I never get bored of the irony that self-defined "mature", "adult" and "serious" gamers are the ones that actually have the least developed taste in games - unless it's got ultra-fabulous HDR realism, and blood 'n guts aplenty, they're just not interested.
Why the Wii needs to fail!
- Thread starter thedoc46
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Yeah as opposed to the 360 and PS3 which have brought better graphics and.... er..... let me get back to you.
The Wii is bringing gaming to a lot of new people. Whilst it isn't for me I can understand the appeal and can only see it as a good thing.
Becaue they are making profit per unit - which is what I said. All I was meaning is that they are unlikely now to go back on that method and start selling units for a loss (not to mention the amount of loss MS and Sony make per one sold)
Im not knocking their method, Im just saying that therefore they will probably still be one step behind (to keep profits high), rather than come back in generation or two where initial costs are astronomical, all the parts are pretty costly and per unit of hardware is sold at a loss
N64 was sold at a loss for a large portion of it's life. RAMBUS was damn expensive. The GC was a bit of a turnaround in terms of console design because up until that point it was very normal for manufacturers to earn very little or lose on every console sold, but make it up on the software (Nintendo rakes in ~£5 per third party game sold, or at least they used to). For whatever reason, it turned out that producing the GC was just very cheap comparitively speaking.
Perhaps this set a precedent, as even though the Gamecube didn't do particularly well for Nintendo (not only compared to the xbox and PS2, but compared to their previous consoles) they made a good amount of money from it.
I dont disagree with that - but even so Sony have always been premier "packagers" of equipment, and surely you have to agree outsourcing usually costs more than doing things inhouse (no matter what it is you are outsourcing)
Outsourcing is usually cheaper (R&D is already done by someone else, plus production lines already established - no need to setup new fabrication plants etc, e.g. the PowerPC CPU in the Gamecube or the Intel Celeron/P3 hybrid thing in the Xbox... or even further back the Zilog Z80 in lots of consoles, the ARM series, and the Motorola 68000). Using a general purpose CPU that has already been designed and is out in the marketplace is almost definitely going to be cheaper... But you might not always end up with exactly what you want.
If Nintendo want to produce a massively high-end machine next time around they will do. We'll just have to wait and see I guess.
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I would really like to see the end of this two-tier system with consoles - a "core" and a "premium" pack is just annoying (a bit like a wonderbra, you see something and then realise it's not the whole story
)... and I'm sure it's annoying for developers too who would prefer one setup where they know there will be a harddrive or not a harddrive...
Soldato
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I guess the opposite is a casual gamer? I've gone from a serious to casual gamer... I now have too many other things to do apart from play games, so I may get a Wii
Hell, I already have a DS. 
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20million wii's and 100million ps3s..... just watch.
Some of you seem to think the 1st year of a generation tells the whole story.
Some of you seem to think the 1st year of a generation tells the whole story.
I'll take that bet, if purely because you seem to think the Wii will only sell about 2.5m more before stopping altogether.
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rofl Weebull nice riposte
Awww, bless.
Personally I think what the OP posted is a load of bull. I suspect this may be due to the fact he has not played with the Wii for any period of time.
Being a past Xbox 360 owner i always had the belief that it was the best console of the 3 next gen consoles, untill i played my brothers Wii & was instantly hooked. The Wii is just heaps of fun to play. For most games the innovative control system is also easy to pickup & use. I have never had more fun playing any game straight off, than i have had with Wii sports when i first picked it up. The graphics are good enough to never intrude on my enjoyment or gameplay experience. Im sure the Wii will continue to do well, as more & more 3rd party developers come onboard due to its sales success.
Being a past Xbox 360 owner i always had the belief that it was the best console of the 3 next gen consoles, untill i played my brothers Wii & was instantly hooked. The Wii is just heaps of fun to play. For most games the innovative control system is also easy to pickup & use. I have never had more fun playing any game straight off, than i have had with Wii sports when i first picked it up. The graphics are good enough to never intrude on my enjoyment or gameplay experience. Im sure the Wii will continue to do well, as more & more 3rd party developers come onboard due to its sales success.
It's not wrong, I never said a non-HD source can't look better than an HD source. I just said it can't be HD, which is obvious. I'm just being a bit pedantic over people taking HD to mean all sorts of things about picture quality when really it means one thing and one thing only, a higher resolution.
I dont disagree with you, but I would also hasten to add that the current purchasers of the PS2 havent been affected b whether the PS3 was on sale or not, they are machines in different parts of the market
I would also say in respect to the PS2 that Sony cant have their asses handed to them, as they have convincingly won that round from every conceivable viewpoint.
The next round of course is anyone's guess - but it does look like its between Nintendo and MS currently
lol - wind up merchant alert.
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resolution means squat in absolute terms, and i never mentioned resolution in the first place! when you talk about "HD" you assume a minimum level of performance, and what i said was that there are some sd-dvd's that come extremely close to that performance.
incedentally i watched the band of brothers on my ps3 recently. that's so well mestered i just couldnt believe what i was watching.
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I was meaning from a general board room decision that it would be hard to go from raking it in during this generation - due to relatively cheap, pretty standard hardware to completely redigning propreitary stuff and paying the cost initially.
They have the money, its just a complete company turnaround after making a success on the gc (from sheer profit if not numbers sold) and certainly the wii to taking a huge gamble using large amounts of resources/cash on r&d etc compared to following behind and still updating for the "wii 2" but potentially being behind in hardware specs compared to MS 720 /PS4 etc
Outsourcing is usually cheaper (R&D is already done by someone else, plus production lines already established - no need to setup new fabrication plants etc, e.g. the PowerPC CPU in the Gamecube or the Intel Celeron/P3 hybrid thing in the Xbox... or even further back the Zilog Z80 in lots of consoles, the ARM series, and the Motorola 68000). Using a general purpose CPU that has already been designed and is out in the marketplace is almost definitely going to be cheaper... But you might not always end up with exactly what you want.
If Nintendo want to produce a massively high-end machine next time around they will do. We'll just have to wait and see I guess.
Im confused, how can anyone else do your R&D on a top secret product (which is basically what any console is nowadays from the sheer amount of ££ they can generate)?
No - one needs to set up a fab plant, just because the design of the cpu/gpu is new, doesnt necessarily mean a new plant at all. Very rarely is this required and certainly Sony, MS or Nintendo havent required to build their own
Yes a single componant can be designed externally (like all your examples) but each console manufacturer still requires their own speciific R&D to be done internally (even on a shared project, the majority would still be internal to the project rather than a 3rd party) all those products you mentioned where already on the market being used in different devices. Even the original Xbox had a significant amount of R&D even though it was just a modified pc (I dont know whether MS had assistance in the design by Intel , but undoubtedly nvidia helped ( I think they did the graphics chip)
Putting all the componants together takes time and money (not to mention speciific O/S, firmware etc and external design
I dont think you were looking at the big picture
Oh ignore me, I'm just nitpicking about that assumption
When I talk about HD I assume a higher resolution, because that's what HD means. As I said, I'm really just nitpicking about the meaning of the term HD.