Nintendo Wii U Teardown Reveals Simple Design

Vigile writes "Nintendo has never been known to be very aggressive with its gaming console hardware and with today's release (in the U.S.) of the Wii U we are seeing a continuation of that business model. PC Perspective spent several hours last night taking apart a brand new console to reveal a very simplistic board and platform design topped off with the single multi-chip module that holds the IBM PowerPC CPU and the AMD GPU. The system includes 2GB of GDDR3 memory from Samsung and Foxconn/Hon-Hai built wireless controllers for WiFi and streaming video the gamepad. Even though this system is five years newer, many analysts estimate the processing power of Nintendo's Wii U to be just ahead of what you have in the Xbox 360 today."

Yes and no...

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhat misleading. While the CPU power of the Wii U most certainly lies in the realm of what you see in the 360 (rumor is it's basically a 3 core, overclocked Wii processor), the video power is a decent step up. We're talking about a semi modern GPU that supports all sorts of bells and whistles none of the last gen consoles did. The Wii U will most certainly be left in the dust by the PS4/720, but the beautiful thing about it is that it should probably be able to play next gen multi-platform ports in 720p. Which will be fine for most people, as half the HDTVs out there are only 720p to begin with (and look just fine).

Re: IMB cpu

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I should fucking hope so. The XBOX 360 is seven years old.

Re:well doh. keep it cheap and simple.

[im_thatoneguy]

which device from them had a complicated board or cutting edge performance?

Nintendo 64 had cutting edge performance. 3D performance was better than most $2,000 computers at the time.

Re:well doh. keep it cheap and simple.

[tepples]

That and one of Wii's competitors has XNA and Xbox Live Indie Games, which is a lot easier to get into than the Wii developer program.

Re:well doh. keep it cheap and simple.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, your K6-2 450Mhz CPU released on the 26-Feb-1999 was faster than the N64 released in 1996.

Re:well doh. keep it cheap and simple.

[Pinhedd]

They were absolutely right. PC games have required full installation for years, and consoles even require significant portions of many games to be installed to the hard drive first. Meanwhile, Flash/EEPROM based cartridges are functionally very similar to USB sticks and SSDs which are more ubiquitous than ever before.

Re:well doh. keep it cheap and simple.

[chromas]

I wouldn't say all ways but:

• 0: It had an awkward, giant and mostly empty controller with only one thumbstick, the plastic guts of which would rapidly wear, causing it to become wobbly and make it hard to dive after the rabbit in Mario64 because I can't run full speed anymore.
• 1: Vibrations required an expansion back that itself required a battery instead of being console-powered and it took up the memory card slot (some (most?) games used internal storage, though) instead of using all the empty space in the controller (Sony got two motors and two sticks into a much smaller case).
• 2: Inadequate cooling system that would cause it to hang.
• D: Cartridges. Although they're the only system that gives decent boot time, they crap out when your kids swap them without turning the console off one too many times.