News - Atari veteran Bushnell thinks the Wii U will pong

[HEXUS]

Godfather of gaming says “I don’t think it’s going to be a big success.”

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[Brewster0101]

Think he is right on the money and Nintendo will go the way Sega did...

[sykobee]

Problem is that it looks like it will still be sold out on launch in many territories.

And people have loads of Wii accessories they can use with it.

And people want HD now from their console, and the Wii U will provide that. Also the ability to game whilst being with your other half who is watching some godawful soap/talent show/sports/car programme (delete as applicable) will appeal to a lot of people.

I'll wait and see, but I expect with a few decent titles launching in the first year, a lot of people will crack and buy it eventually. But it probably won't be a Wii-like launch.

[Scribe]

I actually quite like the Wii U and think the focus needs to return to gameplay.

Yes, it looks a little cheesy but:

- CPU/Graphics superior to Xbox 360 and programming paradigm is fairly simple
- A comparatively plentiful 1GB RAM dedicated to games (less focus on optimisation more on gameplay)
- Normal Pro Controller, GamePad, Numchuck, Wii Mote (plentiful array of accessories for ALL gamer types and gameplay scenarios)

It's clearly much more of a deal for existing Wii owners and investing into it in the early stages for those with PlayStations and Xboxes may seem risky, however the console has all the potential to be a true gamers' console as much as a party gimic or kid's toy.

What makes Xbox so popular? The Live, the voice chat, social elements, the visuals. The Wii U you can Voice/Video/Type via touch chat in a big community network that has been quite comprehensively thought through.

I'd say just because you see the word Wii doesn't mean it's the same beast at all. If I weren't saving right now I'd release-day pounce this, still tempted to.

[kalniel]

Yes, it looks a little cheesy but:

- CPU/Graphics superior to Xbox 360

CPU is inferior unfortunately - roughly equivalent to one of the X360 cores. Devs have already expressed some concern about this, though they are very happy about the RAM

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

CPU is inferior unfortunately - roughly equivalent to one of the X360 cores.

I have not seen anything about the core count. Most I have heard it is a 3GHZ CPU with four threads, which is similar in architecture to the one in the Xbox 360, which runs at 3.2GHZ and has six threads.

[Scribe]

I have not seen anything about the core count. Most I have heard it is a 3GHZ CPU with four threads, which is similar in architecture to the one in the Xbox 360, which runs at 3.2GHZ and has six threads.

It's also based on a newer PowerPC architecture so I'd be shocked to see it match only a single Xbox360 core, especially the real-world figures. I suspect much like the CELL there's a trick involved in this somewhere, something which we won't know until real specs leak.

[sykobee]

Looking at the die shots of the CPU and the system power consumption, I think one thing we know it isn't is a quad-core 3 GHz CPU.

Until someone takes a die photo of the Wii U chip we won't know how many cores it has. Rumours say it is a tri-core based upon a similar core to that which runs within the Wii (and the Gamecube), and that the cores are optimised for different tasks (at least due to having different amounts of L2 cache each).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looking at the die shots of the CPU and the system power consumption, I think one thing we know it isn't is a quad-core 3 GHz CPU.

Until someone takes a die photo of the Wii U chip we won't know how many cores it has. Rumours say it is a tri-core based upon a similar core to that which runs within the Wii (and the Gamecube), and that the cores are optimised for different tasks (at least due to having different amounts of L2 cache each).

I said 4 thread,not quad core!

The Xbox360 uses a six thread CPU,ie,a triple core with SMT,so the Wii U is most likely using a dual core with SMT.

[sykobee]

The CPU portion of the Wii MCM is around 31mm^2. That has to include a link to the GPU, L2 cache (rumoured to be 3MB of eDRAM), and some cores.

A popular rumour (on Neogaf) that doesn't seem to get "put down vaguely" (i.e, invalidation by people in the know) is that there are three cores, two with 512KB L2, and one with 2MB. These cores would be around 5mm^2 each, +/- 20%. Most likely it is three Broadway (or Broadway originated) CPUs (as used in the Wii) running between 1GHz and 2GHz.

I did hope that the CPU would be a Power7 derived quad-core, or even quad-thread, but it looks very unlikely with the power consumption of the Wii U.

[Blademrk]

The review of the new Mario game on Ars-Technica was fairly positive (they actually rated it as possibly the best 2D Mario game to date).

[Noli]

Think he is right on the money and Nintendo will go the way Sega did...

Er... not for a very long time yet.

The have almost a *trillion* yen of cash on their balance sheet. In fact JPY 880 billion as of 30 Sept 2012. That's about £6.7 billion.

That's huge. They could completely mess up their next two or three generations of consoles and still have a tonne of cash to invest in developing a no-holds-barred come back console after that even...

[Brewster0101]

Er... not for a very long time yet.

The have almost a *trillion* yen of cash on their balance sheet. In fact JPY 880 billion as of 30 Sept 2012. That's about £6.7 billion.

£6.7 billion is not alot of money for a big corporation in this age and it doesn't take long to loose that kind of money. Just ask Sony, Panasonic, Sharp,

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

"Atari veteran Bushnell"

Considering that Nintendo beat both Atari and Sega,I wonder if he is just a bit too enthusiastic about the failure of the Wii U!!

[Terbinator]

The CPU portion of the Wii MCM is around 31mm^2. That has to include a link to the GPU, L2 cache (rumoured to be 3MB of eDRAM), and some cores.

I'm sure the rumour is 32MB of eDRAM. Even the 360 had 10MB...

[sykobee]

The GPU portion of the Wii U has 32MB of EDRAM. The CPU has 3MB acting as L2 caches for the three CPU cores. This is why the CPU portion of the Wii U MCM is so small.