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Wii 2
Rohan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Seeing as there's no other thread around on the Wii other than the Wiiware Pop! announcement, and that's unsuitable for discussion of this type, I thought I'd create another one. Now, before I start, let's get any "Duh, this isn't going to happen for ages, the Wii has plenty of life left in it!" thoughts out of the way. I know that. I also know that Nintendo is already planning and developing their next console, as they always do six months after their latest home console is released.
What I'd like to talk about is the direction the new console will go in considering the technological jump it'll have to take in order for it to sell - the Wii sells this generation because of a) the control scheme and b) the Nintendo name guarantees quality games. While I'm confident in Nintendo's ability to further revolutionise how we play with their next console, they will have no choice but to give it a graphics chip far more capable than the Wii's Hollywood. The Hollywood (basically a faster version of the GameCube's Flipper GPU) is quite a nice but dated chip, slow in traditional polygonal rendering, unable to output to HD and lacking true shaders but partially saved via the flexible TEV. Well, that's not quite true... the Hollywood would be more than capable of outputting to HD if Nintendo had decided to give it more RAM to draw the screen with, but no, they left the original 3mb on there that the Flipper had. A fatal flaw? Well, no, as sales attest, but I think we can all agree that we'd be willing to pay a little extra just for the ability to output to HD.
Anyway, Miyamoto has already directly stated that the Wii's successor will be a HD-ready console. But what chips will power this new console? I read somewhere that the Broadway processor inside the Wii can, by specification, be bumped up to 1.5GHz at the most. Will they go the same route as they went with the Wii, just add more speed to the processor while perhaps this time changing the GPU altogether? Or will they go down a more traditional route and announce a completely new chipset for both parts? If they do, most people think that the new console will be as graphically capable as the 360 and PS3 of today, with Nintendo appealing to as many people as they can again by keeping the price down, yet keeping the graphics abilities not much further down the line from the much more expensive 720 (hurr hurr) and PS4. If they do, will they be able to keep the new machine as small as the Wii? And even if so, what about backwards compatibility? They worked with Matsushita to come up with a new type of slot-loading drive that takes both Wii and GameCube games, will they dump that altogether for a new format, getting rid of GameCube and perhaps Wii backwards compatibility altogether?
Sales show that people don't care enough about the low quality of graphics in most Wii games these days when next to the comparably amazing 360 and PS3, so just how far will Nintendo go to keep the price down? Will we get that 1.5GHz Broadway again with a new GPU, or just a modified Hollywood at a much faster speed? Or will we get something new altogether? A new PowerPC architecture that allows for backwards compatibility? And what about the media format? HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or just (by-then) staid, boring old DVD? What are their best options? What path do you expect them to take?
What I'd like to talk about is the direction the new console will go in considering the technological jump it'll have to take in order for it to sell - the Wii sells this generation because of a) the control scheme and b) the Nintendo name guarantees quality games. While I'm confident in Nintendo's ability to further revolutionise how we play with their next console, they will have no choice but to give it a graphics chip far more capable than the Wii's Hollywood. The Hollywood (basically a faster version of the GameCube's Flipper GPU) is quite a nice but dated chip, slow in traditional polygonal rendering, unable to output to HD and lacking true shaders but partially saved via the flexible TEV. Well, that's not quite true... the Hollywood would be more than capable of outputting to HD if Nintendo had decided to give it more RAM to draw the screen with, but no, they left the original 3mb on there that the Flipper had. A fatal flaw? Well, no, as sales attest, but I think we can all agree that we'd be willing to pay a little extra just for the ability to output to HD.
Anyway, Miyamoto has already directly stated that the Wii's successor will be a HD-ready console. But what chips will power this new console? I read somewhere that the Broadway processor inside the Wii can, by specification, be bumped up to 1.5GHz at the most. Will they go the same route as they went with the Wii, just add more speed to the processor while perhaps this time changing the GPU altogether? Or will they go down a more traditional route and announce a completely new chipset for both parts? If they do, most people think that the new console will be as graphically capable as the 360 and PS3 of today, with Nintendo appealing to as many people as they can again by keeping the price down, yet keeping the graphics abilities not much further down the line from the much more expensive 720 (hurr hurr) and PS4. If they do, will they be able to keep the new machine as small as the Wii? And even if so, what about backwards compatibility? They worked with Matsushita to come up with a new type of slot-loading drive that takes both Wii and GameCube games, will they dump that altogether for a new format, getting rid of GameCube and perhaps Wii backwards compatibility altogether?
Sales show that people don't care enough about the low quality of graphics in most Wii games these days when next to the comparably amazing 360 and PS3, so just how far will Nintendo go to keep the price down? Will we get that 1.5GHz Broadway again with a new GPU, or just a modified Hollywood at a much faster speed? Or will we get something new altogether? A new PowerPC architecture that allows for backwards compatibility? And what about the media format? HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or just (by-then) staid, boring old DVD? What are their best options? What path do you expect them to take?
...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
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They got the jump on Sony and Microsoft this time, but next time we all know that they will have full motion controls as well, and almost certainly more advanced than the Wiis are now. But they will also have their awesome HD graphics, online services, harddrives etc. etc. As well the type of 'casual' software Nintendo have been utilising to broaden their appeal, will be present on every console from now on.
Nintendo don't seem all that willing to spend money on fantabulous amounts of power and hardware like that, I seriously wonder if remaining 'the cheaper option' is the only hook they're going to have for the mass market.
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- At least the graphical power of the 360 or PS3. I don't mind them being a gen behind in this respect, though they'd surely get slammed by the press as usual.
- Plain old DVD playback, unless there is a clear winner of HD Warz in the very near future (yeah right).
- A continued Virtual Console with the same infrastructure, probably with importing from Wii. I still hope for GB/Color/GBA this gen, but if not now then next gen.
- Along with the above, more built-in storage space. Probably 20 gig or less because they're so conservative in this respect.
- Better online service, but still friend codes. Not that I want this, but they're so adamant about it. Online still free. Maybe patching and DLC (which might still come this gen).
- Still backwards compatible with GC and Wii, and thus the controller is still very similar. Hopefully will have some new features, maybe a built-in touchscreen or something. Microphone, knowing Nintendo.
- Similar features, channel-wise. News, weather, maybe some new things (MP3 player channel, plays MP3 DVDs).
Sorry if that's not technical enough of an analysis, but it's what I expect/hope for in many respects.
More seriously though, they know how much money they've made from innovation this time around (what with the Wii and the DS) and I imagine they'll push up the graphics a tad but come up with something completely new. VR glasses with headphones? Motion control using gloves, with excellent force feedback (if you push against something in-game, it pushes back)?
Maybe just improved motion controls that are able to tell where the remote is completely, allowing for true 1:1 controls (with possible solutions to all the problems that brings)?
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
No, no, this is brilliant. Each screen would display a picture that's very slightly from a different angle, and you'll have to cross your eyes to play, merging the picture into one perfectly rendered, low cost 3D solution.
Then Sony will come out with the same thing for the PS4 except it'll work across four displays (two on top of each other) but their controller won't have rumble because the technical hurdles are just too great.
Real answer: much more Balance Board integration, hopefully even with an SDK so that WiiWare developers can take advantage of it. It opens up a lot of opportunities if handled correctly, because the damn thing collects so much data.
or Brawl. 4854.6102.3895 Name: NU..
oh, and btw, no PS4, sony goes belly up.
I hope youre joking right? Im going to give you a hint here... Despite the "OMG BLEEDING MONEY" cries on the internet, sony is infact doing all right for itself.
Dont believe me?
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313838/000119163807002611/son200710256k.txt
18 billion in sales, 3/4 of a billion in income.
Yeah, the PS3 hit them hard in their launch quarter (quarter of a billion loss), but if youd been following their reports at all, theyd been prediciting operating losses for that quarter for atleast a year prior. No one was surprised except people who have absolutely no idea the sheer amount of money a huge multinational public company pulls in, hear "250 million dollar deficit" and start crying "OMG BANKRUPT".
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If you watch any of the videos where people hook Wii controllers up to PCs then you should know that the Wiimote is sensitive enough to use 1:1, the problem is all in the programming, not the hardware. I mean, do you really want to waste a swing in a golf game because you tapped the ball with the Wiimote when you were answering your cell or something?
What do I want to see? First off, call it the Super Wii.
Call it the Super Wii for God's sake, you would have so many people buying that shit.
Next, obviously it needs a graphics jump. Now, if it's only moderately more powerful than the 360/PS4 then I'm fine, similar to how it's only moderately more powerful than the PS2/GC/oXbox.
Next, I do want to see more motion control points. Gloves, feet and/or balance board used fully, and force feedback would just be hella awesome.
Also have it do my dishes.
The PS3 didn't stop hitting them hard recently, last time I checked.
You know what's great about the PS3? If it starts selling like hotcakes, they lose money
If it doesn't sell, they lose money and they don't have any possibility to make it back.
Even if it sells well, they'll need genuinely good games on the system. And I don't mean good for the system like Lair or HS where people say "Hey I enjoyed it", I mean games that make people put down MP3 or Mass Effect or SMG or Brawl and pick up their game, and spend the $60 on it over a 360/Wii game. If anyone who owns all systems and only is going to buy one game buys one of the current PS3 exclusives(Well, maybe R+C I would pick up over other games) over one of the current quality 360/Wii games.... well, why?
A loss leader strategy is all well and good when you can follow up on it. Can they? We'll see.
Oh, and as a note, I don't think they'll be going out of business or anything like that.
But they're not rolling in money recently. At least not their game division.
Of course he's joking. This thread is retarded and sarcasm is the only cure.
So I figure the Wii's successor is probably going to be very much like a Wii, but with better graphics and maybe a more refined control scheme. Don't ask me what "more refined control scheme" means; that's Nintendo's job.
Same with the inevitable DS2, for that matter.
Come on guys. Not to back seat mod but just fucking drop it now before it even starts. Both off topic and massively over travelled territory.
TS?
So we're looking at a console that's physically bigger than the Wii, then, unless Nintendo goes with some different storage format.
And you make a very good point, Daedalus, the successor to the Wii will most likely have refined, improved controls over the Wii. Who knows? With Iwata came a completely new era for Nintendo, perhaps they'll go and revolutionise everything again while refining their current controller technology to better suit the games.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Im talking about the difference between "actually caused the entire company to literally lose money" versus "one division is now still in the red". Even still, this was expected since atleast a year ago if you go back and read their shareholder reports and filings and what not. To act like sony losing money on the PS3 is some big shock is assinine. To act like sony losing money as a whole for one quarter is a big shock is assinine.
Im not saying theyve made the right moves, or that theyre doing fine, or in the lead this generation or anything like that. But to flat out say "No, sony is broke, theyre going bankrupt, PS3 is making them bleed money!!" is ridiculous. The fact is, the PS3 is costing them money right now. The other fact is they realised that a long time ago. Theyre behind their target that theyve been touting since this time last year (10 million sold in 1 year), but theyre basically right where they thought theyd be, revenue/profit wise.
But i agree with you, software right now is whats killing them. Every PS3 game thats been worth playing lately is just a port of a 360 game with less features, and delayed. I mean, shit, Stranglehold STILL isnt out for the PS3. If they had of released it the same day as the 360 version, it probably would have sold pretty well. But now the special edition is cancelled in canada, and everyone already knows its a fairly lackluster game, so im betting it will sell fairly poorly.
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Are all of those touch screens? I'd totally jump on that. Especially since Ninty would find some way to get it to all fold up into a tiny package.
Make it real Ninty! Just like you do to all of my hopes and dreams!
I made the mistake of visiting the Gametrailers forums yesterday, I'm still trying to shake that from me.
This is Penny Arcade, Khav, people who say things about consoles aren't always morons who spend their entire life trying to get "GTD" so they can get a free 360 even though if they would just get a job they would be able to afford one in a fraction of the time, nor are they all morons.
And while it's not a console feature, I'd love to see some RTS's for the Wii.
I don't see the vast majority of Wii owners, who really enjoy it as a retro machine as much as anything else, wanting to re-up for a new machine in a couple of years.
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With the DS and Wii, Nintendo have created high expectations about their innovation. A Wii2 or Super Wii, or Wiii, or whatever would have to bring something that's not just quantitatively new, but also qualitatively new to gaming. So whatever all of you try to imagine, Nintendo is still going to surprise us. If they don't, they'll probably be doomed for that generation (in the same way the GC was "doomed" for its generation for not innovating enough.)
As for the technical details: I highly doubt Nintendo are going to put in a hard drive. Not when flash memory is still going down in price and capacity is going up. Also, a hard drive adds a lot more to the cost, and forces you to have a bigger case, all things Nintendo wants to avoid.
As for backward-compatibility, I'm starting to think that might not be as crucial as we think: the Wii is small enough that fewer people are going to be annoyed if they need to keep it around in order to keep playing their Wii and GC games. VC games should be transferable, however, as that can't be too hard to do.
Unless IBM and ATI can come up with way more powerful upgrades to Hollywood and Broadway that are still backward-compatible, it would be a mistake for Nintendo to stick with those architectures for a third generation. But they also shouldn't venture too far off into uncharted territory, or they might have to face the problems that Sony is currently facing with Cell, which is that that CPU just isn't a good fit for video games.
HD is almost a certainty.
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The PSX, PS2 and, ultimately, the DS, proved to Nintendo beyond a shadow of a doubt that maintaining technical superiority was the wrong course of action.
After decades, Nintendo has finally learned their lesson and all they get is flak for it. In a couple years, the technology for comparable graphics will be cheap enough to include with a full set of original Wii hardware for a price that is still lower than the competition was at launch ($300 to $600). If they can get 1.5GHz out of the CPU and throw in a way to offload physics calculations, that would go a long way too, but it's cheap enough to just add together with a full set of next-gen hardware in a coule years when it's really just "current gen."
Being the cheapest option and having Mario is all they really need, the Gamecube proved that.
The only way Nintendo can ensure an RTS on the Wii would be if they made their own. Which will sell decently and make every RTS maker go "well now we can't put an RTS on the Wii because we can't compete with Nintendo on their own system" and completely ignoring the fact that they were never going to bother in the first place.
Not necessarily. Assuming the successor doesn't arrive for four more years, tech advancement will likely allow Nintendo to beef up the horsepower to within the 360/PS3's range while keeping it small. I doubt that the Wii2 will have a huge hard drive, since I don't see Nintendo getting into media distribution like Sony or Microsoft, but I imagine it'll have a larger one. (Hell, it would practically have to.)
Motion controls will likely be refined and expanded. But will it be enough to keep people excited? Ninty really caught lightning in a bottle with motion, but refining motion won't cause nearly as much shock/excitement as refining it. Plus there's always the possibility that Sony and Microsoft will do something similar next time... but considering the 360's doing pretty well as it is while the whole sixaxis thing has been something of a flop (even Insomniac couldn't get it to work well with Ratchet and Clank) it wouldn't shock me if those two soldier on without it.
Just absolutely terrible.
I don't think anyone here is suggesting anything stupid like Starcraft 2 but with the wiimote cursor instead of a mouse.
Obviously you'd need to tailor the game towards the control scheme.
It'd certainly be possible to have a sort-of traditional RTS with a Wii-ish twist.
In fact, I hope something like that happens for the inevitable next Pikmin game.
... because?
Is the Wii hardware somehow precluded from making a decent RTS? Is having a mouse-like pointer suddenly a drawback in an RTS?
Or is it that you just wish it would look like the new C&C?
EDIT: heck ... with the pointer for menus and the analog stick for camera you could actually do some awesome stuff to construct bases quickly or place orders for your units.
You know that you can post more than a sentence and that you're not required to be vague as hell ... right? You can actually explain why you think it wouldn't work instead of just assuming that we know what the hell you're talking about.
No upgrades
Zerg only
Final Destination?
With flash prices dropping as quickly as they are, Nintendo will never need a hard drive for their console or a disc-based media for their handheld.
I'm dead serious. Five years from now they'll be able to put like sixteen gigs in there, easy.
I wouldn't be surprised if they drop BC if the hardware is going to be significantly different. I'd imagine VC and WiiWare will be compatible, though.