

Nintendo's Dolphin Becomes The N-Cube 199
Xenex writes "Nintendo's next next-generation console, formerly know as 'Project Dolphin' now has an official name - the 'Nintendo Game Cube', or 'N-Cube' for short. Info about the name can be found on IGN's new N-Cube site here. Also a N-Cube FAQ is here, specs here (400mhz PowerPC based), and there is a quick editorial about why the N-Cube will succeed here."
Re:Playstation renamed (Score:1)
Says a spokesperson: "Not only will you get to play your old Sega games, they will now be infused with carbony-funness!"
When asked for comment, Sony PSX developers said: "Sega? Who? Oh... didn't they have some game with a hedgehog who got voiced by that Urkel kid in its cartoon form? Are we supposed to be worried?"
Sandidge
What next? (Score:1)
What's next? Rubik's Cube? [marskandiser.com]
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Re:PS2 Advantage (Score:2)
Re:It is a difference in strategy (Score:2)
Are we sure? (Score:1)
Games aren't only for adults (Score:1)
And they still exist (Score:1)
Re:Nintendo loses developers for a reason. (Score:1)
No, not really - they've just watched the success of more mature games and realized that the 10-and-under croud doesn't have the most money, while the 21-26 croud is the most profitible group to pander to. Basically they finally realized that being a "family game company" was hurting them, so they gave up on that and are allowing the rest of the audiance a chance to play games on their system - after all, if they don't, others will, and Nintendo stands to lose big time...
Re:No DVD playback (Score:2)
Refrag
Cubic and PowerPC based (Score:1)
The pity is, despite what game editors think, is it's a better piece of hardware to play the same overdone crap.
This sounds very uninteresting already. Looks like a proprietary lock so I can't develop anything, cross-compiled on my PC to distribute. Nothing new there, Nintendo started the NES with everything locked down, so developers had to pay-off Nintendo, who made the cartridges. Obviously Nintendo's strategy is still to make money off game fees and royalties rather than selling the hardware.
With decent GamePC's zipping out for a pittance, I'm seriously wondering what the future of these are, particularly when the buyer can zip out and get the latest sound and video cards and drivers and spiff up their old box.
At least at this price it won't hurt too much when it's in the back of the garage after 5 months...
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
Re:Not the N32 then, eh? (Score:1)
Re:The big N might fall on this one... (Score:1)
I don't really see the lack of DVD playback as a big issue. Adding DVD playback to a game console may be a big seller in Japan (it certainly helped the PS2), where DVD players so far have not sold very well, but in the States and in Europe, DVD players are doing much better. So... why buy a second DVD player (and why should everything be able to play DVDs in the first place? This is a game machine.)?
If you really insist DVD playback from a Nintendo machine, then Matsushiba (one on Nintendo's major partners in this little project) will be releasing DVD players with the 'N-cube' innards, thus giving you the best of both worlds.
Game Image (Score:1)
That's awesome !!! (Score:1)
Re:Lawsuits followed immediately, I don't think so (Score:1)
Re:No DVD playback (Score:1)
Erian
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You can tell Apple had a hand in the name (Score:1)
Will they release MacOS/Cube to run on the I-Cube?
Re:No DVD playback (Score:2)
Where did you read this ? Reports seem to be that DVD playback on the PSX2 is very good, with two little glitches (one is sound related for very high end sound systems, the other is no remote control yet).
>and don't complain that you'll have to buy 2 devices, a decent DVD player costs about $250.
And a console is around $250 - $350, why pay $500 total, when less will do. And I don't want a million things hooked up to my TV anyways.
N-Cube used to be a super computer (Score:1)
I never expected them to be sold at toy stores!
Re:Coming soon... the S-Frisbee! (Score:2)
Whether AOL might sue or not remains to be seen.
Hello! Mcfly! (Score:1)
Re:Everyone's Doing Cubes! (Score:2)
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
Re:Of course the Dolphin/nCube will succeed... (Score:1)
Re:Wow, another sad attempt (Score:1)
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Re:MUCH better name (Score:2)
Cube: Monosyllabic, easy to say, easy to remember
N is for Nintendo, which is Japanese for box on the carpet into which you continually shovel money.
You'd prefer Duodecahedron? Yeah, cool name, but harder to stack.
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
It is a difference in strategy (Score:1)
IMHO Nintendo learned its lesson with respect to cartrige based games and will do extremely well with the dolphin. Square, Konami, Namco, etc are already on board for the playstation 2 and I trust they will figure the kinks out by the time the Cube comes out.
My only fear is that the playstation 2 might be overextending itself. I like the playstation because I could just stick in games and not worry about it. I did not have to deal with hardware problems like the ones games on PC have. But it will be nice to have a DVD player for my TV.
MUCH better name (Score:1)
Erian
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copy protected DVDs? (Score:1)
Re:Unfortunate name (Score:1)
"Blue Elf shot the food!"
No DVD playback (Score:1)
Yuck.
Next
Re:Games aren't only for adults (Score:1)
--
Lookout, Nintendo! (Score:2)
Weak trademark. (Score:1)
Anyway, an n-cube or hypercube is an efficient way to connect the processors in a massively parrallel supercomputer. As a result, there are already plenty of computers that are referred to as n-cubes. As a result, I'm pretty certain that Nintendo will not end up calling this machine the N-cube because the name is already taken, and defending their trademark would be very difficult.
Re:It is a difference in strategy (Score:1)
You still buying that "quality over quantity" nonsense they were spewing before the N64's release?
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Re:So, should I take on a Dolphin lead T&L job? (Score:2)
Re:Games aren't only for adults (Score:1)
Lawsuits followed immediately (Score:2)
Re:Unfortunate name (Score:1)
Playstation renamed (Score:5)
Re:So, should I take on a Dolphin lead T&L job? (Score:2)
On the other hand, it might be fun to taste the games industry for a few years. Please try and talk to some people at the company, IN PRIVATE, before you commit. Very Big Game Makers tend to be Fascist Bastards.
Re:No DVD playback (Score:2)
DVD drive that can't play movies....hmm...Nintendo afraid of MPAA perhaps?
which brings me to my next question, while slightly off topic....
Will the Playstation 2 be enforcing region codes?
'N-Cube' not the official name. (Score:5)
The site states in several places that 'N-Cube' is just a best guess for the system name. The official name will not likely be announced until Spaceworld (Aug 24). For now, the official name still has yet to be released.
Re:No DVD playback (Score:2)
That sucks...I don't own a DVD player yet anyway, so it hasn't had any diret realivance on me yet...but the fact remains that I think the coding "feature" sucks.
Re:Everyone's Doing Cubes! (Score:2)
Re:Lawsuits followed immediately (Score:2)
Ein reich, ein volk, ein cube(r)???
Re:Thoughts on Nintendo's kiddie reputation (Score:2)
Learn your history! Back in the 16-bit era, there was much moaning about how the SNES had kiddie games and Genesis titles were more "mature." That was the initial backlash against the classic Nintendo school of game design, at least from people who had outgrown the NES.
Re:Everyone's Doing Cubes! (Score:2)
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Re:On the arrogance... (Score:3)
I hope Nintendo release a prototype (or the inital Japanese release) with no media support or just mpeg support (pay them some licensing, they are the not-"open" standard video format) and make a big stink over why they will not pay HOLLYWOOD. The average punter will listen if Nintendo says their console would be $20 more to play the HOLLYWOOD DVDs without any change in hardware AND that the people collecting the money are also collecting it on every DVD created (etc. etc.).
I would not assume that this announcement vis-a-vis DVDs has anything to do with hardwre or software or any other technical or marketing decision......it is simply the start of a negotiation for "substantially reduced" royalty charges (i.e. none), and perhaps the thought of an extra few tens of millions of cheap DVD players out there will tempt the MPAA etc. into accepting the royalty payments from the DVD producers. Perhaps Nintendo will simply buy a special license (then what odds on the Nintendo DVDPlayer for every platform under the Sun).
Re:On the arrogance... (Score:2)
Also, I suspect that the N-Cubes sold in the US (region 1) will not play French movies (region 2).
There is arrogance involved here, but it's not on the part of the journalists.
--
Faugh! My Atari 2600 was more fun (Score:3)
What's up with consoles these days? I had more fun playing 2600 games than most of the things out there today. The last game I bought with re-playability was Perfect Dark, which is basically a revamped Goldeneye. Everything else has been spotty at best.
What happened to those 80's game designers, anyway?
I might buy a PSX2, but that might be my last game console. I'm just not seeing a reason to continue to sink money into pointless hardware. The Internet is more interesting.
ArtX? (Score:5)
The very same ArtX as this [arstechnica.com]?
Another story (Score:2)
Bad pun... (Score:2)
I don't see how this is going to be all that great. I mean, its big Oh of n cubed. I mean there isn't much worse other than big Oh of n factorial.
Re:No DVD playback (Score:2)
You won't like this, but the US version of the PS2 will have the DVD playback stuff in the hardware
For more info, check the PS2 FAQ [ign.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Questions of timeframe. (Score:2)
You're right, they are nuts. Actually, Nintendo consoles usually have a much better S:N ratio than the other consoles - but also, they often have far fewer games. Say that we can quantitize the Nintedo as producing one excellent game (signal) for every four poor games (noise). Say the PlayStation gets only one good game for every 10 games. (IE, S:N is 1:9, but that makes it a nice 10% good, 90% "other.")
The problem is that the PlayStation will have 100 games in a certain time period, while the Nintendo may get around 20. 100x10% = 10, 20x20%=4, so by this "example" the PlayStation has 10 good games and the Nintendo only has four...
This is, of course, an over-simplification, but there are many really bad games for the PlayStation - far more than for the Nintendo. There are just more games for the PS. Nintendo needs to get back some of the developers they managed to lose, most noticibly Capcom and Squaresoft. Some of the best SNES games where by those two, and their "defecting" to the PlayStation was a real hurt to the N64's success.
Not to mention that the great hardware of the N64 was severely hurt by the really crappy media used to store games - something like a max space of 350MB. Final Fantasy VII was something like 1.5 GB, spanning 3 CDs. VIII approached 2 GB with 4 CDs if I recall correctly. But these were "cinimatic" games, so the CG probably hurt them - then again, MGS which contained very few CG sequences and was mostly done through an ingame rendering system weighed in around 1 GB on 2 CDs with all the audio it had, not to mention the superior music.
The bottom line is that even if the tech specs seem superior, a console is only as strong as it's weakest link - it remains to be seen if the Dolphin will be as good as the PS2, the X-Box, or the Dreamcast. There are many things that go into a good console, the hardware is just one variable among many.
Re:Thoughts on Nintendo's kiddie reputation (Score:2)
SNES corrections (Score:2)
The SNES patched its slow CPU problem by including fast DSPs inside many SNES cartridges. This made SNES games expensive at the time. Hell, when the processor inside the cartridge for Super Mario Kart over twice as fast as the CPU in the SNES... your system wasn't designed very well.
Of course the Dolphin/nCube will succeed... (Score:3)
This things going to have a DVD that doesn't play DVD's (how...useful), no built in harddrive like the x-box (though, how necessary this is is certainly up to debate), and from the look of the specs, no built in modem/ethernet card for on-line play. And it won't matter a bit, because MarioWorld 128, DonkeyKong Word 2, or whatever they'll call all those titles will be available, and half the country will want one anyway.
Not that the Dolphin will necessarily be a bad thing, however. SuperNintendo and N64 certainly had their share of good games, and there's no reason to think Dolphin won't either. Still, you have to wonder what the console gaming field would be like had Nintendo simply put more power into their gaming consoles. Coming of the NES, Nintendo literally ruled the console market, with Sega shooting themselves in the foot and others like Atari not really a threat. Had Nintendo beefed up the hardware for the SNES and N64, you might not even be hearing about Dreamcast, PS2 or XBox.
All together now... (Score:2)
Some things never change. Speaking of which, no surprise to see Nintendo is still hanging onto the proprietary media for "counterfeit crotection." Sure, that and crotecting the high manufacturing prices they've enjoyed throughout the cartridge era.
By the way, I thought the Game Sphere was a promising idea that was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.
I smell a lawsuit (Score:2)
"Non-Gamer"??? (Score:2)
I 4 1 am one of those first person gamers - UT, Qx, DOOM][, Descent, etc... and I LOVE Mario Kart!!! It is living room deathmatch for the whole family - no blood/guts and the computer cheats in the not so skilled players favor so they aren't completely left behind in the dust.
This is where the "set top box" always lacks - no user customization or creative input i.e. you can't add new levels designed by the amazingly creative minds that design for Q/UT/DOOM and you are stuck with whatever the N developers make. (mario paint doesnt count so don't even bother).
They definitely need to allow for multiple display o/p...cramming 4 people on one 25" TV is a pain.
Feature wise, set top boxes always lack so I will most likely purchase a computer upgrade instead of an N^3/PSX2/etc... and yes I realize they are great for the computer illeterate (if that even makes sense).
--Clay
Nintendo Space World (Score:2)
"We have no official announcement on 'Dolphin' at this time, but look, a Squirtle-shaped N64!"
(Sorry, been in this business way too many years now.)
Re:So, should I take on a Dolphin lead T&L job? (Score:2)
The person I was having the beers with went to this Very Big Game Company after working for me on Mac stuff three years ago, and is now big in their PS2 world, so I'm getting the pretty straight dope here I think.
Very Big Game Makers tend to be Fascist Bastards.
Very Big anything tend to be Fascist Bastards
Re:Faugh! My Atari 2600 was more fun (Score:2)
Look here. [dadgum.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Faugh! My Atari 2600 was more fun (Score:3)
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All generalizations are false.
Cube this and Cube that .. (Score:2)
do i hear office revolution ? or am i just reading too much dilbert ?
Re:No DVD playback (Score:2)
Or the DVD (Forum | Consortium). The site mentioned that in order to play DVD movies, Nintendo would have to give them $20 for every unit sold -- too much for Nintendo.
I hope they don't screw up. (Score:3)
I really enjoyed the old Zelda games. They were great. I still play them. But when it hit the N64, they lost something they once had. It was now a question of trying to jump through hoops and it was no longer fun.
I hope this new system returns to the old camera views, ease of use, and great storyline.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! (Score:2)
...and you thought that stupid paperclip was annoying. Just wait until you have a giant ape constantly throwing barrels that roll along your lines of text to kill your cursor and delete your file if you don't hit the "jump" button just before it hits.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Re:No DVD playback (Score:2)
As per the specs page [ign.com] on cube.ign.com [ign.com]:
When one says mini-disc, and they don't mean sony, then they mean 77mm, like the "three inch" CD/CD-R format.
You most likely will not be able to fit a full-size DVD into the box in any case. If you could, then you could load a DVD player software app (if someone wrote one and got MPAA licensing) into it and play one in software. It doesn't look like it's that kind of party.
Re:The big N might fall on this one... (Score:2)
Re:ArtX? (Score:2)
Wow, that's really nasty. It reminds me of some recent stuff with NVidia.
I don't think that the chip is going to suck so much slime down when it makes it to the Dolphin, though. For one, you only have to make NTSC res on a low-cost box like Nintendo specializes in producing. I suspect the price will be closer to $150 than $200, so they can capture all the people who don't want to spend $300 on a PS2.
The NES was lower-powered than its competitor, the SMS (Sega Master System.) This was true in the case of SNES vs. Genesis, but the SNES had far more advanced hardware. Consider the SNES the Amiga of video games, except that it was successful for a longer period of time (at least, in video game years.) The N64 was the most powerful system of its generation, which can more or less be considered the fourth major generation of video games. Now in the fifth generation, I think Nintendo would like to take the bottom end of the market, but they do have a standard to uphold.
I personally think Nintendo would have dropped them if they couldn't deliver.
Questions of timeframe. (Score:3)
...
Had Nintendo beefed up the hardware for the SNES and N64, you might not even be hearing about Dreamcast, PS2 or XBox.
I question these comparisons, as the N64 was released _years_ earlier than the systems you list above.
In my experience, Nintendo has usually waited six months to a year after Sega released a platform and then released a platform with superior hardware that blew them out of the water.
Rememeber the Sega Genesis? It made the NES look very shabby, until Nintendo rolled out the Super NES as *their* entry into the 16-bit arena.
The N-64 was Nintendo's first-generation 3D console, designed to compete with the Playstation (Sony's first-generation 3D console) and Sega's Saturn.
Now we're seeing Nintendo's next-generation 3D console, designed to blow away the Dreamcast and the Playstation 2 - and it just might do it. 16 megs of _embedded_ _SRAM_ means no memory bottlenecks in the graphics subsystem, and T&L at 0.18 copper (migrating to 0.13) should take care of geometry.
Again, it looks like Nintendo is releasing _superior_ hardware about 6-12 months after the competition.
Nintendo's achilles heel has always been game quality, as opposed to platform capability. There are good games for Nintendo machines, but there are also many mediocre ones, and my gaming-nut friends tell me that the signal to noise ratio is substantially better with other platforms.
Re:No DVD playback (Score:2)
This actually prompted Sony to issue a recall, even though there were no functional defects with the unit. That was possibly the first time in history that a product has been recalled because it had too many features.
Re:Thoughts on Nintendo's kiddie reputation (Score:2)
History, shit I was playing the games back then! Sure some of the SNES games were a little kiddie (especially at first) but since the SNES had the shear bulk of the games, a lot of mature games came out too. First of all anything from Square Soft. Sure some of them (Chrono Trigger) had a younger image (though CT was far from kiddie) but there is a difference between image and actual game-play. You also had a lot of horror games, a lot of fighting games, combat sims (Iron Eagle and Urban strike), the list goes on.
The general feeling many people had at the time was that SNES games were "too brightly colored" (and therefore too kiddie) and Genesis games had a darker, edgier look. I don't agree, but that's how it was.
Trademark Infringement? (Score:2)
They make servers for streaming live media (at broadcast quality).
Re:Thoughts on Nintendo's kiddie reputation (Score:2)
The big N might fall on this one... (Score:2)
Re:No DVD playback (Score:2)
Re:The big N might fall on this one... (Score:2)
Always last to market?
If memory serves correctly Nintendo beat Sega to the US market with an 8 bit system by about 2 months. Nintendo was just in time for the Christmas rush of that year. It took Sega YEARS to make up for it. Even though the Master System was technologically superior to the NES, the NEW got a HUGE boost that year.
LK
Nintendo loses developers for a reason. (Score:2)
When they could get away with it (back in the NES days), they locked developers into contracts so they could only make NES games. Even now, I believe they don't allow straight ports to their platforms. If you want to bring one of your popular games to a Nintendo platform, you have to add at least one special Nintendo feature, so Nintendo can claim that their version is special and unique and worth paying for a second time even if you've already got the original.
They also insist on being "the family video game company", and not having any games that hurt that image. They will tell you that a feature of your game is unacceptable, and you must change it or you can't release. The guys at id Software had a terrible time getting Wolfenstein released for the SNES (I think it was the SNES). They demanded a bunch of goofy changes ("can you change the dogs to rats? It's wrong to shoot dogs.") and generally made a nuisance of themselves.
That kind of thing wasn't uncommon, either. They are a royal pain in the ass.
They'd have to completely change the way they work to even have a chance at getting their old developers back.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Thoughts on Nintendo's kiddie reputation (Score:3)
As the Nintendo kids grew up, they eschewed Nintendo-style games as being for children. It was a weird teenage backlash, though, as the perceived requirements for "adult" games were superficial: gore, more techie stylings, dark graphics, plots involving evil corporations that kidnap princesses instead of goofy cartoon guys who kidnap princesses. So when someone puts down the N64 as being for kids, it's hard to take them seriously. Most games on other systems with more of a pseudo-adult feel have the same type of gameplay, but they have what I suppose are viewed as edgier graphics. It's not like there are many video games that really do target a more intelligent market, in the same way that a good many novels (written by people other than Danielle Steele) do.
Unfortunate name (Score:3)
Actually, PS2 has remote available (Score:2)
-jpowers
Re:Faugh! My Atari 2600 was more fun (Score:2)
Here's a game which is as fun as anything that ever came out in the 80's: Rayman 2. The Dreamcast version, especially, is gorgeous. The gameplay is fun and unique and never gets stale. The cinematics are amusing enough that you don't constantly skip them. Most importantly, it runs at full (60fps) framerate, something most developers seem to think is not important...
Another good one that I played at E3 is Jet Set Radio (supposeldy the name will be changed to Jet Grind Radio for the US). Very unique gameplay, and art that gets away from the horrible polygonal look that games have suffered from ever since the industry became obessed with 3D.
Re:I smell a lawsuit (Score:2)
Slashdot article [slashdot.org], ZDNet article [zdnet.co.uk], Cobalt press release about settlement with Cube Computer Corp. [cobalt.com]
I think I'll have to patent the remaining Euclidean solids... I want some money if someone tries make an icosahedron-shaped computer.
So, should I take on a Dolphin lead T&L job? (Score:2)
I, however, have been a Mac programmer for fifteen years (earlier this spring I was offered the chance to port said Very Big Game Maker's T&L suite to the Mac
So, so, so. What would all of YOU do if you were me?
On the arrogance... (Score:4)
will it play independant films? or how about french movies? note to journalists: not all movies are hollywood movies...
Re:Advanced Counterfit Protection (Score:2)
I would not be surprised if it took a hacker almost a year to crack Nintendo's new system. Just like the Dreamcast over the summer, a bunch of crackers finally reversed-engineered the DC and made it playable with normal CDR's instead of Sega's GD-ROM.
Now, I'm speculating here. So everything from here on is what I heard from various sources on the net and in magazines (probably all those sources related to IGN) and what I'm picturing what the N-Cube will be.
The N-Cube would be base on a new technology to deflect piracy on the new system. In helping with this is their new mini-DVD format. I'm guessing its the size of those mini-CDs you might see in an import section of a store. (You see the mini-CDs a lot for Asian music sinlges.) Though, I also heard that the mini-DVD may be in a case... sort of like the MiniDisc. That's my guess.
Now with that idea in mind. And this N-"Cube" shape (assuming), wouldn't it be nicer for Nintendo to create a mini-DVD drive instead of putting a full size DVD drive (which wouldn't even play movies)?
That will help Nintendo out for piracy since there won't be any mini-DVDR burners out there. Not only that, no one would be able to insert a normal DVDR in the player. (ala Dreamcast: Uses GD-ROM, though a CD-ROM can be used, too.)
But will be the new Nintendo system be un-crackable? Don't know, will have to ask the HK black market for that one. Anyway, also more heard information about Nintendo's new system. Matsushita is developing the drive for it. Also, Nintendo would be licensing their technology (maybe a year after N-Cube is released) back to Matsushita to develop a "home entertainment system". That's DVD playback and N-Cube playing included.
Only then I could think that N-Cube could be cracked and by then maybe DVDR will be cheaper. But, Nintendo's counterfeit protection isn't limited to the mini-DVD. They're doing some funky stuff internally with the system. I don't know much about security, so I'll leave it at that.
Though, I can say it will be fun watching everyone trying to crack Nintendo's new system. I guess that's how we progress in the technological age :)
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neafevoc
n^3 vs n64 (Score:2)
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Re:Advanced Counterfit Protection (Score:2)
Re:Of course the Dolphin/nCube will succeed... (Score:2)
Which are exactly the reasons I'll buy one. I have two boys, 8 and 3 years old. Let's face it, Nintendo has more to offer young kids. We have a SNES now, specifically because of the Mario games. Mario and Pokemon will drive the purchase of the next console. What does PSX (1 or 2) have to compare?
Forget three letters. (Score:2)
Wierd specs. (Score:2)
128 bits; N32; Gekko (Score:2)
The original "N32" was the PlayStation, which was originally a Sony addon for the SNES. When Nintendo killed the PS project, Sony developed a version called "PlayStation-X" that was designed to be independent from the SNES. That's the PSX that killed N64.
And yes, the AltiVec unit in some PowerPC processors (is it in Gekko?) can crunch 128 bit vectors, making the G4 Cube a 128-bit system.
But doesn't the name of the core of the N-Cube remind you of the name of the core of Mozilla?<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
Re:Thoughts on Nintendo's kiddie reputation (Score:2)
Re:MUCH better name (Score:2)
So long and thanks for all the frag
I guess it's not the kind of thing that Arthuer Dent would buy anyway.
- Derwen
Coming soon... the S-Frisbee! (Score:2)