I'm guessing it is going to be around 300 or 400 dollars, because the technology is stronger than the ps3 and xbox 360 apparently.

Its not overly expensive to buy chipsets for a console at mass production levels that is superior than the PS3 and Xbox 360. When matter of cost comes to play is what manufacturing die size Nintendo ends up utilizing and what transistor count the chipsets will end up with. There are options commercially available that could utterly destroy the PS3 and Xbox 360 yet Nintendo would still come in under the manufacturing costs of those consoles as they where originally. Specifically those options would merely mean Nintendo has to spend a little more than twice the money it originally did on silicon. Current statements point to the possibility of the system being higher end than I and many others originally expected, so I'd be shocked if this console launches under $350 U.S.

I think it will cost $350 in America and £319.99 but it will probably be dropped to about £300. Hopefully there can be another retail battle that will drive the price down like with the 3DS.

That all depends on how much room Nintendo has to at least break even from each console sold. Nintendo unlike Sony or Microsoft aren't going to look at loosing money at launch, so if it costs $300 U.S. to manufacture or more its unlikely the price of the console will go down for a year after launch. That's about how long it takes to launch a new version of the console with its chipsets shrunken one die size down to lower costs.

Well I have heard a rumour from someone who's brother works for a big game developer and he told me the the price in the UK will be £250-299....Of course I can't say this is definite...but his brother has worked for this company for many years on Xbox,360 and PS2,PS3 software and they working on Wii-U now too.
The Wii-U looks great and is...but its not really next gen.A lot of it is of the shelf parts that have been around a while.
The days of massive profits are over (for now) and adaptability is the name of the game.
My friend did stress this is a rumour within the company but I think this sounds about right.

It wouldn't overly surprise me if PS4 is heavily based on off the shelf parts with their direction with PS Vita, but I highly doubt this will be the case with Nintendo's Wii U. Its highly unlikely that the final chips will be off the shelf parts especially with Nintendo's history. Early dev kits often are made using off the shelf parts, but early dev kits don't usually represent final components. First, second, and maybe even third generation dev kits for Wii U no doubt use off the shelf parts, but the final components will be heavily customized.

The Wii's successor will likely be more expensive at launch than the Wii. Like the 3DS I expect Nintendo to have a larger hardcore focus next gen and focus on getting third party support early on. Just how more expensive is anyone's guess, but in my opinion it could range from $279.99-$299.99. I don't expect it to be anymore expensive than that. Nintendo is likely going to try and keep the Wii's successor being marginally cheaper than what they expect the price of their competitors new consoles to launch. Truthfully as long as its cheaper than $400 I'm likely to be an early adapter.

If we go according the rumors based on my own estimates Nintendo should be able to manufacture the Wii U even if the chipset is on the high end of the previous rumors for $250-290 dollars US. $299.99 looks to be completely within the realm of possibility even with profit at the beginning. The issue is that some rumors and speculation I've read at Neogaf would mean that the Wii U is going to be noticeable more expensive than the previous GPU rumors would paint it. Still I doubt it will be more expensive than $349.99 US.

That would be £212 to £243. I hope Nintendo won't make it more expensive in Europe as they have with the 3DS. On the topic of price, I wonder how much additional controllers will cost. With the rumoured HD touchscreen they could be very expensive.

Based on the rumors IGN asked a manufacturer how much such controllers would cost to manufacture and the guess was around $25 U.S. Whether its more than $25 to manufacture depends on the capability of the screen and how much internal guts the controller has (enough to decode video or enough for some functions without streaming power from the console). Retail my guess is $80 dollars.

Well the current price of the Wii is $149 and Reggie has said it won't be around there- I think we all know that.

The CURRENT price of the PS3/Xbox is $249/$199, that could be down $50 at the end of the year, or including some games. I just don't see how Nintendo expect to have a successful launch of a console that is priced at $350-400 which will be competing against consoles that play the same games, barring a few Nintendo 1st party games, but cost 1/2 the price.

Wii U will not be competing with the PS360 consoles. For the love of god get that through your skull right now. We're not completely certain on the consoles capabilities, but enough points towards it being a arguably significant upgrade over the current HD consoles. The Wii U's competition isn't out yet nor are they in the public mindshare yet. No doubt Microsoft's and Sony's next consoles will be more powerful, but if your expecting truly night and day differences your going to be disappointed.

Feldo's prediction of $350 to $400 may end up being in the ball park. With 3DS launching at $249.99 merely eight days from now in the U.S. an odd thought came to mind to gauge how expensive Wii's successor possibly could be come it's eventual release that I didn't think of earlier. I decided out of curiosity to compare the prices of Nintendo's handhelds at launch to the corresponding consoles.

The Game Boy Advance launched in North America on June 11, 2001 at $99.99. The GameCube launched in North American on November 18, 2001 at $199.99. The original DS launched on November 21, 2004 in North America at $149.99. The Nintendo Wii of course launched in North America on November 19, 2006 at $249.99. A pattern emerges though perhaps a little shallow only going back two generation cycles, but I likely could argue to extend it to Game Boy which released in 1989 and SNES released in 1991.

The resulting figure is beyond the sort of prices I expect from Nintendo, but if this interesting pattern holds true for another generation Wii's successor could be as expensive as $349.99. I bought a PS3 at $599.99 so I more than likely would still buy Nintendo's next console at launch even if it was $349.99, but some maybe reluctant if this prediction is correct.

I really doubt it will be F-Zero. I'd like to see a franchise like F-Zero have a reboot from Retro, but to me F-Zero doesn't make much sense based on Retro's experience though neither did Donkey Kong. Star Fox doesn't sound all that impossible I could envision a space fighter combat/first person shooter reboot that could borrow extensively from Retro's experiences with Metroid. That said I think there was a reason Retro created Donkey Kong Country Returns. Its specific existence likely comes down to needing another quick release while Retro was if I was to speculate working primarily on next gen engines, but it may of been testing the market for a Donkey Kong Country reboot. This perhaps isn't what majority of fans would want Retro to work on, but I find it likely Retro's next game for the foreseeable future is Donkey Kong. As a launch game Donkey Kong even makes sense instead of a Mario or Zelda. Its not currently really an overly powerful franchise and wouldn't completely overshadow 3D party efforts, but give a reason for Nintendo fans to buy the system right away instead of waiting.

Hopefully not to close

So far to my knowledge the only limitation is that you more or less have to be in the same room, but otherwise you don't have to be too close to the console

Here is an interesting piece of information pulled up by Bgassassin from Neogaf. The article in question is from earlier in the year and was apparently not looked at closely previously outside further confirmation along with other sources that the GPU within the Alpha dev kits was a Radeon HD 4000 series card. If the article is correct the GPU within the Alpha dev kits may of pushed beyond 1TFLOPS. Basically the card within the early dev kits would of had to been a Radeon HD 4870 at least to reach that level of performance and that certainly would of explained the over heating issues rumored with the first dev kits.

http://translate.goo...611_452478.html

Thread regarding the Wii U from Neogaf where Bgassassin posted this info: http://www.neogaf.co...434824&page=178

And where this at?

That comment is likely from speculation from Neogaf or somewhere else. We already know if they stick with R700 architecture it will be custom to some degree because of the likely hood of Nintendo using Eyefinity technology. They also may switch from VLIW5 architecture to VLIW4 architecture basically lowering transistor count and TDP while keeping the same performance. In the end the final chip may be an altered low end 7000 series card. AMD's latest architecture easily could of been on the table back when alpha dev kits started being produced and sent to developers, but according to the time line within an article from around the pre and post E3 leaks all that would of been available to mimic the performance of lower end 7000 series cards was 4870-90 and the 5770, which was rather new on the market.

Microsoft will most definitely try to round up the pursuit for the gamers choice over the 3 next gen consoles, especially pushing themselves further ahead of PS3. This I am sure of; they want to capitalise on the success of Live, and be able to force Kinect into the mainstream. They will also take some PS3 gamers away from their pedestals, and finally settle a score. I don't' think they will care about costs too much, they will keep throwing money at 720 or whatever till it works, pulling gamers into their consumer base, and will most likely make it an awfully powerful machine and with great potential...somehow. I reckon they are watching Nintendo closely here, and would expect there to be a clash at some point. It would be interesting to say the least! Nintendo will hopefully stand to the mark! They haven't competed properly in years. GO NINTENDO!



XBox fan-boys can go ahead and state that the Wii U will have nothing on it, and I know it has been spoken of before that next gen won't be so 'next gen' when it comes to recently-produced hardware, but Microsoft can work very very hard if they want to. Don't quite understand the unintended contrast stated here. But, sounds to me Jikayaki, that you're suggesting ARM will make the 'loop' more powerful for sure, but will be closer to the Wii U's potential in hardware more so than we understand. Don't know how you've come to suggest all of the above, but i'd be interested in reading a link? Would be good to check out new XBox rumours, if there is any. Might be similar to the way Wii U supposedly had information 'leaked' all those months ago, before E3

All I'm saying is even with ARM architecture its rather easy for Xbox Loop to out perform the Wii U. It certainly isn't a certainty. If the Next Xbox is ARM based its also possible that in some ways the Wii U using more conventional hardware would have some advantages. ARM architecture however would be in Nintendo's favor if it is in the next Xbox. Development for ARM is focused toward mobile devices I doubt creating a chip equivalent to modern desktop chips would be a wise investment to the point that more conventional hardware would cost less.

I wouldn't expect that. Rumors of the Xbox "Loop" are pointing to a smaller, cheaper Xbox Next with ARM 6-core processor. For those who don't know, ARM is whats in most smartphones and tablets. These processor by 2013 are said to have power just as good as Xbox 360.

If this rumor holds true, this would mean the Xbox "Loop" is going to be on par with the IBM Watson CPU and the ATI/AMD RV770 inspired GPU.



Where have you heard it was from the 48xx series? And the RV770 is the base for all newer cards, or most, from AMD. Which means Nintendo might have started with the RV770 and AMD has been updating it since. Also all rumors point towards the GPU pretty much being done, if I remember correctly, and CPU still be worked out. Or that could be swapped.

My statement was based on a supposed leak regarding the GPU being a RV770 in the alpha devkits. Since alpha devkits are usually made using of the shelf parts that limited the range in power of the GPU realistically from 3x to 5x the power of Xbox 360 based on the commercially available cards. A statement from an article around or shortly after E3 pointed to the alpha devkits having 1TFLOP of performance or more. This moves the alpha devkits more toward 4 or 5 times the power of current hd consoles. The HD 5000's where in principle based on 4000's. AMD often reuses designs between card gens gradually introducing new hardware designs.

Don't simply look at the capabilities of mobile devises when considering the power of the rumored Xbox Loop even with an ARM processor it could easily out perform Wii U. However if the rumored Xbox Loop is the next xbox and ARM based it certainly would improve the possibility that Wii U and Xbox next would relatively close in capability.

The WiiU has some specifications, ie significantly more RAM than ps3 or Xbox (for the record ps3 is more powerful but xbox has more RAM). This gets people excited and they think the WiiU will step up past the other consoles in power, but really that RAM is used to stream video audio and touch programming (well you know what i mean) to the controller. So we aren't sure what the console has but i remember Iwata saying when he first announced it in mid-spring, that the power is great but that that wouldn't matter once you see the console (which is evident when seeing the controller). I'm assuming this means Iwata doesn't want us to focus on the power (unsettling). Though i still expect a lot from this console and even if the power equals that of the ps3 (not taking into account the power used to stream) i hope it makes enough unique , fun games to bring a whole new kind of game to the table that isnt as hard to come up with good uses as the Wii (sooooo much shovel-ware). This Ninovation has a more obvious hardcore or classic gaming use unlike the Wii's motion . The power is important but i can see many uses for a ps3 power level wiiu controller......... and i know Sony has the PSVita but that doesnt come with the console and connects differently so developers wont be as open to it as the wiiu. In summary to this ridiculously long and repetitive post: I feel the power is equal to or greater than the ps3 with greater RAM than the xbox. But the design of the wiiu seems to easily overcome any worries..... although i see MANY uses for a super powered, online integrated wiiu......... mmmmmm, open world MMO action...... yoshi.....?

The Wii U won't be overly burdened by streaming to the controller. Going off of sources such as the Wii U tablet patents, the speculation regarding Nintendo using Eyefinity technology, and the current supposed specs of the Wii U kets from leaks and rumors streaming to the controllers won't be much of a burden. The big unknown currently is focused more primarily toward bandwidth, which would determine how many Wii U controllers can be used at one time. Your spinning Nintendo merely being Nintendo negatively. Nintendo is still very much carrying forward the marketing strategy of the Wii and DS with the Wii U. At the same time Nintendo has been burned by being too open and honest about specs before and the Wii U is likely still not completely taped out.

This seems relevant.



It says Nintendo Wii vs PS360, but he just made a typo.

This merely goes along with the rumor that the Wii U uses a GPU based on the RV770 series of ATI Radeon GPU. This narrows the expectations down to a specific range, but still were talking about a GPU from about 3 to 5 times as powerful as current HD consoles, but with developers earlier pointing toward the Wii U's GPU being around a Radeon HD 4850 and more recent rumors of it being around a Radeon HD 4870 in power we can at least hope that the Wii U is around 4 to 5 times as powerful as Xbox 360.

firstly i really hope this epicly high power rumour is true, are the quotes definite or possible quotes anyway regarding reasons not to make games for wii u, it seems there should be none untill u realise that the sliders arent clickable like R3 and L3 on ps3. i hate to give bad news but this may make life harder for developers plz someone prove me wrong but i dont know what buttons can replace the click buttons on ps360 controllers. how would you sprint in battlefield

This shouldn't be an issue. The touch screen can handle some functions removing them from face buttons.

Well, no doubt Nintendo are trying to hit a sweet spot, between making the current gen consoles obsolete, thus forcing Sony and MS to bring out new machines, and having a console with enough power so that if the competition does bring out those machines anyway, the Wii U itself does not become obsolete.

With all the hysteria about console wars online right now, it is difficult to predict who will do what, but it is hard to see why Sony and MS would launch their next gen machines now. They can more easily keep in touch with the Wii U by adding more ram and, in the case of the Xbox, a higher capacity disc drive, to their current consoles.

Only time will tell, but we can be sure, whatever the competition do, the Wii U will be relevant for some time to come.

Outside trying to keep the Wii U relatively affordable while remaining within a level of improvement over the current HD consoles that would stop PS4 and Xbox Next from completely overshadowing them I don't think Nintendo cares much what Sony and Microsoft do. Nintendo's strategy going forward still has itself firmly rooted in their blue ocean strategy with the Wii. They'll be competing far more directly with their rivals' systems true, but the focus in on differentiating themselves from Sony and Microsoft and giving unique experiences that don't exist outside their own hardware. This is why 3D was added to the 3DS and why Nintendo is going forward with the tablet controller. The rumored power of the system already makes the PS3 and Xbox 360 obsolete anyway.

The "Hawk" statement comes from the complete version of the Japanese Garden tech demo. After the Japanese koi fish the demo continues with a hawk or falcon that then precedes to move around the garden as the seasons change ending with the falcon playing in the snow on one of the roofs. This tech demo is something you really needed to see in person at the event or through high quality video to get the full effect. It's actually quite impressive in my opinion certainly not something you can do on current consoles outside the PC. We don't yet have any real hard facts on the consoles specs, but from the IBM Watson statements we can determine its based on Power 7 architecture (honestly the only real choice Nintendo had anyway). It really is possible that Wii U's CPU could be a full generational leap over Xbox 360 and it wouldn't make sense if the GPU didn't match the CPU's capabilities. It still greatly depends on what exactly you expect from a generational leap and the specifics of the chipset. There likely will be a gab between Wii U and Xbox Next and PS4, but it likely isn't going to be as large as many think. Currently I'm thinking Dreamcast comparative to the GameCube or Xbox is about as bad as its going to get.

from what i know it wont be outdated it will be very powerful and graphics are at there max until 2016 when ultra high definition is meant to come out

It will be outdated from launch. The rumored GPU architecture AMD's R700 series is openGL 3.3 and DirectX 10.1 complaint when Nintendo's competitors GPU's will likely be openGL 4.1 and Direct3D 11 complaint. Technically there wouldn't be as large a difference in total functionality as the transition from openGL 3.3 to openGL 4.1 and DirectX 10.1 to Direct3D 11 primarily was simply fixing the issues with the previous API's and adding software based tessellation. Project Cafe's GPU will likewise be capable of tessellation through a hardware based operation AMD integrated into the R700 architecture,but it was hardly used outside tech demos. As far as raw power goes Nintendo's next console could very well be a true next gen leap. There are GPU's in the R700 series that would give an eight to ten times increase over current consoles. It depends on whether Nintendo utilizes a double GPU. The rumored size and price of the console at around the size of the original Xbox and costing from $350 to $400 U.S. dollars because of high manufacturing costs points to the possibility its packing a lot more power than many expect. The only reason N6 ends up being a mid generation increase in power at an expected TDP of 150 watts or more judging from the rumored size is if it uses over the shelf PC parts.

I'm sure it could but it would have to be with low settings, lol.



I was impressed with the background but something about the bird just seemed off...idk what it is.

Anyways, that was a tech demo, not representative of graphics during actual gameplay.

Remember the Quantic Dream's tech demo for the PS3 that had everyone's jaws dropping to the floor? Well it took Quantic Dreams 4 years to actually to be able to make a game with those visuals (Heavy Rain) and even then it wasn't on par with that original tech demo...and to even get close to it, the entire game had to be done in QT events.

Other than Heavy Rain, no game has even come close to what they showed off in that Tech Demo for the PS3 and we're well into the systems life cycle...if games were going to be able to do it, they'd have done it already.

It's entirely possible (if not likely) that it'll be the same for the Wii U with it's tech demo's.

Not that it would be a bad thing, it's still a MAJOR step up from the original Wii and short of people who made the massive mistake of actually buying into all the b/s pre-reveal hype no one expected a modern day graphical powerhouse from Nintendo.



I'm not against Nintendo, I love me some Zelda, Mario, DK and Kirby. I'm against people who try to irrationally overrate products or features of products.

You have to look at Nintendo's attitude regarding tech demos and general tech specs. Really the reason Nintendo stopped releasing technical specs regarding its systems is what happened with GameCube. Sony and Microsoft give the media fluffed specs regarding their consoles, which simply wasn't possible in a full game setting. Nintendo on the other hand were more honest and openly discussed the capabilities of the GameCube and the whole situation soured on them. This isn't Sony or Microsoft where consistently you can expect them to show case a tech demo simply not possible on the hardware in a game. Nintendo's tech demos for certain franchises for instance often end up not quite as impressive as the finished product and it wouldn't be like Nintendo to show case a demo that didn't represent what the console is truly capable of pulling off.

Regarding hardware and software the console will be outdated by release, but few games even use open GL 3.3 and DX 10.1 so there is a level of complexity possible using existing API's that you don't see in majority of games possible on the console. Whether it will be outdated in regard to its hardware's raw power comes down to exactly what R700 series GPU the console's own GPU is based on. The three options I'm hoping for is Radeon HD 4850, Radeon HD 4870, or Radeon HD 4890, which would mean a four, five, or six times more powerful than Xenos. If Nintendo is serious about maintaining 3D party support for the long hall they may choose either a Radeon HD 4850x2 or a Radeon HD 4870x2 equivalent dual GPU, which would mean eight to ten times as powerful as the Xbox 360. Ironically optimizing proven tech from 2008 seems a very Nintendo thing to do and both a Radeon HD 4850x2 and Radeon HD 4870x2 are likely the cheapest way to equal a jump in power equal to the jump from PS2/Xbox to Xbox 360/PS3. I'm reasonably optimistic that Nintendo's next console will be reasonably powerful just on there rumored focus on 3D party developers and regaining the hardcore. Only issue is tessellation, which would be in software with Xbox 3/PS4 and on hardware with N6. Ultimately tessellation will be the largest visual improvement next gen the rest of the power will be utilized for more subtle things, but it would take longer to learn to utilize in hardware tessellation capabilities. The year to year and a half headstart the console may have on the market may remove that issue for any dev that seriously utilizes its hardware.

Extremely unlikely.

Looking at the currently rumored specs of the Wii U this is nothing short of impossible without the PS4/720 costing well over 900$ USD to produce (That sounds outrageous, but keep in mind that manufacture cost of a launch 60GB PS3 was $950 USD!). Sony is too smart to make the mistake they did this last generation of releasing a vastly over expensive console that is difficult to develope for, and Microsoft would lose market going this route as well.

Prehaps if either console was release say some 4 years after the Wii U, such of a gap would be expected, but I doubt Microsoft/Sony are being serious about the "10 year lifecycle".

Its impossible for the next Sony and Microsoft consoles to be so above the Wii U in tech to repeat this generation, but its rather easy even regarding the higher spec rumors for PS4 or Xbox 720 to be more powerful machines. It all depends on how these devices are designed and their intended market and price point. If PS4 follows Vita its going to be more powerful, but perhaps not as much as some would like to think as Vita is mostly a device created to budget with little R&D based on current advancements in mobile tech. The next Xbox is harder to speculate about we've heard rumors that Kinect is going to be a heavy focus next gen for the Xbox brand. That eats into revenue to produce the device since that would seem to point to a mainstream product something that could easily be within the ball park of Wii U. So its sane to say that these systems will end up more powerful than Wii U, but by how much we can't say.

Forget the rumors.... lets talk about the my first question. I asked a question which i thought had facts to back it up. we know nintendo made billions off the Wii. so can they not afford to put more up to date tech into their console. i was just posing a question and every nintendo fan on here took it as a personal attack on them. open up your mind people!

This is merely Nintendo creating console hardware based on the same principles that went into the creation of practically every console ever made. Individuals forget or simply don't realize that using the latest tech has never been within the equation of creating console hardware before the Xbox 360 and PS3. The tech behind consoles in the past was old by time the consoles hit the market often by several years. The gap on the age of the technology within a console has steadily decreased since the Nintendo Entertainment System, but still for instance the age of the GPU technology rumored to be used in the Wii U is rather equivalent with what we saw in the previous generation of consoles at launch.

This isn't anything really to be worried about itself neither Sony nor Microsoft are likely to use bleeding edge tech in their consoles though certainly more up to date than Nintendo. How far behind the capability of Nintendo's Wii U is to their competition really depends on what sort of memory they use, clock speeds, amount of customization, ext. Technical issues will greatly limit the capability of consoles this coming generation primarily because of high wattage from chipsets. I certainly expect Sony and Microsoft to have an edge regarding power, but it isn't going to be anything like the Wii in regards to the Xbox 360 or PS3.

As much as I enjoy this news, it`s sad because the wii was perfect for pikimin

You'll still have the capability to use the Wii remote motion controls including Wii motion plus. I'm not surprised Pikimin jumped a generation. You simply have to look at how Nintendo approaches development and how their developers think, especially in the case of Iwata and Miyamoto. During development Miyamoto will completely throw out a game if it doesn't meet his expectations or he wants to add new ideas and those ideas conflict with the current version of the game. This can be seen as the result of the new art direction found in Skyward Sword motivated in part after adding Wii motion plus functionality. With Pikimin it may simply be that the Wii's hardware wasn't capable enough to do what Nintendo wanted thus why this game was continually stuck in development. Now as a plus Pikimin serves as a strong launch title that won't over shadow 3D party titles. Even if those 3d party titles are practically no more than slightly enhanced ports simply because the art direction of Pikimin won't compete directly with the same audience.