AMD to Power Next-Generation NES

[Xzibit]

Because it is still more expensive than disks and for substantially less capacity too.

I'm wondering why they haven't abandoned disks entirely and gone with an internet/subscription-based model. Physical mediums are so 20th century.

I'm totally against that but it might be more controllable with Nintendo. I wouldn't hold my breath. Look what its done to the PC gaming industry and the consoles. Developers become so dam lazy it becomes a race to yearly profit cycles and we the consumer end up with half ass finished game requiring a substantial download to patch, spanning weeks to months to even play the game as intended.

Now companies are becoming more sneaky and greedy then ever before to turn a profit. I fully expect games & patch EULAs to come with a no sue clause upon installation & use going forward.

Don't trust the cloud it will piss on you, Science says.

 

[erocker]

Good on Nintendo! I hope the new console is much better performing than the One or the PS4. Perhaps, the console market won't get old and stagnate like it did last generation.
I never liked the Wii U. I think Nintendo should of just stuck to the Wii... perhaps update it a little internally and that's it. It's good to see they actually want to compete with Sony and MS now.

 

[Dent1]

DiY Tech Support
I always wondered why there was never a push to go USB stick given how cheap its gotten.

Because it is still more expensive than disks and for substantially less capacity too.

I'm wondering why they haven't abandoned disks entirely and gone with an internet/subscription-based model. Physical mediums are so 20th century.

Also because there is already industrial machinery to duplicate games to digital optical disk on a mass level and there are lots of companies readily available to outsource that job to.

Whereas to mass duplicate games to a USB flash drives would require investment in specific machinery. Nintendo would have to do it themselves because finding an established company to do it would be a nightmare.

Because it is still more expensive than disks and for substantially less capacity too.
I'm wondering why they haven't abandoned disks entirely and gone with an internet/subscription-based model. Physical mediums are so 20th century.

This is where the industry is going, it's a gradual process. Now you can download old games, demos, patches, and exclusive material on xbox live. It's only a matter of time before the entire game is downloadable. The gaming industry are already clamping down on people selling and swapping games so this will be the solution. Also it would reduce piracy thus equalling more profit for them. In the past the Internet connection was a huge factor, but with broadband becoming standard my prediction is by 2020 this will be rolled out.

Now companies are becoming more sneaky and greedy then ever before to turn a profit. I fully expect games & patch EULAs to come with a no sue clause upon installation & use going forward.

They can try but it won't hold up in court. For a contract to be binding it needs to be signed and counter signed.

Although, a way around it would be for the console to ask you if you agree to the EULA, and then to proceed you have to say "YES" into the microphone. That voice file is sent to the console manufacturer's headquarters to use against you if you violate the verbal contract.

 

[Mussels]

me and my partner want a wii U for a variety of games - but the damn thing and its games are too expensive.


Make the console $199 without the stupid LCD controller (stop pushing novelty gimmicks! add support for a 3DS or 4DS for screen streaming!) and make the games cheaper than rivals (online downloads preferred?) and watch the sales skyrocket.

 

[xenocide]

me and my partner want a wii U for a variety of games - but the damn thing and its games are too expensive.

Make the console $199 without the stupid LCD controller (stop pushing novelty gimmicks! add support for a 3DS or 4DS for screen streaming!) and make the games cheaper than rivals (online downloads preferred?) and watch the sales skyrocket.

That's really all Nintendo has. Nintendo games are cheaper if I recall, they just never drop in value--they launch at $40 or $50 compared to others $60, and stay around that $40 mark until the systems EoL. The problem is that the Wii U doesn't do enough to justify getting it over a PS4 or Xbox One. You can't play Blu-Rays, are basically stuck with a single streaming service, it's woefully inferior hardware, the defining feature only benefits one player (told people for monthes you would never see more than one tablet controller running), and even with backwards compatability there isn't enough to make up for the anemic 3rd party lineup. If you only love Mario and Zelda, then get a Wii U, but if you want an all in one media box that plays a wide variety of games, the Wii U is a waste.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I'm totally against that but it might be more controllable with Nintendo. I wouldn't hold my breath. Look what its done to the PC gaming industry and the consoles. Developers become so dam lazy it becomes a race to yearly profit cycles and we the consumer end up with half ass finished game requiring a substantial download to patch, spanning weeks to months to even play the game as intended.

Now companies are becoming more sneaky and greedy then ever before to turn a profit. I fully expect games & patch EULAs to come with a no sue clause upon installation & use going forward.

Don't trust the cloud it will piss on you, Science says.

What is Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing? It was released before the internet took over, it was a buggy piece of crapware and it sold well.

PC gaming (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) isn't a walled garden like consoles have been since their inception so we see trends in it long before the walled garden claims it as its own. The trend for the last five years is towards a subscription, entirely internet based model where you buy (subscribe) to a digital product and are entitled, through that subscription, to unlimited downloads and unlimited play time by that subscription (TOS violations excluded, of course). It doesn't stop piracy but because there is no physical medium and there isn't lots of middleman, prices can go lower which broadens the market willing to buy and also affords larger profit margins for publishers.

The only reason why the current generation of consoles haven't gone this way entirely is because they would have to ask for more upfront money to install hard drives that aren't rubbish.


There's only two reasons why consoles have been relevant, since ever:
1) lower hardware cost
2) simplicity

The first will always be true for the same reason a Ford will always be cheaper than a Rolls Royce. Mass production translates to savings. I can't name one model of computer that has ever sold 10s of millions of units because it simply doesn't happen. The PC industry is full of variables and the console industry consistently lacks them (where it matters anyway).

The second is losing relevance due to XInput which made Xbox 360 controller support in games a common thing. Steam Machines is also tackling the hardware front of it. The fact two out of three consoles this generation use the same CPU architecture as PC and the next Nintendo system will make that thee out of three, they're rapidly losing this edge.

That's really all Nintendo has. Nintendo games are cheaper if I recall, they just never drop in value--they launch at $40 or $50 compared to others $60, and stay around that $40 mark until the systems EoL. The problem is that the Wii U doesn't do enough to justify getting it over a PS4 or Xbox One. You can't play Blu-Rays, are basically stuck with a single streaming service, it's woefully inferior hardware, the defining feature only benefits one player (told people for monthes you would never see more than one tablet controller running), and even with backwards compatability there isn't enough to make up for the anemic 3rd party lineup. If you only love Mario and Zelda, then get a Wii U, but if you want an all in one media box that plays a wide variety of games, the Wii U is a waste.

Nintendo games have substantially less production cost than AAA titles on other platforms simply because Nintendo hardware has always had severe limitations in terms of capabilities. Why design really fantastic models and produce high resolution textures when you know the console can't handle them anyway?

 

[TRWOV]

If history repeats itself Nintendo will try to keep power usage at 40w (the Gamecube, Wii and Wii U use a 40w adapter, before that everything was <20w) . They would up that to 50, maybe 65w but not much more IMO.

I'm going with a 2.5Ghz Quad Jaguar, 4GB of GDDR5 RAM, 1028SP (a 7850 basically) and an ARM+RAM for the OS. This would of course break backwards compatibility but would streamline game production a lot for third parties since every console would be x86. Of course that also means that all Nintendo's work with the PowerPC architecture will be tossed in the garbage bin but that's a necessary step for better third party support.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Nintendo games have substantially less production cost than AAA titles on other platforms simply because Nintendo hardware has always had severe limitations in terms of capabilities. Why design really fantastic models and produce high resolution textures when you know the console can't handle them anyway?

Yet when RE4 was released it was considered the best looking game of that generation on the GameCube. It was against the Xbox and the PS2 also.

 

[TRWOV]

The Gamecube hardware was pretty nifty in terms of capabilities for its time, specially the GPU. It had a fixed T&L engine (derp!) but was capable of 8 hardware lights, 8 textures per pass (vs the Xbox's 4), built in Z management (the Xbox used ~16MB of RAM just for this) had texture compression and was the first to use eRAM plus it was capable of some advanced effects although it wasn't as easy to get into as the Xbox.

Rare's Starfox Adventures is probably the best example of the Gamecube GPU's capabilities (water refraction/reflection maps, height map bumpmapping as well as DOT3 bumpmapping on every object) and Factor5's Rogue Leader showed right off the bat just how capable the Cube was in therms of polygon count (~15 million real-time polys with hundreds of light sources). In short, the Xbox used brute force to do stuff. It had the most capable hardware though, but the Gamecube was no slouch.

 

[TheMailMan78]

The Gamecube hardware was pretty nifty in terms of capabilities for its time, specially the GPU. It had a fixed T&L engine (derp!) but was capable of 8 hardware lights, 8 textures per pass (vs the Xbox's 4), built in Z management (the Xbox used ~16MB of RAM just for this) had texture compression and was the first to use eRAM plus it was capable of some advanced effects although it wasn't as easy to get into as the Xbox.

Rare's Starfox Adventures is probably the best example of the Gamecube GPU's capabilities (water refraction/reflection maps, height map bumpmapping as well as DOT3 bumpmapping on every object) and Factor5's Rogue Leader showed right off the bat just how capable the Cube was in therms of polygon count (~15 million real-time polys with hundreds of light sources). In short, the Xbox used brute force to do stuff. It had the most capable hardware though, but the Gamecube was no slouch.

The WiiU isn't all that bad either man. Its just a bitch to code for. Honestly I haven't see a single "Next Gen" title from the PS4 or XBone that the WiiU could not do.

 

[TRWOV]

What I would love Nintendo to do is to drop the touch pad controller and instead bundle the Pro Controller. Of course this would require a system update since lots of functions (unnecessarily) use the touch pad but this would allow them to sell the console at a lower price. There's only a handful of games that actually require the touch pad to work (Zombi U, Nintendoland and, to an extend, Super Mario Bros.) so it wouldn't be missed IMO. Sell it as a third party accessory for the remote play function and 3DS ports (why haven't we seen more 3DS ports?). I think this would allow them to move more consoles.

Regarding the speculations and looking back at the old Nintendo Fusion rumors I think that Nintendo might come up with a console-handheld hybrid concept. We've seen that Nintendo has been playing with this idea since the N64: the GBC connectivity that some games had and expanded with the Gamecube (FF Crystal Chronicles being the most upfront example), even the Wii U touch pad exhibits some of this thinking with the remote play feature.

The game console business is falling into a ditch IMO, sales figures aren't as good as before and gaming on tablets and smartphones is on the rise instead. We see development studios falling left and right and even giants like Capcom are on the verge of having to consider a merge to stay afloat. Heck, Sony (as a whole, not just the PS division) having less money than Nintendo is another warning flag. Development costs are on the rise and returns are on their lowest ever (games still cost $60). I think that this generation cycle will be pretty long (8 or so years), and with things like the Playstation NOW I even think that Sony might just not release a new console and just stream everything to the PS4. When the Xbone was in development MS was considering a digital only approach too.


What I think Nintendo might end up doing is either:

a) make a handheld with roughly the same power as the Wii U AND a dock for connecting it to the TV. The handheld would act as a controller or maybe offer a stand alone controller, heck, the touch pad could act as that.

b) make two systems (console and handheld) with the same architecture but different specs. Games would identify on which one they are being played and load the corresponding game version (polygon count, textures, enable/disable effects), savegames would be the same for both. Of course this means no disks so games would be limited to flash storage. 3DS games can go up to 8GB (biggest one ATM is RE: Revelations at 4GB though) so maybe we could see a 16-32GB cart in the future which doesn't seem like much but really, what kind of game apart from lengthy RPGs would require that much data? I know there are a bunch of PC games going at >30GB but working in a closed architecture has the benefit of easier optimization.



What? Keep the power where the Wii U is currently at? Yes, Nintendo needs another Wii like homerun and for that they need to be affordable and easy to develop for, if the limits of the console are held somewhat low that levels the playfield for everyone and in turn would lower development costs. And let's admit it, the general populace doesn't care if the Xbone is 5 times as powerful as the 360 as long as there's good games for it. There's always the PC master race for us enthusiast.

 

[xenocide]

Yet when RE4 was released it was considered the best looking game of that generation on the GameCube. It was against the Xbox and the PS2 also.

RE4 used the Gamecube as its primary platform, the PS2 version was announced last minute (because they realized it would be stupid not to launch it on the PS2) and it never appeared on the Xbox. The Gamecube was almost completely designed with 3rd Parties considered, which is why there were so many great 3rd Party entries on that console. The problem was Nintendo released it a year and a half after the PS2, and didn't go with standard DVD's meaning at launch the PS2 was a very cost-effective DVD-Player as well.

As to the above post, odds are they will do something like that, it was offhandedly mentioned by their CEO a few years back and since then Nintendo fans have been speculating away.

 

[RichF]

Nintendo should make a deal with Intel that enables them to use Nvidia GPUs. It is not impossible. Apple did that, and Apple was even using a Nvidia motherboard. Intel should supply Nintendo with a 14nm CPU that has no GPU. It will reduce die size and power consumption. Intel should also offer that CPU with an unlocked modifier in the enthusiast space.

Consoles need performance per watt more than desktop PCs. Intel leads that in the CPU space and Nvidia leads in the GPU space. If Nintendo wants to recapture the lead it needs to lead in performance per watt as well as total performance so it can deliver a quiet console that is reliable and impressive.

One thing that seems quite silly, though, is how much enthusiasts are focused on e-peen issues like GPU power and CPU power and ignore the horrendous input lag problem from modern TVs.

Nintendo should add G-Sync to its console and try to get an industry-wide TV standard adopted that will provide consumers with a low input lag for the TV's game mode — along with G-Sync support. It's ridiculous for gaming that ancient TVs were so much better in terms of lag. Progress is supposed to be a forward-moving process, not one that goes backward!