Nintendo verifies GameCube housing at E3 [update 1]

I think it's already been pointed out that this doesn't say anything negative about the Wii. It was Gamecube housing, so what? But I want to say that this could only mean good things for it. If this isn't final hardware then the games could look even better than they did last week. And they look good enough for me already. But I doubt any serious graphics leap as an unexpected surprise. And I don't bash the 360 or PS3 for still using dev kits to show demos. It doesn't matter. Why does the system need to be completed? It's still at least 6 months away.

And who here thinks it's hysterical that the 360 demos last year were being run on G5 Powermacs? I'm sure they have their reasons and they're probably very valid but man, what irony.

But people enjoyed themselves at E3, didn't they?
Y'all just jealous you can't get in :D

Apparently it is indeed Wii hardwares inside:

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=12739&rp=49

#47

I would love to have some of the false hope you are smoking, because all the screenshots and videos I seen from the Wii games, there is no uber secret omg pwnzers graphics that are going to compete with PS3 or 360.

But that isnt Nintendo's back of chips now is it? They know they cant compete with sure hardware power, so they are trying a different approach. Plain and simple.

It looks like there were plenty of Nintendo GameCubes at E3 this year after all...just hidden...much like Snake in a box in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. No matter how we played it, we still played Wii.
Paul Gale
1up.com

Imagine being a casual visitor in E3 and visited the Nintendo booth to witness a cable coated monstrosity inside the glass.
Most people dont know what dev kits are and they dont care.

The shiny Wii case with the blue light, makes for a great object in display. And as presentation goes(isnt this the whole point of e3?)it fullfilled its role.

I agree with those who feel this is not an issue for them. Are any of us who has been following the Wii development surprised at all that they were running demos from either Gamecube housing or they were running from a modified Gamecube? It has been known for some time that the development kits were similar. Nintendo gives itself a lot more time to fine tune the console if they don't put emphasis on having demos running from the units. It would have been nice to see, granted, but it doesn't mean I'm less impressed with the new control design. We all expected to see shinier Gamecube graphics.

So no big whoop, right?

It's a tradeshow for the industry, and often the hardware being shown won't be in stores for a year or more, so none of this bothers me at all.

Dev kits, prototype controllers, 'no-AI' demos... Every company (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) needs to DEVELOP these things for us to BUY later, so look at it the other way: this is what is being worked on for your pleasure, maybe some or maybe all of what we are allowed to see will hit the shelves later this year.

Just a few wise words here to describe E3 for ALL the companies present, TA-DAAAA

BETA TEST.

Final products in the fall/autumn. Thank you.

WOW
Wii is truely "next gen"





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hahahhahahahahahahahhahahahah
ahhahahahahahahhahhahahahhaha
ahahhahahhahahhahaha..........
ahahahahahhahahhahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahaah

nintendo is crap full stop.

tell ur uk nintendo boss that sony has not copied nintendo at all, it was nintendo copied sony and other companies.

like for eg: nintendo copied eyetoy ps2.
ds lite nintendo copied pda.
nintendo copied cds insteads of cartridges.
nintendo make the same games over and over again.
nintendo copied the rumble pad just like the playstation. check out on the psinext website.
nintendo copys everything they are big losers.
nintendo graphics are pile of pooh you be bored with in 5 min waste of money.

and plus microsoft has copied ur nintendo joystick and ps2 eyetoy, for their camera. what do u say now guys, u will of course back microsoft u big sad losers.

All Nintendo Fan boys are screaming that this doesnt matter. If Sony had been running GT demo on kits that looked like a PS2 they would be screaming at the top of their lungs, the PS3 is not ready..... Enjoy paying $200.00 for a Game Cube with wireless controllers. And i will enjoy heating my house with my PS3. :-)

@60 (joey)

uuhhh... what?

In nintendo's defence,

1. I have no idea what sort of peripheral was copied off of EyeToy.
2. I think that compact discs were used far before the PS1 was brought to market (does that mean that Microsoft, Toshiba, Samsung, etc. all copied CDs with their CD players too?
3. Yes they do, they're called franchises. Generally when something succeeds, you want to make it again. See: Call of Duty, Gran Turismo, Mario, Zelda, GTA, and the list goes on.
4. From your PsiNext website, I found this: "Sony have had a lot of issues with their rumble feature and they?ve had to withdraw it ? because they didn?t innovate, they copied." I think that point has been made.
5. For 'copying everything', I think, from a business perspective, that they're doing well. Considering, above all else, that they are MAKING MONEY.
6. Nintendo has stated time and again that they weren't going for OMGZ!!1! graphics on their machine. They've tried to innovate instead. That's all. No one is forcing you to play on their 'pooh' graphics. If it means that much to you don't buy it. They likely won't lose any sleep over it.

Personally, I can't wait for Samus to hop onto my Wii and have some fun. Until then though, I think I'll salivate over Gears of War.

Cheers!

Mikey

jojo are you playing a retard or are you one in real life?

Nintendo patented the rumple first for a console controller.

Nintendo had a gameboy camera that would have interacted with the N64 in several games to put your face in the game.

Amazing ten years ago Nintendo was doing what Microsoft and Sony are now doing.

Yeah you will be heating your house with your ps3 that thing is 99% vents and will still overheat.

I find it funny that people who bash the Wii graphics dont think logically about it. It as if they have an axe to grind with nintendo (too many mario games perhaps? lol) The blanket bashers dont take into account why nintendo is even spending money on new "hardware", outside of the wii controller, nintendo didnt have to spend any money on a new graphics chip or cpu. Nintendo could have shrank the gamecube down quite easily (a la redesigned PS1 and PS2) and gave us a gamecube (slapped on some wifi) with the wii controller for $99 bucks. Instead Nintendo is spending a great deal of money developing (in conjunction with IBM) the broadway and the new graphics chip from ATI. Granted, its not possible for the Wii to rival any PS3/Xbox 360 graphics at 720p and up. But come on! some of those games at E3 looked like they were being played on a PS2! (sorry nintendo fanboys). Surely these bashers(fanboys?) think that the Wii graphics would be at least as good as the original Xbox (say Black/Halo2/Mech Assault quality) with the amount of time and money nintendo is pouring into the system. The vast majority of the Xbox games were released at 480p (Halo/Halo2/Black were 480p games)! Get a grip!

List of 480p (and 720p/1080i) games for the original xbox here: http://www.hdtvarcade.com/hdtvforum/index.php?autocom=custom&page=xboxa

Ahem the gamecube was actually as powerfull as the xbox.

Keep in mind the megahertz myth.

Gamecube games built for the system instead of being a PS2 port which is most xbox games were as well looked far better then any native xbox game.

#65

Wrong. There is quite a bit more involved than the clock speeds of differing architectures.

A major advantage for the Xbox was the shaders in the XGPU. The GameCube's 3D pipeline was far better able to simulate some of those operations in software than the PS2 but doing so still produces a workload many times greater than the same effects on the Xbox. That difference left the Xbox with plenty of left over capcity while the GameCube would be maxxed out. Thus those effects were generally left for non-interactive scenes in GameCube titles.

The Xbox also had considerable processing resources for audio independent of the CPU, which also came in handy for those developers who learned to use it properly. This enabled audio effects that would bring the competing machines to their knees while leaving other tasks resource starved.

The Xbox's lead in processing capacity for those things that matter to games is quite substantial. The difficulty, as Microsoft learned, was getting developers to exploit this power when the much greater installed base of the PS2 commanded their attention and made them far less likely to create original projects for the Xbox as the primary platform. Enhanced ports are all well and good but will always lack compared to projects that have the machine in question as their sole focus. Nintendo understands this and has had some very high budgets for some of the ir first and second party titles in confidence they could produce the sales numbers needed to justify the investment.

On one hand, this is much ado about nothing. The only time I can recall final hardware being available for hands-on use at E3 was when the machine was already released in Japan or was only a few weeks from that launch. The N64, for example, was out in force at the 1996 E3 and on sale in Japan about six weeks later.

Most of the time, though, the machine isn't quite done and the risk of theft at events like E3 is very high. The more machines in the booth the higher the risk one will magically grow legs and wander off.

But on the gripping hand, this offers some interesting clues. The GameCube is already a very compact design and doesn't offer a lot of spare space, yet Nintendo found it a convenient place to mount their prototype Wii innards. One big reason could be that the Wii is being implemented on the GameCube boards initially.

Thus far, Nintendo hasn't indicated the existence of any Wii features that require any additions whatsoever to the GameCube chipset. The 512MB of flash memory, SD slots, WiFI, wireless controller transceiver, and USB ports are all either easily handled in software or better left to low cost off the shelf chips that are already sold by the millions at extremely low prices. Since it appears the Wii sensor bar works with the existing GameCube controller ports, a prototype using GameCube hardware is the low cost way to go.

Further, the only additions to the chipset that appear unquestionable are greater clockspeed and increased RAM. A die shrink of the chipset allows for both and drives the chipset cost down to allow leeway for the new features at a price point that also includes recouping the Wii R&D costs within a year of a successful launch. Bringing the GameCube chipset down to 90 nm allows for a substantially increased clock speed and a big increase of the embedded RAM. This may seem mild compared to all the bells and whistles in the competing consoles and new PC products but it will give developers plenty of additional capacity where they would previously have hit a wall on the GameCube.

One big convenience of these new chips is that they can be virtually identical to their predecessors from an external perspective. Pin compatible chips could be easily mounted on the existing GameCube board design to get developers started. The additional features in the final version will be minor additions to the game designs by comparison to making full use of the greater throughput and memory resources. Developers get a reliable working prototype that truly represents the final product rather than a vague representation that most pre-final dev kits offer. Nintendo's engineers get to focus on the final Wii board without fielding complaints from developers struggling with awkward beta dev kits.

Perhaps the Wii will add some notable features to the GameCube function set but none of the companies involved have offered any reason to believe this. I expect the IBM and ATI guys are operating under a reversal of the usual NDA situation. Rather than being restricted from discussing new chipset features, they're restricted from discussing how minor the changes are. There could be all sorts of new stuff. The CPU could be a dual-core design that currently uses a shared bus like the early Intel dual-core models but in the final version will have a bus design that allows the core to operate more independently of each other. There could be a lot of stuff, but I'd find it hard to believe the GameCube case was a convenient choice if the prototype Wii is not essentially an enhanced GameCube.

Did anyone ever say those were official final wii's?? I mean really, its not a lie, it was a form of the wii. Nothign says they have to tell you every little bit of how it was put together (and who cares how they did it, they still showed us the awsome games didnt they)