. (Will play AAC-encoded files off SD card)
Not allowed: write-access to record AAC-encoded audio files (or any other format) on SD card. My guess is no AAC encoder is used at all for DSi's recording audio features (cheaper license) but I sort of can't explain why they don't let you save it to SD card and for longer audio lengths (but it's probably system limitations loading big files).
Allowed: viewing of 0.3 megapixel pics taken with the DSi's cameras.
Not allowed: your own pics from SD card to be viewed on the DSi - the megapixels would probably choke the poor unit's ram

 

[foob]

Of course I'm talking about the DSi there to give some clue as to what we might see in the 3DS.

 

[JonthanD]

My honest guess is 64MB-128MB's.... 256MB's would be nice but I doubt it will be that much.

Maybe 128MB's of main system RAM and 16-32MB's of video RAM.

 

[foob]

My honest guess is 64MB-128MB's.... 256MB's would be nice but I doubt it will be that much.

Agreed. If I had to bet on it, I'd say definitely nothing above 128MB for Nintendo 3DS.
They are the money masters and I'm not holding my breath for breathtaking amouonts of ram.

 

[Rydian]

Every frame rendered by the GPU is stored in the frame buffer memory. did u even read my post, its the last sentence. 64Mb is not enough end of story.What reason is there for keeping a frame in memory after it's already been displayed and thus won't be displayed again... ? Modern systems keep 2, maybe three or four frames in memory at once to avoid tearing (yes, buffering), other than that there's not a use I'm aware of.

QUOTE(Painguy @ Aug 30 2010, 08:21 PM) this is assuming they dont use something around the area of DDR. The Wii uses T1-SRAM and thats around DDR2 so thats why 88mb is good enough in relation to the other hardware they had. But from the things im reading about the 3DS hardware so far its going to need more than that.

The higher types of memory have lower access times and higher clock rates... but that does nothing to improve their storage capacity...

 

[DiscostewSM]

For "double-buffering" of a 400x240x2 display at 16bits per pixel, that would amount to 768KB of memory. However, such buffers would be stored in video memory along with textures, not in main RAM where everything else goes. Heck, they may not even use double-buffering, and use the technique they had on the DS (but highly unlikely if they don't want to end up with screen tearing like DS games had with lots of up-close effects, especially with having the 3D effect).

 

[Rydian]

And if they manage to keep a game's resource usage below a certain threshold and stay at or above the refresh rate, there's no need for buffering in the first place.

 

[deagle67]

64MB would be enough for a modern 3D handheld console without any OS, and cost effective
don't forget a dollar more in the BOF means 3-5$ more for the consumer..

 

[Painguy]

Every frame rendered by the GPU is stored in the frame buffer memory. did u even read my post, its the last sentence. 64Mb is not enough end of story.

What reason is there for keeping a frame in memory after it's already been displayed and thus won't be displayed again... ? Modern systems keep 2, maybe three or four frames in memory at once to avoid tearing (yes, buffering), other than that there's not a use I'm aware of. ....yeah....thats what i was telling the dude. he just siad we need more ram for a higher resolution, and i was telling him that every frame is stored in the frame buffer memory not the RAM "Every frame rendered by the GPU is stored in the frame buffer memory". Whats with everyone not reading my posts correctly? is my english that bad or something?

this is assuming they dont use something around the area of DDR. The Wii uses T1-SRAM and thats around DDR2 so thats why 88mb is good enough in relation to the other hardware they had. But from the things im reading about the 3DS hardware so far its going to need more than that.

QUOTE(Rydian @ Aug 30 2010, 10:23 PM)

The higher types of memory have lower access times and higher clock rates... but that does nothing to improve their storage capacity...

I know storage capacity doesn't increase. whats with the obvious statements? thats why i made the comparisons of different types of RAM. it should be common knowledge that one type is faster than the other. are u ok dude?

is everyone like....idk having a hard time reading my posts or what? "T1-SRAM and thats around DDR2" this should be an obvious speed comparison...lol

 

[DiscostewSM]

Pretty sure Rydian took your "every frame" comment a bit further than needed. Yes, every frame is stored, in that it has to be in memory to be useable, but every frame is "not kept", unless for specific reasons.