routerbad

they have no next gen consoles listed. that means nothing. they said before that next gen would be announced later. dont want to make you feel bad but hey what else do you do to a 10 year old kid.

They do, XBOX One and PS4 are listed for Ghosts.  They officially announced a PS4 version already, the only one that hasn't been announced is the Wii U version.

I'm going to go ahead and bring up the argument I used against a friend. We are not at the point of marginal returns. Console makers make their consoles less powerful so as not to lose so much money and then want you to believe that. Until we are at a molecular level in games, there will always be room for improvement.

It has nothing to do with losing money.  Their silicon budgets for the internals of the consoles are a determinate factor for price point, they aim to make their money back some way, and the gaming market expanded by a factor of three last generation thanks to "casual gaming" so once the software library is up to snuff console makers will make their money back, except for Sony, they still haven't made their money back on PS3.

Diminishing returns isn't something that goes away because you don't believe in it.  GPU makers put out high end cards for 1000s of dollars in some cases that have more shaders and more RAM than mainstream or budget cards, but all they can do is a few more frames or a higher benchmark score. 

Similar to the CPU "add more GHz" then "add more cores" GPU makers are saying "add more shader cores" then "add more RAM" "wider memory bus".  The problem is that more shader cores and more RAM aren't getting the same performance gains they used to, because as these systems get more complex and powerful, the graphics engines that run on them become more efficient and scalable.  Meaning the engines can do more with less hardware, but having more hardware is no benefit to anyone.

This may help others reading, and I know it will help my general understanding:

 

My impression of console development is that it gets finalized at some point. The foundation, so to speak, is there. In this case, Nintendo, AMD, and IBM know they are going with a GPU, most likely custom from the 6 series (2010), and the tri-core Power 7/750 base chip. Leaving the gamepad out for a moment, I would presume the only thing left for the box itself would be the clock speeds, amount of cache, and so forth. Or, put another way, that initial dev kit, with the 4850 inside, it should have been the target for the OS. 

 

As they got closer with the gamepad and finalized specs, I would have thought that the OS would have been patched along the way. 

 

What I am having trouble understanding is how the OS was in such a state at launch, and how the dev tools were to the point where launch games were using 2 cores. 

 

Note: I am also under the impression that the MCM is simply a customized e6760 and IBM  solution to fill in the gaps. Without a real target game from Nintendo to show off technical capabilities, it is hard for someone not really tech savvy (like myself) to rationalize the issues they have had outside of the gamepad development (which is an amazing achievement along with the low power consumption). 

The original prototypes and the software environment was built around weaker hardware than ended up in the system, that is true.

Because it took so long to get the hardware finalized, the OS itself was not optimized for it by the time they were preparing for launch.  This is a big reason behind the utter lack of marketing, Nintendo are sandbagging the Wii U intentionally (they know early adopters will buy into it anyway, they just thought there would be more) because they themselves felt the software environment was not ready.

The real problem is that the GPU is so very divergent from the original target hardware, that all of the tools would have had to be rewritten both to take advantage of the GPU at a basic level, and to properly use the gamepad.  For the gamepad they needed to essentially upgrade the target hardware in order to get the performance they were looking for with the gamepad, and AMD tech like eyefinity fits perfectly.

It isn't just a customized 6760, its the other way around, in fact.  Its a custom chip that happens to utilize the AMD unified shader cores from the 6760 that they licensed.  It's a brand new animal that no one was prepared for.

I assume they still haven't nailed down the best clock speeds, and the cache on die was based on their budget for the chip.  They really thought of everything, and companies like Shin'en that really understand GPU tech through and through are able to be authoritative on the fact that there is plenty of power there if you know how to use the system properly, and everything is designed for extreme efficiency.  No clock cycles wasted, as it were.

The great thing is that many of us are already satisfied with how the system basically operates, and that says something, because Nintendo isn't, and they will continue to improve all aspects.

I'm just gonna leave this here.

Anyone expecting a major bump in graphical fidelity from any of the three console makers or 3rd party publishers should just stop holding their breath right now.  It isn't going to be the bump that we saw from gen 6 to gen 7 at all.  It will all be very minor enhancements.  Games will look better, and artists will have more room to create, but it isn't going to magically enhance the graphical fidelity to over 9000!!!!

I forgot about the third pillar, lol. I figured then that it was a fancy way of saying transitioning into a different demographic before expanding the product across the entire demographic. Including GBA BC made me think this way.

I did not know they expected immediate success with the Wii. I presumed they expected to expand into the blue ocean while offering the established market something the competition was not. Hence all of those Wii's gathering dust next to the HD Twins awaiting exclusives.

So,launching in 2012 makes sense with regards to the global economic recovery, yet 2011 fit better with Nintendo's product cycle.

What I have problems understanding, from an R&D standpoint, is how the architecture could not be finalized by E3 2011, with dev tools and software being developed from then on? I believe everything in it existed at this point, may be wrong. Clock speed would be all that remained.

I appreciate routerbad and yourself for being so generous with your time in regards to discussing these concepts.

No problem at at all.  

The real reason why they didn't have final hardware much earlier will probably never be known.  Technically, none of the components existed until Nintendo and IBM developed them.  They are based on previous architectures, like Power7, PPC, and AMD Unified Shaders, but the final product is anything but.  

The target hardware for the wii u early on was rumored to be something like a high end HD4XXX series GPU, with a pure Power7 CPU.  Because of all of the difficult R&D that needed to be done to develop a wireless video standard with broadcom that worked with zero lag and no tearing, artifacts, etc, the GPU had to be designed at the same time to work flawlessly with that standard.  My guess is that it took them longer to develop the tech behind the gamepad than anything else, and that the GPU was finalized once they were settled on that.

Also, as 3Dude pointed out in another thread, they wanted eyefinity, which only debuted with very high end 5XXX series GPU's, and made more broadly available for HD6XXX.

    I hope it turns out really good. Without specific screens, and an influx of GAF rumors, one can get a little concerned that the Wii U version would be on a completely different level. Then again, the GAF group presumes the PS4 will be ultra efficient, and the Jaguar cores will all be available to games. Oh, and that the cores are fast, lol.

Very, VERY few GAF members have a grasp on what the Jaguar cores are actually capable of, these are the same people that thought that a low clocked chip with high IPC and efficiency couldn't exist precisely until the PS4 clocks were announced.

 

E3insider.com is a site owned and operated by the organizers of the E3 conference itself.  They give viewers a backstage pass, so to speak, to all of the highlights of the happenings on the show floor.  They commonly list games that will be making an appearance at the conference on the site several days before the show floor opens, complete with a platform listing.

Activision Blizzard has been mum on whether their latest installment of the critically acclaimed Call of Duty franchise would be making its way onto Nintendo’s next generation system, but the landing page for Call of Duty: Ghosts on E3 Insider lists Wii U as one of the release platforms for the game.  This may ease the angst many fans of the series were experiencing as the announcements came and went without a single mention of the Wii U, and those fearing more backpedaling on support from the publisher due to lackluster COD: Black Ops II sales.

Given that EA has confirmed they will not be bringing their flagship first person shooter Battlefield 4 to the Wii U it would make even more sense for Activision to continue with their own support, and Call of Duty can enjoy very little competition from other similar games on the platform.

What are your thoughts on this revelation?  Will you be looking forward to Ghosts when it launches later this year?  Sound off in the comments below.

[Source: E3 Insider]

 

http://nintendoenthu...-by-e3-insider/

[UPDATE] The reference has been pulled.

hmm I just thought of this.

 

The PS4 and Xbone both don't support BC because they couldn't handle the code written for the PS3 and Xbox360 hardware, not because they're weak but because the architecture is so different.

So my guess would be if devs were to port games from this gen to the next the Ps4 and 360 in a similar fashion they do for wii u they would suffer from hick ups as well? 

Seeing as the CPU both of the other consoles went with is not only much weaker than PPE (on a core per core basis and only with regards to SIMD) and that they moved from RISC to CISC it would take a lot more work than it does even on the Wii U, which at least has decent SIMD given the performance we do see in ports using only two cores at times.

 

Worst thing is, a lot of these posts were made by the same person, djlewe. Can't we just stop these doom and gloom threads with incorrect spelling, punctuation and all and just wait for what Nintendo has to offer? 

 

 

 

 

That was where the assumption came from, dijewe was trolling the boards hard with these types of threads for nearly a month.

This wasn't leaked, this was posted up at Disneyland.  They were posters of already announced/shown games.  It was to promote the Nintendo Summer Showcase in the area, where people were able to play demos of available titles.

This wasn't leaked, this was posted up at Disneyland.  They were posters of already announced/shown games.  It was to promote the Nintendo Summer Showcase in the area, where people were able to play demos of available titles.

This is beyond hilarity.  Don't act like none of you who were around for the bit wars as a kid didn't do this exact same thing talking about why Mario was better than sonic.

I have been searching A$$, if you didn't like my question you don't have to post on it. Troll huh lol how old are you? 12 prob! everyone else thanks for your post. Its kinda what i figured just laziness. 

I also just want to point out, since you said you couldn't find it.

Developers were originally given the final hardware Dev units late last year and were required to port a game with zero experience on a new platform (all of the chips are custom) and with literally no tools at the outset.

I wouldn't blame it so much on laziness, as I would Nintendo not being prepared to launch the system when they did.  The OS was buggy and slow, the tools were not there, the dev units had just been finalized.  Nintendo has to shoulder a bit of the blame as well.

Also, throughout the dev cycle, most games were only ever able to run on two cores, meaning that the third core of the CPU (which the game engines, being ports themselves from PS360, relied heavily on) was not in use.  Only a few games ever ended up making use of the third core by launch.

It wasn't Nintendo's brightest moment, but the good news is that they quickly made the proper fixes, and are still providing updates to boost system performance as well as iterating and refining their tools for developers and providing more hands on support to them.

Not a new console. Sega talking to hardware partners would raise flags. It's probably game related, maybe some sort of online thing.

A wild possibility... Maybe Sega is helping Nintendo with their online, and its called Sega Spectrum?

Probably not BUT one can dream.

That would be awesome, some sort of Wii U tie in.  I think its more related to the arcade market, though.  Sega still talk to hardware partners regularly as it is, they just don't do home consoles.  They still have an arcade business.

You need to slow your roll. He was just asking a question.

Please, this forum is cluttered enough with useless threads asking the same questions over and over.  His question was actually answered in a thread on the front page of "new items" and several in the first page of the hardware thread.

Also, I answered the question, by posting several topics in which his very question is investigated in detail, and apologized for the misunderstanding.  I could have just deleted my previous post, but that would have been dishonest.