Hard drive's seems to be the best choice. One, it's very reliable. Two, you can transfer data between one hard drive, to another.
I think Nintendo should go for the hard drive this time around, if they use an SD card, I will be highly upset.

I think they should make two models, in both $300 and $350 form. (Or $350 and $400 form, whichever.)

The $300 form will have no Hard Drive (however, you can purchase one at a later time if you should want to) and will use external memory to save.
The $350 form will have a Hard Drive (The amount of gigs is TBD) and can also use external memory to save, and you can transfer data from the Hard Drive to the external memory card.

Just my two cents on it anyway.

The reason that Nintendo isn't using an internal hard drive is that they simply aren't reliable enough as well as the extra costs that an internal hard drive adds to a system. Hard drives add more moving parts than Nintendo is comfortable with increasing the likely hood that something breaks. This is primarily why Nintendo likes solid state memory. You will never see a Nintendo console with an internal hard drive. The wide variety of options open currently from SD cards to external hard drives is more than enough storage. For the average consumer 8GBs is more than enough for those who need more at least there will be options to supply that.

My impression is that its graphics capabilities are not far beyond the current competition. That is probably plenty enough power anyway, but at the same time they don't want to reveal specs because people would judge the system on the fact that the specs are similar to five year old products, despite that you shouldn't.

We're rapidly approaching a threshold where graphics across the board are going to be impressive and they simply won't matter anymore. There will still be improvements, but they won't be defining systems like they were a decade ago, when everybody was debating what system had the best capabilities.

The industry in the modern era is about marketing, software, and services. Hardware matters more in form than raw tech specs.

What's most important about Wii U on the technical side is its architecture. Work on the system to an extent carries over from the current generation. Don't expect visuals of Wii games to get much better than you see in their first year. Developers already know how to achieve results with the hardware because they've worked on the Xbox 360 for years. Of course they aren't identical, but they're going to find all the ins/out/tricks a lot faster this time.

Your impression is quite off then. Both demos to some degree showcased effects simply impossible to replicate with current generation consoles. That's without mentioning that both demos where running at 1080p native resolution in real time while pulling off Global Illumination, high quality textures, and ext. Literally only a few PC games on their highest settings can do some of the things being done in both demos. The more impressive demo the Japanese Garden Demo is specifically stated as being based on an older version of the hardware and Zelda tech demos always are worse than the final product. Their choice regarding the demos perhaps wasn't the best. It would of helped get the capabilities of the console around to specific crowds of individuals if one demo had been a realistic urban setting (a FPS ext). We've more or less already meet the threshold where most individuals have a hard time telling several of the current improvements in graphics compared to the capabilities of the current consoles. That has a lot to do with the fact majority of it is very subtle and that no developer has really embraced tessellation. What improvements can be seen for next generation consoles also really need to be seen in person or the original video files as recordings lose quite a bit of detail.

Speaking of tessellation, I just heard that the Xbox 360 will employ a rendering technique called "mega meshes" that will supposedly take advantage of the tessellation unit that I never knew the console had.

Here's a tech demo.

I'm not sure if this is anything to really be excited about. AMD's in hardware tessellation unit in the Radeon HD 4XXX series of GPU's wasn't very efficient. To do anything meaningful with the tessellation unit in the 4XXX series you practically needed the raw computing power of Radeon HD 4850x2 or 4870x2 both of which are practically a full generational leap from Xbox 360's Xeon. I don't see how a tessellation unit on the Xbox 360's Xeon would be any different. Notice how lifeless majority of that tech demo was for instance. This may be too taxing on the hardware for the Xbox 360 to utilize this in any meaningful way in games.

Hey, Jikayaki, what did you think of the Zelda tech demo?

It was impressive in its own right. The highlights of HD Experience Zelda Tech demo was the lighting, shadow, particle effects, and resolution of the animations. It looked impressive from the beginning so I really haven't given it much of a second look, but compared to the Japanese Garden Tech demo there wasn't as much going on. I'd safely say that like the Japanese Garden Tech demo the effects done in the Zelda demo was beyond anything you can do with current consoles short of the PC right now. I'm interested in seeing how Zelda Wii U ends up looking like as historically Zelda tech demos are always worse than the final product.

Something to look into the version of this demo used during the conference isn't the full version of the demo and the demo itself is far more impressive if you can find a good quality video. Something missing in this version for instance is the hawk or falcon part of the demo, which shows in real time the seasons changing and the falcon interacting with the environment( pulling a leaf from a tree, rain dripping of the falcon, and the falcon playing in the snow). This demo is actually very impressive once you stop to think about it even in comparison with some of the latest PC games like Witcher 2. You can't play this using current home consoles, and according to Reggie this demo was based off an earlier developer kit, thus doesn't represent the full capabilities of the console. I have higher hopes for Wii U graphically than I did originally. The CPU is likely based on info from IBM based on Power 7 architecture. This means in layman's terms there is a chance that the CPU at least is a full generational leap a head of Xbox 360, so it wouldn't make sense for the GPU to lag behind. It still won't be capable of graphics to the level of that recent EPIC demo, but neither will any next gen consoles.

Well, Microsoft plans on using this rendering technique in their upcoming exclusives. In fact, this tech demo was derived from Peter Molyneux's Kinect project, Milo and Kate.

Then its likely that you won't see a whole lot done with this at least not on Xbox 360. They may be able to utilize this technique to a certain degree in real world situations, but something else has to take a hit to utilize it to any real effect. At this point developers don't have much left over processing power to throw into this rendering technique regarding Xbox 360 hardware.

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.

Found it. Here's that patent.


Wait...AMD is shipping a ton of Trinity processors next year? That's news to me. When did that get get leaked out?

A leak from AMD apparently some time last year are so stated that Trinity APU would be in a next generation console launching in 2012. There is a thread on Neogaf where the idea of a Trinity APU powered Wii 2 originated from to my knowledge. I've seen several forums predicting that Trinity APU which should be in production in 2012 could power the next Nintendo console since the leak mentioned AMD designing the CPU for a next generation console to launch in 2012 and a few put two and two together. I haven't yet confirmed the existence of this leak, but I first heard of it at Neogaf, which I take as a rather reliable source. I still think Nintendo would go with PowerPC or at least Power derived CPU, but something interesting brought up on Neogaf's is it isn't impossible to include PowerPC cores in the APU. The sealing point of Nintendo possibly utilizing a Trinity APU derived processor to me is it would cast less than twice what their CPU and GPU did last generation only at about $80 at mass product levels. Depending on the price point of the console Nintendo could easily up Trinity's GPU a little an throw in two small PowerPC cores and make profit from the beginning with a sizable upgrade in power over current consoles.

Nintendo has always been about creating awesome content first, then making a console worthy of it, so to speak. Really, as you explained over your entire post, and as I said in my last one, there won't be any spectacular differences between the competing consoles because we're rapidly approaching the physical limitations of our current hardware (e.g.: I don't think 4k TV's really exist yet; even 3D ones are still brand new). I see the next generation of consoles as one in which hardware power will play a much smaller role than it did before, and the focus will be on creating incredible, memorable gaming experiences instead - and Nintendo is better known for that than any other company out there.

I'd agree Nintendo is very successful in creating memorable franchises that hold a lot of weight for the fanbases they attract. I don't think Nintendo can compete next generation without third party developers, but Nintendo seems to be handling that rather well. Resolutions beyond 1080p do exist, but primarily on Monitors not HDTVs. A higher resolution on HDTVs is unlikely to appear for quite sometime.

Thanks for that list, Play4Fun. I featured it over on the blog.


I agree with most of your points there, Jikayaki. Honestly, I don't think anyone's yet made a game that uses up every ounce of even the PlayStation 3's power yet, so the arms race for the bigger and badder console is probably going to slow down as the console manufacturers begin to focus on providing engaging services and experiences, now that they've made machines so powerful, comparisons between them don't even matter anymore.

Some kind of game streaming tech a la OnLive would be amazing to see implemented by a major player someday, if only because they'd do it better. Actually, Nintendo received a patent some time ago for a technology similar to that, which also allows the developers to directly send game patches and updates to the distribution servers - I remember it was a fascinating read. I can dig it up, if you're interested.

I'd actually would be interested in that patent if you can find it, but that sort of technology isn't ready yet. It would be a waste to invest in an OnLive like system next gen console since the necessary bandwidth and internet speeds for mass market appeal isn't really there yet even in most first world countries. Currently the latest graphically impressive games on the Xbox 360 and PS3 utilize about 80% to 90% percent of the total power of these machines. Its actually rather unusual to reach this level of capability in closed hardware simply because usually we'd would of already seen a console refresh.

Not that there's really much of an envelope left to push, as you're putting it. I still remember the days when the PlayStation 3 was thought of as a miniature supercomputer, and hearing news stories about them being used in clusters in scientific and military applications. But yeah, 5-year-old technology is 5-year-old technology, and it would probably be more surprising if Nintendo didn't surpass it with the Wii 2.

It would be almost impossible not to surpass the PS3 to some extent using more modern architecture. GPU's exist that would have what I'd consider in the ballpark of next gen capabilities over current consoles, but I do have one worry with next gen consoles though and in a way that explains why Microsoft and Sony are banking on 3D tvs. Going by 01Net's R700 class CPU speculation as an example the most realist mid end GPU of that family of GPU's that may not be that difficult to optimize for consoles is Radeon HD 4850, which would roughly be a little more than four times as powerful as Xbox 360's own GPU. This GPU would allow likely at native 720p lighting and physics effects on GPU side increased by four times over the Xbox 360. If you understand the little details behind the capabilities existent in current games that is an impressive increase in its own right since most games can't run on a descent FPS on 720p on current consoles with only 1/4 the effects, but the average consumer won't be capable of noticing the difference. The image will be clearer with more detail and four times more realistic physics and lighting, but the average consumer already has trouble understanding the difference between 30FPS from 60FPS, 720p from 1080p, and even sub-HD from real HD. There isn't going to be that clear cut difference between generations we're used to regardless of how much more power these machines have within a realistic range.

The most power I expect in Nintendo's next console ranges from about six times as powerful as the Xbox 360 to eight times as powerful. According to a leak from AMD picked up by Neogaf its Trinity APU is going to be in an next generation console to release in 2012, which currently if true could be the Wii 2 making the console about 6 times as powerful as Xbox 360 if its using a Radeon HD 5770 equivalent GPU. Like the situation above, this would carry over to all consoles not just Wii 2, it would no longer be possible to truly bank on the possibility that the average gamer would be able to notice a considerable difference between the new hardware and its games and the current HD consoles. In this case the console would easily be capable of native 1080p with again a large boost in physics, lighting, and A.I., but a clear cut visual difference isn't guarantied. A format beyond 1080p being made into production would go a long way to creating a visual difference that the average gamer could see, but Nintendo wouldn't bank on technology only now entering the market anyway, much less something not yet available. Sony and Microsoft are banking on 3D to be the visual distinguisher between current gen consoles and next gen. Nintendo seems to be banking on content instead regardless of how powerful their next console is going to be. Still this is something to think about Sony and Microsoft may not push too far beyond Nintendo simply because it wouldn't be beneficial.

EDIT: To explain simply the complexity of games will increase greatly next gen, but visually the improvements will be more subtle than we'd usually expect from a generational jump. From diminishing returns and simply available resolutions along with some other factors it won't be as spectacular as previous jumps because of technology limitations. So as I meant in a previous post I don't expect as large of a jump as seen in this generation by the two HD consoles over the previous generation in this coming generation simply because it wouldn't be useful. NOTE I'm only talking about how visually impressive the graphics would appear to the average consumer. Viewing distances, A.I, physics, lighting, and the general possible size of game worlds would increase noticeable in any game actually utilizing the hardware's capabilities, but overall there wouldn't be an overly noticeable increase in graphics visually.

More IGN rumours:


IGN

These rumours are driving me crazy. Now they say it's coming out later this year...
I know GBA and GC released the same year, but will Nintendo really do this?

Seems 01Nets speculation had something behind it. Going by these specs depending on what IBM processor the custom core is based on and what R700 series GPU its graphics processor is based on we're looking at a very sizable increase in power. There are four realistic choices Radeon HD 4850, Radeon HD 4860, Radeon HD 4870, and Radeon HD 4890. Radeon HD 4860 is a little too inefficient at merely 3.5-3.8 times as powerful as Xbox 360's GPU with higher TDP than Radeon HD 4850, which itself is slightly more than 4 times as powerful as Xenos. I honestly hope they use a GPU derived from Radeon HD 4870 or HD 4890 which would result in about 5 times as powerful with 4870 and almost 6 times as powerful with 4890. A TDP below 150 watts doesn't seem a priority going by the rumored size, so who knows it could utilize a rather hot CPU or even a dual GPU depending on costs.

Great posts Jikayaki!

I've been reading the GAF rumour thread all week and it started out as a good thread for info but has gone to the pits of hell with people thinking Ninty will ditch motion controls and go back to 'normal' controls for the 'hardcore' gamers.

I'm pretty sure the 'going hardcore' rumours just mean Nintendo is trying to get better third party support along with their first party offerings, not that they are going to become more like Sony and MS.

I don't think motion controls will be dropped at all. I'm just waiting to see what that dual analog rumour meant.

Nintendo going "hardcore" doesn't surprise me for the most part I expected a strategy from Nintendo much like the 3DS in their next console. Nintendo wants to be the PS2 of next generation and cash in on both hardcore and casual gamers. Motion controls I don't think have been dropped some rumors from Edge point to it carrying over to this new console. I believe Nintendo is going to make two primary controllers for the console this Gameboy thing and an improved Wii remote. For the rumored touchscreen Gameboy-like controller to work its going to have to either upgrade to Bluetooth 3.0 or utilize a cheaper alternative. Pair a modified Wii remote + with Bluetooth 3.0 and a better camera and realistically it should be a sizable upgrade over the Wii's motion control. I doubt an upgraded Wii remote + would cost much to manufacture more than likely something like $18 including a nunchuk depending on the camera they use to replace the one in the Wii remote.

i agree with this, games are only going to take longer to make with the hardware they will be dropping. Unless they want their gamers to suffer droughts all through the generation, they will have to make sure they are getting third party ports to fill in the blank spaces.

I'm expecting them to do a little expanding of their studios, maybe buy up some new ones, but I still think they will need better third party support.

To my knowledge several studios including Retro are expanding. Nintendo is creating a new R&D studio as well and at Nintendo often these studios are used for making games not merely software and hardware R&D.

I have an odd feeling that this upcoming generation may be the last, or second last, generation of (console) video games... At least for a long time.

Especially if the project butterfly rumors had some truth to them. If that's the case then all we'll have is 'sub-generations' for a very long time.

The difference in capability next generation compared to the current HD consoles likely isn't going to be as large a jump as we're used to with previous next gen console jumps. Simply put software needs to catch up with hardware otherwise costs in the industry will continue to balloon out of control. Depending on bandwidth limits and internet speeds the generation after this coming generation may be the end of console gaming as we know it. Nintendo 7 for instance may maintain majority of its power from servers something like Onlive. In one way it actually allows for expanded console generations something the overly expensive devices introduced by Microsoft and Sony this generation aren't really capable of doing, but this means you'd be paying a monthly or annual payment for the duration of the console generation. It may even be smart to allow the capability to utilize such a feature in next gen consoles and when or if bandwidth and internet speeds meet the level necessary offer the service. It wouldn't be completely impossible to over it free if costs where gained in some other fashion.

I think it will only be a tiny bit more powerful, but hey, the PS3 is super powerful.

Compared to the technology available the PS3 is extremely weak. Going by rumor and speculation if Nintendo uses a R700 family GPU from 2008 there exists the possibility of a console ranging from about twice as powerful as current consoles to almost exactly 10x times more powerful than current consoles. It would be rather cheap for Nintendo to out do PS3 in a noticeable way its merely a matter of how far Nintendo is willing to push the envelope since they themselves have little interest in continuing the hardware war.

There are no specific details in any of the rumors outside the controller (at least as far as detailed information) and the fact it is being reported by "sources" many game media sites trust that it will be capable of HD resolutions. A lot of the rest is speculation as far as hardware goes. An example being the French 01Net article. Apparently "sources" stated that the "Wii 2" has similar architecture design to the Xbox 360 and new controller with 6" touch screen everything else regarding hardware is speculation from 01Net. These includes the three core custom IBM PowerPC CPU, the ATI R700 family GPU, and the statement regarding "at least" 512mb RAM. These aren't real specs merely 01Net's speculation. The concrete information if true regards the controller (which is incredibly complex with Wii remote pointer and motion control capabilities, Gamecube/Classic Controller Pro level traditional gamepad functionality, and a 6" touch scream {capable of streaming video and games from the console, maybe HD, and the obvious DS like gameplay functions}) which personal sounds interesting, but at the same time doesn't seem like it could possibility be real.

As far as hardware capability goes information given in the leaks seem extremely vague. Some game media sites "sources" stating that the "Wii 2" is significantly more powerful than current HD consoles others either don't specifically state any concrete info of capability outside HD resolutions like current consoles. 01Net's own speculation regarding Wii 2's specs likely come done to rather vague info such as it still using an IBM PowerPC CPU and an ATI GPU simply because it still retains backwards capability and remarks by "sources" as stated above apparently stating that the hardware design more closely mirrors that of the Xbox 360. So be careful of believing any rumored specs as far as hardware goes, but if your worried about power don't be. If 01Net's speculation is close to what Wii 2's internal guts ends up being it would easily be noticeably more powerful than PS3 and Xbox 360 by a factor ranging from 2x to 4-5x depending on the chips.

These maybe a controlled leak from Nintendo because of the NGP and falling sells of the Wii in both hardware and software. This would explain the reason behind it being extremely vague in some respects, put more concrete in others with multiple sources giving game media sites similar information. They want to build hype for E3 and possibly a pre E3 reveal, but at the same time not giving away all the details.

I've been visiting lots of forums since I heard about these leaks, and there's one thing many Nintendo fans "fear": that the consoles MS and Sony will release as an answer would be much more powerful. this "fear" is based on the thought that all other consoles will most probably be released years after "Project Caf�" and thus will have much more up-to-date hardware.

According to the rumors, Nintendo is going "back to the roots" with this one, and there's one thing in Nintendo's history that could help "Project Caf�" to stay on par with the competition: add-ons. They've used add-ons for almost every console they made, and there's one special add-on that could see a revival: the N64 Expansion Pak. The Expansion Pak was some kind of a cartridge you put into your Nintendo 64, increasing the RAM by 4 MB (this amount is kinda cute from today's point of view). I'm not a technician or engineer, so I can't say whether this is possible, but couldn't they release some kind of Expansion Cup Pak for Project Caf�? It could consist of an additional processor and more RAM, boosting Project Caf� to the level of the competition. I personally think that most core gamers would spent some money for such a thing, and considering that Project Caf� is aimed at exactly these core gamers according to the rumors, this might come true once Project Caf�'s hardware starts to get old.

On the other hand... what do you think of the whole Project Caf� being a mere add-on to the Wii? Probably a stupid idea, as just adding some processing power wouldn't enable the console to use these fancy new controllers, and adding the controller compatibility by an update doesn't seem like something Nintendo would make. I hope Project Caf� will be an entirely new console because I finally want to make homebrew software for my Wii without risking not being able to use my games for a while! xD

Even if 01Net's speculation is right on the money we would still be potentially seeing a large step over PS3 and Xbox 360. There are GPUs in the R700 family that easily could give capabilities at least near 8x what current HD consoles are capable of doing now. The issue would be to update the GPU to be capable of utilizing OpenGl 4.1 API, which gives Nintendo an alternative to fixed shaders so their Wii 2 games don't suffer from a learning curve catching up with more modern shaders. An a three core custom IBM PowerPC CPU could easily be three times or more as capable as Xbox 360's own CPU depending on what modern Power processor line it is derived from. PS4 and XboxNext may have more modern architecture, but certain real world limitation exist limiting hardware. Be assured its doubtful that the deference in power will be as large as Wii to PS360.

Hardware is becoming ever increasing in complexity in these machines so I doubt "Project Cafe" is being designed with the concept of being able to be ungraded at a later date. The good news regarding hardware for "Project Cafe" comes down to how Nintendo has seemly changed compared to it's classical way of creating Hardware. Classical Nintendo created a device it believed had a market and met their own internal developers needs 3D party weren't involved. Nintendo now though is a different arena the console itself is still originally built with Nintendo ideas and needs in mind, but as shown with 3DS its possible for 3D party to nickle and dime Nintendo to increase the capability of console. The 3DS itself arguable changed perhaps three times during development in hardware and there is no reason "Project Cafe" won't either especially if Nintendo wants 3D party support for the long hall. Since it appears early developer kits have at most only been in the hands of 3D party developers according to rumors for at most a year and likely less hardware is no where near finalized.

These new touchscreen controllers appear to use a different version of the Wii remotes motion sensing and pointer technology according to some sources along with the ability to stream video and games. The necessary hardware to utilize such a controller doesn't exist on the Wii an software update wouldn't accomplish anything and in the first place there is no obvious way to attach new hardware to the Wii. This new controller itself requires greatly different hardware to the Wii, so without a doubt this is a new console not an add on.

You can't say for sure. Even if no leaked real photo's have ever come up for past console releases, there's nothing saying that this one can't be real either. This is the first time a Nintendo console has been leaked to this extent, is it not?


Everything involving pre-release leaks and rumors can be compared to Schrödinger's cat. Just as the cat is both alive and dead, these rumors are both true and false. Until the box is opened, figuratively and literally, we can't tell.

Besides, current rumors and previous examples show that at least the first two rumors are likely... The similar build to the 360 and Spotpass, respectively.

A poster at Neogaf examined those photos and determined it was fake from the way Nintendo is printed in the image. Plus according to IGN you has broke a considerable amount of info on the device its the size of the original Xbox and looks like a updated Super Nintendo.

Actually, I'm thinking along the lines of... Well... What do you usually do when you go to a gaming Cafe? That's right, play online games. (At least, that's what I heard.)

That means that it will have awesome online features...

Plus...

If that box photo is real...



People, we're looking at an MMO console.

Its fake don't ever trust so called leaked photos. They are always fake.

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.

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.

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.

Something within the performance range of the 4850 and 4870 is what I suspected before, but Neogaf focusing on something within the range of a 4830 to slightly above sort of curved my over all enthusiasm. Overall I'm confident that the final GPU will be newer in design and architecture than the R770 or simply the 4000 series in general. Though it may not be concurrent tech from AMD. 4870 based speculation was at its hay day several months ago since then the general focus has moved away from those articles and leaks that pointed to something in that range.

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.

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.

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.

The Wii U likely runs four to five times as hot as the Wii without being any more than 42% larger in volume. The design of the Wii U simply has to accommodate design choices that keep this thing from melting or breaking while in use.