ZephyrXero

Yawwwwwnnnnn..... Someone wake me up when AMD finally releases a Phenom chip to the public...

Not a bad article, but I find your discussion of CISC vs. RISC a little misleading in paragraph 3. You're comparing the Wii's processor to the Xbox 1's processor, rather than the Xbox 360's which is also RISC (as is the PS3's for the most part). It seems a little odd to try and one minute say the Wii can hold it's own against the other current gen systems, but then step back and compare it to a prior gen system that it shouldn't be directly competing with. Perhaps you were mentioning this to counteract people's arguments that "the Wii isn't even as capable as the Xbox 1", but the wording still seems like it could be a little confusing seeing as how even though you can't compare a 729Mhz IBM RISC CPU directly with a 766Mhz Intel Celeron-ish CISC processor, you certainly can put a single core 729Mhz RISC CPU right up against a triple-core 3.2Ghz RISC CPU (Xbox360's).

I think the real question of the Wii's power comes down to two aspects. A: The graphics are plenty powerful for standard definition NTSC/PAL type TVs as the majority of people have right this moment, but will Nintendo's next console come out in time before people are sick of seeing it's blurry/blocky presence on their new 720 and 1080 HDTVs when they finally become the norm over the next year or two? Truthfully, while it will bug the hell out of a graphics whore like me, the common person probably won't notice too much...same as they didn't notice the PS2's lack of anti-aliasing in 99% of its titles even though almost every Gamecube and Xbox game had it. Still...even with that said, looking at the Wii in 480p, and then flipping over to the Xbox360 or PS3 in 1080p will always leave quite a jarring memory in your mind, even if it does have the same shader effects and normal mapping.

B: (and I find this one much more important!) Will the Wii's lackluster power prevent it from really making the most of the wii-mote via advanced physics and AI? While the graphics are immediately obvious to most, many will not stop to think about physics and AI, which will both heavily benefit from more powerful, multi-core CPUs and more RAM. Due to the Wii's natural, tactile nature...users are going to intuitively expect it to react to their motions in game with hyper-realistic physics, and super smart handling of their actions. I'm afraid this is the real area Nintendo has limited themselves with the Wii's limited specs. (And also, this aspect was not mentioned what-so-ever in your article either, just to prove my point).

Don't get me wrong, I really really like the Wii...I just think Nintendo would have been better off to charge $50-100 more so it could have had some slightly better specs and full HDTV support (at least 720p). It would still have sold just as well for $300 as it did at $250 (which I still consider outrageous when you think about these specs). Seriously, it costs 150% more than the gamecube, but only offers about a 50-100% increase in performance? And don't try to justify that with the Wii-mote either because it's been public knowledge since it's launch that both the accelerometer and tilt sensors only add about $6 to it's production cost, another intersting point you could add in if you wanted to make this post a little more fair and balanced.

Or you could go out and find some open source, cross platform development tools that are not only free and high quality, but also work with any OS. Good examples are GCC (compiler), Ogre (3d graphics engine), SDL (open source version of DirectX), ODE (physics engine), Blender (3D modelling and animation tool), and the hundreds of other tools available ;)

Thanks, but no thanks Microsoft :P

If they want to defeat piracy this go 'round the solutions are simple. Don't charge quite so much, and release a demo BEFORE the game is released. I'm willing to bet that 90% of the people who downloaded Doom3 around it's release simply wanted to give the game a try and then didn't bother buying a copy since they already had one. If ID had just released a demo a week before the games actual release, rather than two or three months after, they wouldn't have had nearly as serious a problem.

Those little bastards! How could the only release this in Flash 8!? Anyone running something besides Windows or Mac OS, like Linux, is screwed right now... self included :(

I really hope someone figures out how to rip this off the site and put it in a decent video format :/

w00t!

Jeez...take a joke buddy ;)

Nick, it's nice to know that MS has paid employees reading and commenting, good job guys!

Windows XP was much much better than Win98 (and WinME by default, seeing as it's the undisputed worst OS ever made). It was much more stable, but secure? no... A day doesn't go by that some new virus or worm is reaking havok on the average joe Windows user. So, this next version of Windows claims it will be, but with MS's track record I seriously doubt it. Put that on top of the insane new minimum requirements and crazy number of versions they're planning on releasing... perhaps people will be more willing to try other things out. While I'll admit myself that Desktop Linux isn't perfect yet, it's a hell of a lot better off than it was 5-6 years ago when XP came out. Plus things like Firefox and OpenOffice are showing people just how great open source software can be....it's only natural for them to want an open source operating system at some point too, and MS is providing us with the perfect reason for them to think about it: Pay hundreds of dollars for a new version of Windows that really doesn't offer anything new except a little eye candy, and probably have to upgrade at least one or two components of your PC? or try out this "linux stuff" I've heard so much about.... Then again with the laziness of people, I could also see Apple/OSX taking off, but at least it's half way open source :/ Still, for the most part, gaming is just about the only thing MS still has going for it that's keeping people using Windows, and something tells me that's about to change too ;)

If you think Linux is "hard" then you're behind the times... with the newer distros, like Ubuntu, it's almost just as easy to use as Windows now if you have even the slightest bit of computer know how at all.

Well, he's not blindfolded, but here's a guy playing through Sonic 1 on the piano on Google Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6370664922950823106