4.5M Wii sold in 3 months... what's up with the real games, N? - Page 2

Exactly.

Yes, we are in a bit of a drought right now, but the console IS still pretty new. Don't unfortunately expect much more than some ports and some games that simply show off the controller for most of this year. Yes, we could see another Gamecube-like life for the Wii if Nintendo doesn't push third-parties. On the other hand though, there is a good chance that at the next trade show (think the new E3 maybe?) we could see that killer line up that will make the purchase worth it and give us the real gems from third parties. Yes, right now, the lineup sucks outside of Super Paper Mario for the immediate future, but there really wasn't too many other possible outcomes.

Oh, and the lack of online support IS inexcusable. Anything otherwise is just ridiculous in this day in age.

QFT. The branching point will probably be NEXT year; that's when we'll discover if the Wii is like the DS or the GC. The DS had a terrible start, with games like Pac-Pix and Mario 64 just to tide us over. The Wii had a much stronger lineup, though...and I think Nintendo is spacing out the big releases so they can have some serious punch. It must be noted that nothing succeeds like success. One reason the GC lost so badly was that no one owned a GC to begin with, but everyone bought a PS/2. Once enough people have the console, it's installed base will bring developers by itself. And on that score, the Wii is doing well.


Seconded. This 'friend code' nonsense is just pathetic. I don't expect Xbox-Live...but Nintendo has to stop treating the Internet like some disease that it's afraid to catch from some online toilet seat. Metroid Prime 3 is clearly being delayed for online code additions...they'd better make it count. MS is quickly moving into the casual space with stuff like Catan and Carcassone (which I eagerly await)....why isn't Ninty already there? And MULTIPLE friend-codes, one for each game? NFW. That's beyond the pale, guys. Don't cripple the Wii in the same unusable fashion as the DS. PLEASE.

Am I unhappy with my purchase? No way, especially since I got $70 for my Gamecube that I bought in 2001-2.
I love the VC ability even though the big N has found a way to screw it up.
But I'm still let down that a console released in 2006 has 5 year old tech in it.
I don't expect Xbox 360/PS3 ability but something at least as powerful as the Xbox 1.
There isn't a single game released that couldn't be "run" on a Gamecube, and their major launch title, Zelda, proves it.
It wouldn't have killed them to increase texture details, add some 720p capabilty, and optical audo.

Now, I saw some video of Super Mario Galaxy that truely looks close to next gen, but the Metroid looks the same to me.
Hopefully things will get better but I'll just be happy to finish those Gamecube games I bailed out of.

How are people saying there is a drought of games? Within the next month there is SSX, tiger woods, marip party, a sonic game, NBA live, etc.

Hasn't someone run something like nmap against their Wii yet? That should tell you what tcp/ip stack is used, and be a pretty good guess at the OS, right? Or am I way off base?

He doesn't state that. I'm not really sure where you're getting that interpertation from. What he does say is "Well, obviously we would have an extremely powerful engine on it with our work on Rebel Strike, but for right now we certainly haven't planned anything for the Wii outside of some third parties who have approached us about licensing DivX and MusyX, which would be a no-brainer for us."

He also says: "They all have finally figured out, five years into the hardware's life cycle, how to do at least basic shaders and a rim light, but that's what everybody does. But I still don't see enough bump and normal-mapping, if any. I still don't see enough post effects, although you would have insane fill-rates with Wii."

In other words, their engine from FOUR YEARS AGO would run very well on the Wii, which is an upgraded Gamecube. Because Factor 5 released two games that have rarely been matched graphically on that platform. Note how he mentions that the hardware is FIVE YEARS INTO IT'S LIFECYCLE. He's essentially calling the Wii a Gamecube right there.

He's saying the exact OPPOSITE of what you think he's saying. The only statement where he sounds like he's saying the Wii is superior is his comment on post-effects, but it's not clear exactly what 'insane' means...does he mean insanely slow or insanely fast? It's not clear....but the rest of the statement is pretty unabmiguous. He's calling the Wii an upgraded Gamecube and lament that most developers haven't tapped the power that's already there, not that the Wii is a huge (as opposed to incremental) leap forward.


No, they got their PRODUCTION SDKs. They were, by no means, the final SDKs. Ask Ubisoft and EA about Nintendo's network code, for example. You can be sure that the current batch are being developed with more online capabilities than just being able to send Elebits screenshots to other friend's Wii. Rayman's single failure is that Nintendo wouldn't give them any networking code to have an actual leaderboard. You can be sure the Xbox 360 version will have one.

People are getting annoying. The Wii is fun, the Wii is different, Nintendo makes good first party games. Who cares about the specs. People arguing about it will not change the specs or make Nintendo change them. If you want mario and zelda games and a new way of playing you have no choice. Go buy a gamecube and see if you can use this controller on it.

:Note, I read a lot of this thread but not all of it. I apologize if I repeat someone else's sentiment:

I'm looking forward to that there Sonic game myself. It'll easily be my next purchase.

But I think that (as with ALL consoles) we will know more in a year. The key here is for N to secure third party support. Something I think that they can easily do with their sales numbers, alone. Coupled with low production costs (compared to the other consoles) and we could be swimming in them by this time next year.

Here's to hoping.

True enough, but why do you care if people want to argue about it? If you're getting tired of reading the arguments, then ..... don't! Otherwise, let the tech-heads have their fun. I'm actually enjoying the arguments, although much of it is over my head.

-Dan

The 750 was actually a less capable microarchitecture than the 604e. What it offered was a L2 cache interface that hung right off the CPU. It was built as an improvement on the 603 microarchitecture. The 604 series had more capable FPU resources capable of performing double precision FP ops in a single cycle. The 604e also had better branch prediction.

The 750 was faster due to a better L2 cache scheme, and an ability to ramp clock speeds higher. It was a less capable CPU in design, and oddly enough... BY DESIGN.

I used to have to intimately know this stuff... for a living.


If the Broadway CPU is still relying on the 60x bus, like EVERY SINGLE PowerPC 750 derivative CPU does that IBM produces... then it's still a bottleneck. All I did was point out the likelihood that this is the case based on the GameCube and everything everyone knows about every 750-class CPU ever produced.

To which you rebutted that the 750 never used the 60x bus interface.

I have no idea what's taking up space on the Broadway die. L2 cache, maybe a more robust VMX implementation, more branch prediction logic, maybe a wider interface to memory or peripheral IO. Who knows? I don't. You don't. Devs do, and not a one of them has played the Wii out to be anything more than a moderately improved GameCube.

If I had to bet my house on what's on that die I'd say most of it is being taken up by a cache increase, as it almost certainly isn't an extra CPU core.


You made the blanket claim that AGEIA was providing physics acceleration for the Wii. Not a single thing indicates this. The only indication that AGEIA has any presence regarding the Wii at all is that their PhysX SDK is suitable for physics routine development for code deployable on the Wii.


Most-likely is not what you said. Moreover, not that it matters, the NT-embedded kernels are quite robust, and have a small efficient footprint.

For all we know Nintendo did role their own OS. Maybe they used Linux, maybe they used BSD, maybe they used Symbian, or Palm, or threw down a little action on some L4 or Mach based platform.

We have no idea. What we can observe is that... the Wii OS does more than the GameCube OS. This comes at computational cost. As a result some of the added performance of the Wii hardware is going to be eaten by OS features the GameCube didn't have to contend with.

Additionally CPU cycles will be eaten by the WiFi and Bluetooth stacks. CPU cycles will be eaten by having to read in the steady stream of accelerometer and positional data that pours in over that Bluetooth connection.

There's a lot more computationally intensive "general operation" going on than the GameCube ever had to contend with.

On the GameCube the controller causes an interrupt. The interrupt propagates up the system. A callback manages what to do once the interrupt is received. It's a very fast, very simple, and very direct process.

The Wii has to do all that, and it has to read in a steady stream of values brimming off the gyro and accelerometers. Then the developer has to filter and trap the ones they care about, and then depending on the complexity or motion dependencies of the action performed may have additional calculations to perform for relations between the data coming off the wiimote, and then you get to throw the nunchuck into the mix as well all the while spewing out more of the same that the Wii has to process.

My whole point was that while the Wii has some incremental improvements in hardware capabilities. There are plenty of places for at least some of that to be soaked up by basic operation of the Wii system.

Maybe they're to busy trying to meet the DS demand.

I don't mind it (started skipping the posts after they got to be so frickin' long), but what I do mind is a lot of threads on other topics devolving into a discussion of the tech in the Wii. There ought to be a sticky called "The one and only "is the Wii a Gamecube" thread".

Great idea! Probably no chance of that, but still...

-Dan

He's stating it because his entire point is that no one is doing on the Wii (and didn't do on the Gamecube) things that his company and it's engine were doing on the Gamecube in 2001.


No, he pretty much says it's a Gamecube, PERIOD. Or did you purchase your Wii in 2001? He refers to them pretty much inter-changeably, except mentioning the fill-rates being insane on the Wii (which I agree, most likely means 'very good' or 'very fast').

Don't believe me? Read EGM 209, where the same guy was quoted as saying:
""When I heard what was going on at Nintendo, I cringed," Factor 4 President Julian Eggebrecht says about the development of the underpowered Wii. "Its audio is relatively mediocre. It is essentially GameCube 1.5, which is fine because of all the motion-control stuff they're doing is pretty radical. That's precisely why the 360 wasn't exciting to me, because it didn't have the jump there, even though it had everything else."

I'm a total Nintendo fanboy, but the fact is that if you're holding out for a sudden quantum-leap in graphics from what the Gamecube was capable of, you're going to be somewhat disappointed. The Wii is capable of more than the 'cube, but overall the difference is purely iterational, not generational.

What is the resolution of the Wii? Its at 480P but what is the res? 720x480?

AFAIK, it adheres to the 480p standard, so at 16:9 it would be 720x480.

Considering he's a PS/3 developer with no development plans for the Wii (and therefore we have no reason to believe he has a development kit, especially as Nintendo doesn't have enough of them to meet demand), why would you think he has more intimate knowledge of the Wii now than before? I think we're arguing over the fact that we agree, here.

Most of the things you're looking for are already there. They were in the Gamecube, too. Anti-aliasing was there and is in games like Red Steel. Dewey's Adventure for the Wii will feature normal-mapping in some parts.

The real issue, which was what Factor 5's prez was talking about, is that few developers so far have really taken advantage of the power that's there. And I think we can all agree that we want them to use the Wii's power to the fullest in a way they DIDN'T for the GC.

I'd really like to see the specs on this incredibly improved bandwidth relative to the GameCube.

Do we have any evidence that the Broadway isn't derived from the PPC750? If it is based on it, then it almost certainly still signaling on the same PPC60x bus protocol that every other PPC750 CPU does, including the 750CL. If that is the case, and system memory resides hanging off that bus then it is almost totally certain that this tops out at near 240 Mhz. If I were a betting man I'd say the bus is running at 243 Mhz to make it the same ratio to the CPU speed as the GameCube had.

We don't have a block-diagram that I know of for the Wii, but the GameCube's topology had the CPU interfacing with the GPU/1T-SRAM over its 60x bus at a max of 1.3 GB/s. The GPU had much faster access to the internal 3 MB of memory actually on the GPU core. The GPU also had faster access to the 24 MB of 1T-SRAM packaged with the GPU, but this was much slower than the on-core 3 MB of RAM.

When the CPU needed to deal with the system memory it was bottlenecked by the 60x bus between it and the GPU where the system memory resided.

The Wii has a 50% clock boost over the GC as far as anyone's best guess/estimate has been reported or inferred from IBM's part numbering scheme. The same goes presumably for the GPU and other components in that package.

The only real wildcard here is I don't think any of us know where the added 64 MB of GDDR3 RAM is sitting. It isn't in the package of the CPU or GPU, but we still don't know what it's really attached to. Is it hanging off the CPU bus, and at what speed, does the GPU have direct shared access to it as well? Is it hanging off the GPU as extended memory still accessed by the CPU by way of proxy of the GPU like the GameCube?

The presence of GDDR3 doesn't mean anything about system performance by default. For all we know all it's getting Nintendo is more throughput per trace/pin which just means lower integration cost and simplified signal timing debugging, or maybe just lower power requirements. Who knows?

What are the actual figures of massive bandwidth increase of the Wii compared to the GameCube aside from the obvious boost in clock speed?

Is the Wii supposed to have better graphics than the PS2?

If so , Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Medal of Honor Vanguard are quite disappointing.

Dude, the Gamecube had better graphics than the PS2, when it was used.
Of course, since most gamecube games were PS2 ports, they looked worse, generally, not better.

I just picked up Sonic and the Secret Rings...and it looks NICE.

Dude this is what I'm talking about. Developers for Wii games just dont care, regardless of the 4.5 million buyers of the Wii.

More time wont do crap.

Looks like your Sonic is good because its made for the Wii. Is that how it is going to be? Any cross platform games will suck on the Wii no matter how much time you give them.

In the previous generation, why were games developed for the PS2 and ported to the game cube? I think there were two reasons.

First and foremost, the PS2 was the dominant system (in sales). That was where the money was to be made. Worry about the PS2 first, and then port to whatever other systems you can (cheaply), and whatever income you get from those ports is a bonus.

Secondly, it was the weakest as far as horsepower. So if something works on the PS2, it will work on the game cube.

This time around the roles are reversed. The Wii is killing the PS3 in sales, and it is the weaker of the two machines. It will take a while (2 years?) for the trend to turn around, but eventually titles will be developed for the Wii and ported to the PS3. The PS3 will definitely have it's share of exclusives that look amazing, but I bet it will also have a bunch of crappy looking Wii ports in a few years.

Only time will tell for sure.

I thought the gamecube was more powerful than the PS2.Whenever it came to multiplat games,it was always xbox>gamecube>PS2 as far as graphics and sound.Many times I remember there being a minimal difference between the xbox and gamecube versions of a game,and then a larger gap between those two and the PS2 version.