i hope they go back to cartridge i mean i always thought it was superior to disc i mean cartridges are pretty cheap now and the console could be pretty small without a disc drive

Cartridges have several advantages to disks like the capability for near lack of loading times, co-processors, and extra ram, but I don't think it would be wise to switch back to cartridges. They simply aren't cheap enough yet to have capacities large enough to compete with other options available. One option that may be possible next generation is holographic storage. It removes a considerable amount of the cartridge's advantage regarding loading times with Tapestry Media having transfer rates of 20 MB/s in read write mode and up to 300GB of storage estimated last I can find at 6 to 20 cents per GB. Holographic storage is also compared to other disk formats extremely scratch resistant and a drive should still be able to play Wii and Gamecube games. As a retro bonus Tapestry Media has a cartridge/floppy disk like design. Nintendo had a stake in this technology with a joint patent with Inphase Technology, though all progress has potentially stopped because of recent troubles at Inphase, which now is under new ownership.

Yeah, I've been wondering when Nintendo will start using holographic storage. I'm not sure if they can get it out cheap enough yet.
It would be awesome if they brought it out next gen.

Tapestry Media as far as the disks are concerned likely are ready even with the latest issues at Inphase Technologies. Imagine a floppy disk about the size of a Gamecube disk with more than three times the storage of a single layer Blu-Ray disk, super fast loading times, and possibly not costing much more than a comparable Blu-Ray disk. A 150GB disk for instance could cost from $9 US to $30 US based on previous estimates. Sounds high, but it could potentially beat Blu-Ray XL at similar capacities as far as price goes. The issue are the drives the Tapestry Media drives last I knew where large and very expensive, but the joint patent between Nintendo and Inphase Technologies points to a miniaturization in the technology. The final issue though is I'm not sure if any real progress has been made because of the financial issues at Inphase.

From what I gather from Neogaf this rumor from 01net is either completely bogus, an over reaction from some of the earlier dev kits which are known to have several issues, or simply someone not understanding that generally hardware development at this stage is usually clustered and haphazard to begin with. An individual from Neogaf with connection with this issue stated that the latest dev kit fixed the streaming issues with the controllers, so apparently that no longer is an issue.

Although I know that (unless something HUGE happened in the industry) Nintendo will never fork over the Metroid license to Crytek...

The prospect makes me tingly inside.

The best thing that could happen for the Metroid franchise is simply for Nintendo to beef-up Retro and hand the franchise back to them. It was the most popular it has ever been in the 3D gens in their hands and its doubtful that anyone else would be able to engage the current fanbase to a higher degree. First I'd rather Retro handle another IP perhaps a full blown Donkey Kong not merely a retro side scroller, but no doubt no one would better revive the Metroid franchise than Retro. Crytek themselves are a poor choice for Metroid anyway. Metroid is so much more than merely a third or first person shooter. Crytek's specialties don't really apply to the creation of a game like Metroid.

This is very exciting news but why do i feel so skeptical about the wii u?? Maybe crytek could be making the next metroid game?? That would be insane!!!!

I highly doubt Nintendo would hand one of its franchises over to a western developer that they themselves don't own. The second coming is more likely to happen tomorrow than Crytek ever producing a metroid game.

Every last leaked photo is fake. The Nintendo logo was wrong of the first few leaked images and many of the others have obvious features that give them away as being fake. Manufacturing of this console only recently started leaked photos should be of the developer kit not prototypes, which would be secretly held at Nintendo. If any of you have ever seen a photo of a early Nintendo dev kit you'll understand that usually these devices are very crude. The early DS dev kits where made out of two butchered GBA's with a Super Nintendo controller. The current Nintendo Cafe/Stream dev kits are likely butchered PC's.

Edit: I believe I've already stated this somewhere on this blog, but anyway these fake photo leaks are created using a Windows 7 software box with fake connections. They could even used photoshop to create the majority of image. They are fake and not worth noting Nintendo would be on these rumors quicker than flies to garbage would an actual photo leak.

If you read my last post about the leaks (the one in which I leaked an image myself), you'd know that these are supposed to be pictures of a developer unit with no working disc drive. So that slot you see isn't really a slot for anything.

They're not real Feld0. You shouldn't get your hopes up regarding images from a console that has only recently been in production, or potentially isn't in production yet. If you've ever seen an early Nintendo dev kit you'd understand that these devices don't fit the bill. Early dev kits are crudely built devices in the case of Cafe we're likely talking about a butchered PC.

Improving the fidelity of the Wii Remote will have to wait until Nintendo releases a new remote for the Wii U. The only way really to my knowledge to increase the fidelity of the Wii Remote after Motion + is to replace the camera within the Wii Remote with a higher quality camera. The technology behind the Wii Remote is quite different than that behind PS Move.

Nintendo won’t be sharing the technical specifications of the Wii U anytime soon. We’ll have to wait for a full teardown when the console releases for the juicy details. But as a very rough guide, an industry analyst shared that “Some of the developers we spoke to indicated to us that the console will have 50% more processing power compared to the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.”

That sounds pretty decent to me. Developers are still managing to wring more power out of the current systems, so 50% more power is plenty of room for developers to play with.


http://wiiublog.com/the-wii-u-is-50-more-powerful-than-the-xbox-360-and-ps3/

This isn't anything to really pay attention to. How exactly did they come up with that 50% figure. Most individuals don't understand squat about tech or how to judge how capable one chipset is compared to another. For all we know a few developers told them the Wii U has a 50% faster clock speeds. This was more or less expected in any of the predictions of Wii U's hardware and is in no way an indication of the chipsets raw power, but to the uninformed they may think Wii U is only 50% more powerful because of 50% faster clock speeds.

Would only 50% more powerful be bad. I think that is good. I don't see the next consoles from Sony or Microsoft to be no more than 75% more powerful. Being that is what the developer is saying only 50% could mean more as developers haven't even tap out the current gens power.

It would be bad for long term third party support. Nintendo would potentially maintain support for the next one to two years it takes PS4 and Xbox Next to release and then they'd potentially lose support depending on Wii U's popularity. Still regardless the success of Wii may lead to Wii U maintaining better support even after Sony and Microsoft's next consoles hit, but Wii U would quickly end up in the same situation as far as support goes depending on what happens even potentially having a shorter lifespan than Wii depending on its popularity. I expect the next Xbox and Playstation to be five times as capable as their current incarnations at least. This would mean lower prices, smaller consoles, and profit earlier than this previous generation if not right away. That's close to the jump earlier rumors placed Wii U. Don't buy into nonsense both Xbox 360 and PS3 have been tapped out as far as raw capability. This is partly a limitation based on RAM, but still even with more RAM you couldn't get much more out of current HD consoles outside the possibility of PS3.

I don't know how they came up with the 50% more powerful figure is basically I don't think its wise to focus on this. For all I know this comes from a report that Nintendo's chipset runs 50% faster like I said or the CPU benchmarks at 350 gflops. At 350 gflops it would only have 50% more processing power than PlayStation 3's cell processor, but around 4x the processing power of Xbox 360's Xenon processor. If the processor is simply a tri or quad core CPU and not some strange architecture like the cell that would also mean roughly four times the general processing capability of current consoles. Then like I said most don't understand tech instead of single precision gflops developers may of given double precision gflops info. A figure of 120 gflops or 144 gflops doesn't look impressive unless you can distinguish whether its single precision gflops or double precision gflops. A figure of 120 gflops or 144 gflops would place Wii U around 50% more powerful than Xbox 360 depending on if you go with the real world benchmark figures or if you use the theoretical figure, but if instead of single precision gflops the figure is double precision gflops those same figures are 2 to 2.5 times as powerful as Xbox 360. An that's merely in double point precision operations we still would have to figure out the single precision gflops of the chip, which could vary greatly based on architecture. As an example Playstation 3's cell at best in real world figures has 15 gflops to a theoretical 17.2 gflops regarding double precision operations compared to the theoretical 230.4 single point precession gflops figure given to same chip.

Wow the PS2 only had a 299Mhz processor? That sure is a big jump. However, I don't think you could expect the Wii U processor being 1,000% more powerful with a 30GHz processor, that technology doesn't even exist

There may never be a 30GHz processor. Current trends are leading to numerous small less expensive cores and architecture redesigns that increase performance without increasing clock speed considerably.

I'd rather see someone at Nintendo finally bring the gameplay of Donkey Kong Country into the third dimension. I enjoyed Donkey Kong 64, but I wouldn't call it the ideal transition from a side scrolling platformer to a third person platformer. I'm relatively positive this would be good challenge for Retro and if done right it could easily give Nintendo a third heavy hitter. The tp's idea itself wouldn't be bad as a downloadable game for the Wii U or a full game for the 3DS.

correct they have stated that they will not invest heavily on the ps4 as they did on the ps3 but please stop saying sony isnt finacially stable  because thats just incorrect.

nintendo could have sold twice as many wii's and im pretty sure they still wouldnt even come close to sony's revenue

dont be a fanboy as its pretty likely the ps4 will be stronger

Don't be a fool. The PS3 lost Sony so much money they lost all profit they've have had within the console market. Worse many of their other departments aren't doing overly while on their own for a few years. Nintendo is a much bigger company than many realize. They've made profit off of the Wii since the beginning likewise with the DS. Nintendo hardware has made Nintendo billions of dollars while Sony has lost billions and only recently to my knowledge began making a profit. The razor edge model is dead at least to the extremes of the PS3. The Vita is Sony's future attitude toward hardware going forward. Low R&D using mature technology while taking advantage of developments in hardware. Really I wouldn't be surprised with Sony taking a lower cost direction with PS4 depending on the result of the Vita.

I do believe that the patent for the Wii U tablet controller confirms that the tablet controllers will use a rechargeable battery. They could likely use the same battery as the 3DS cutting cost while still having a relatively log battery live since the tablets are mostly dump terminals.

From everything we've heard in my opinion this is what I see Nintendo's online service basically being. First there would be some basic infrastructure and a Wii U account (it could still use friend codes or something equivalent to tell you the truth). Then each publisher would have individual services such as Origin or Steam. Hopefully this is all set up where you don't have to use multiple accounts for different games, but that is a possibility.

All of the wii controllers and the gamecube controller will be able to be used. As for games, they might put gamecube games on virtual consoles or the store.they will have for sure, wii games.

GameCube controllers are out a long with GameCube backwards compatibility. The Wii U is merely backwards compatible with Wii. This mostly is because the ports for GameCube controllers and memory cards has been removed.

Nintendo it seems at least don't appear to be considering the idea of focusing on 3D in the Wii's successor. Some other visual or control based hook will likely be added to give the Wii's successor the same sort of viral appeal Nintendo is trying to give the 3DS with its glasses-less 3D screen. The only idea I can think of that they could add that would give a similar experience as 3D without depending on consumers buying an expensive new TV is through head tracking VR displays through the same sort of camera technology already used in the DS, 3DS, and Wii remote. The problem is that it would be a very personal experience as only one individual at a time could benefit from the effect.

We still don't know the final specification of the Wii U. Nintendo don't make a loss on consoles and the Wii U console itself is quite small only marginally bigger than the Wii. I've read comments from developers that have sounded at times its less powerful, the same power or more powerful than 360/PS3.

For example the GPU will more than likely be bottom of the range similar to Xbox 360 and may be underclocked to prevent overheating in the Wii U case but the fact it will be using slightly later technology and have more high speed video memory will give it advantages. One comment I've read is it can use higher resolution textures.

Until we get a final specification we won't really know the power of the console. Remember the Wii was launched well after the original Xbox and yet was far less powerful.

Nintendo were happy to use PS3/360 graphics to showcase the Wii U at E3. You would think if the console was as powerful as modern PCs they would have used PC graphics to showcase Wii U graphics. I think we need to put our realistic hats on.

I do believe Skyrim will be fantastic on Wii U though and as its got to come later to the format it will probably come with many of the bugs already fixed. Bethedsa games always seem to have major issues and require patches. I just hope the patches the Wii U version will need don't fill up the Wii U's flash memory.

Nothing supposedly from developers have placed Wii U at or below current HD consoles. For the most part developers aren't willing to talk about graphical horse power and more than likely Nintendo has told them to say nothing regarding this issue. How the console relates in power to the other HD consoles has been practically a no comment issue. Practically all developers have said is that it is an HD console and that its architecture fits their current business model. Currently by piecing together information regarding current Dev Kits that's leaked it seems because of a heating issue they had to be down clocked because under too large a load the kits crashed. Otherwise the GPU for instance is supposedly from multiple rumors within the range of a Radeon HD 4850. We'll have a better idea of the consoles actual abilities sometime this month once the new Dev Kits get into the hands of developers willing to leak info.

The Wii wasn't far less powerful than the Xbox. In fact it was noticeably more powerful than the Xbox. The only capability Wii lacked was programmable shaders a feature Nintendo at the time really didn't like.

Nintendo apparently used PS3 and Xbox 360 footage because Wii U footage available to them from 3d party developers wasn't noticeably better than the PS3 and Xbox 360 footage. This was Nintendo trying to prevent the issue that occurred to Microsoft when showing early Xbox 360 footage that lead to the belief that Xbox 360 wasn't noticeably more powerful than Xbox. Many of the rumors regarding the GPU should allow Wii U to play any modern PC game at high. Perhaps it would of been smart to showcase some of the latest PC games as an example of what the console is capable of, but it is obvious that their focus was the controller.

How on earth do you consider the Wii noticably more powerful than Xbox? The xbox had high resolution graphics upto 1080i resolution, 32bit colour not 24bit colour, true 5.1 sound, a more advanced gpu, a faster cpu, 64meg of main memory not 24meg plus 3 meg video, a built in hard drive with the ability to cache in extra game data quickly. How are you gauging the Wii has more power than the Xbox? I've got both and the best Xbox graphics easily beat the wii. Games like Soul Caliber II run at 720p on xbox. Some games run at 1080i. Have you actually seen Far Cry on the original xbox? Still a stunning game visually.

The 64MB of unified memory within the Xbox was for everything while the 88MB on Wii is split. The unified memory is superior that's certainly not something I'm arguing, but if you think all that 64MB is for GPU work you need to do more research. On average I doubt Wii has less memory available to the GPU, and at the resolutions used by the Wii it really doesn't matter. Wii's GPU however is superior in some ways to the Xbox while inferior in others. Overall however the Wii is more powerful than the Xbox its not even arguable. The only significant advantage the Xbox had over the Wii is programmable shaders. A hard drive hardly has anything to do with the capabilities of a console so that's a mute point. Developers choosing not to really push the Wii really doesn't make this any less true. I'm gauging the Wii's power based on info that's been found by various sources. You have to realize that in real life applications the Xbox wasn't extremely more powerful than Gamecube and the enhancements to the architecture from Gamecube to Wii as lack luster as the console was surpassed what was actually capable on the Xbox.

Firstly the extra 64 megabytes on the wii is buffer memory for the dvd drive and sound. The gamecube only had 16meg of slow buffer memory but it only had to buffer a single layer 1.4GB optical disc. The wii makes use of a full dvd disc so it was increased. The xbox replaces the dvd buffer memory with 768meg of cached hard drive memory for each game. Remember the hard drive itself has some cache memory. So that 64 meg is there because of a lack of hard drive and its still much slower but does mean the wii can load level data continously and doesn't need to pause to load new level data in the same way as the dreamcast for example.

The wii has 24 meg of main memory and 3 meg of video memory. 2meg of video memory is the frame buffer and 1meg for textures. The 2meg limits the resolution of the wii to 480p and the 1meg texture memory creates heavy restrictions on the amount of textures that can be used. Hence why many of the wii's best games are cartoon type graphics due to the texture limitation.

Xbox has 64meg of unified memory of which upto 12meg can be used for graphics. I guess that would be needed for 1080i games. Most games only use about 6meg I believe. 3 meg frame buffer and 3 meg textures I guess. Remember the Xbox has 32bit colour where as wii is only 24bit colour so xbox needs 33% extra memory for the frame buffer.

If you want to believe the wii is more powerful than the original xbox back it up with facts. You haven't made any case at all. Of course the hard drive is important. Maybe you believe the powerpc chip at 720mhz is more powerful than the Celeron at 733mhz in the xbox. Benchmarks proof otherwise. The xbox gpu is much more powerful than the gamecube/wii gpu.

The wii has more memory bandwidth overall but its a very limited console. The soundchip in the xbox was state of the art for the time producing a huge number of channels and with true 5.1 sound, the wii has a 2 channel sound chip.

There is nothing like Half life 2 on the wii. That game on the xbox had a full physics engine. We are certainly going off topic with the discussion but its clear the wii is inferior. Can you think of a single wii game with realistic graphics that is superior on wii to a similar title on xbox? Something like Call of Duty 3 on the wii has lost the excellent 5.1 soundtrack, its lost the 32bit colour range and been downgraded to 24bit colour. Some of the detail in the game is missing to fit into the 24meg memory of the wii. Treyach really went to town with the wii version and it's the wii's most successful first person shooter selling over 2 million copies but its still inferior to the xbox version. Far Cry is far superior to Call of Duty 3 on xbox but it would be unfair to compare Far Cry xbox to Far Cry Wii.

The fact is people assumed the wii was more powerful than xbox because it came out later, the reality is that it isn't. Many xbox games are hugely ambitious and the likes of which have never been seen on the wii due to limited memory and lack of hard drive.

Just to summarise;

Xbox is best for;

GPU
CPU
Memory
hard drive
sound

wii is best for

memory bandwidth

Your still not getting it. Certainly there are some features the Xbox GPU has that the Wii's doesn't, but overall in raw capability the Wii surpasses the overall capabilities of the Xbox. The hard drive on the Xbox isn't capable of acting like RAM. You can load game data onto the hard drive and pull it directly from there, but you still have to run game data through the slower memory bandwidth. It may or may not be faster to load data from the hard drive I'd have to do further research than I think this topic requires. A hard drive hardly has any effect on the capability of a console its a nice feature that's quite welcomed in the case of the PS3 because of the slow Blu-Ray drive, but its not going to magically improve a console's capabilities. Wii is a console only meant for standard definition obviously and fixed function so the feature set of Hollywood and Xbox's GPU is quite different. You again have to understand that regardless of what you may find on the Xbox's GPU in real world situations because of one restraint or another it wasn't considerably more powerful than the Gamecube. Architecture improvements and a higher clock more than makes up the difference. The largest advantage of the Xbox over the Wii your going to find is programmable shaders. Its possible as quoted by devs to reproduce the shader effects of the Xbox, but most don't bother to do so.

Its been considerably more difficult to search up some of those old threads and news releases regarding the capability of the Wii compared to the Xbox than I thought it would be, but still using Google you should be able to find sources that explains why Wii is technically more powerful than Xbox in far more detail than I can. The CPU Broadway is more powerful and regardless of its own limitations Hollywood has several advantages and technically capable of more in regards of real world situations. The Wii simply hasn't been pushed graphically. Majority of third party developers focus more on making Wii games as cheaply as possible since they haven't been historically successful on the console and many developers have admitted to the fact they don't really try to push the console.

the ps3 looked 50% better on paper then the xbox 360 but it wasnt just remember that ppl

Don't get overly carried away with the silliness of this info's source say that the Wii U is 50% more powerful, because that is completely impossible given their own rumored specs. Alpha dev kits are created with of the shelf parts for the most part, so the only 40 nm 4000s series card is the 4770, which is four times more powerful than the Xbox 360, and a more modern quad core would completely outperform the Xbox 360.

It says right in the article that these are for the March 2011 devkits. The real Wii U will likely be much more powerful.

If this rumor is true this is extraordinary actually. 768 MB of embedded dram is outrageous, much less this also states that another version is experimenting on 1 GB of embedded dram. This is actually not a bad thing if this would happen you can do a lot more with 768 MB to 1 GB of embedded dram than the 1-1.5 GB of rumored and speculated ddr3/gddr3/gddr5. This would greatly increase the performance of the rumored R700 GPU and the CPU considerably. This also sounds like complete unicorn tongue. 768 MBs of embedded dram would be extremely expensive much less if the other version of 1 GB would end up being the final amount.

Edit:

Coming from Neogaf if this rumor is true the site who give the information may of gotten their terms wrong. Instead of 768 MB it could be 768 Mb, which would be 96 MBs of edram, which is more realistic though still expensive. There would still have to be main memory of some lesser ram.

Can't see much truth in those.

Surely if there is any truth to these rumours then it's 768Mb(96MB) and not 768MB. However I don't even see that as been true as one thing that we do know is that the chip and eDram will be made using IBM's 45nm node, not 32nm which is where I believe that the 1Gb of eDram becomes possible.

Also from what we have heard about the overall Wii U performance then a quad-core 3Ghz CPU seems overkill. Bear in mind the Xbox triple core isn't comparable to an Out of Order chip. A proper dual-core coming in about ~2.5Ghz would surely be more than enough to feed what will most likely be a custom Redwood core(400SP).

Actually using IBM's edram the maximum amount of edram that can be embedded per core is 32 MBs. That means embedding a total of 96 MBs to 128 MBs is completely possible at the 45nm process. A dual-core wouldn't be enough. For one thing I have no idea where you came up with the idea that the Wii U uses a custom 400SP GPU. All the leaks and rumors point to something more around 640SP to 800SP. A custom gpu around the capability of a 4770 or 4850 is highly likely.

Because there's no reason why they can't make Monster Hunter for both handhelds and home consoles so they might as well cover both markets even if the handheld one is bigger.

The point is that not only is the market for handhelds larger, but the market for console games within Japan isn't large enough to warrant development on next gen HD hardware. There isn't a financial reason for Capcom to develop a game within the franchise for the Wii U. The Wii U has to enlarge the console market in Japan, the monster hunter series is going to need to find a western audience, or Nintendo needs to foot the bill otherwise Monster Hunter Wii U is very unlikely.

http://gamrreview.vg...ble-3rd-hd-ver/

Really? And that's just an HD port.



That's what I was saying, sort of.

An HD port is an entirely different beast than creating a new entry within the franchise for an HD console. There isn't anywhere near the cost involved with your average port than creating a game from scratch for more capable hardware. I hold to my statement Monster Hunter Wii U is very unlikely unless Nintendo foots the bill, or Wii U creates a larger market internally for console franchises. Capcom isn't going to just create a Monster Hunter game for Wii U for **** and giggles. Capcom is a company and like any company needs a financial reason above all to go forward with a project. There simply isn't any reason financially for Capcom to create a Monster Hunter game for the Wii U.

My point was that Monster Hunter sells great no matter what. Also Nintendo has said they're willing to invest in third-party exclusives for the 3DS and Wii U some I'm sure they'd give a moneyhat for Monster Hunter on Wii U. In fact I bet that's how they got Monster Hunter 4.

I don't rule out Nintendo potentially footing the bill for a Monster Hunter for the Wii U. My point is merely that Capcom doesn't have an incentive to create an entry within the franchise on the Wii U otherwise really unless Wii U proves to drastically increase the size of the console market in Japan. For what it would cost to develop a single Wii U title they could likely create several entries and spin offs for the handheld market, which ultimately would prove more profitable. Then footing the bill for a proper Monster Hunter for the Wii U would be considerably more expensive than footing the bill for the 3DS. Financially Nintendo may not see the point for footing the bill for such an expensive purchase especially when majority of the console market is the west where majority of their troubles are likely to occur.