

Revolution Easy To Port To 48
Despite suggestions that the Revolution will not be as powerful as the other next-gen systems, 1up is reporting the system will be easy to port games to. From the article: "It's easy to see Nintendo's logic, though. Even though Revolution won't have the same memory bandwidth as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the familiarity with current generation development and tools that Revolution takes advantage of means most companies shouldn't have much trouble working Revolution into the mix."
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's more expensive maybe? And because not everyone buys all 3 systems! And because without an HD TV, you wont see a huge difference.
Think about it. The X-Box had the best specs of the last generation, but the lowest spec machine (ps2) had the most sales.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:1)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Rare? (Score:1)
Realistically it will be a rare game that actually needs the hidef resolution and can't simply be displayed in a lower resolution
I thought rare games [rareware.com] were supposed to be Xbox 360 exclusive.
I do worry though if Revolution will have enough power to handle high end AI and physics simulations.
Given that its rumored CPU specs are similar to those of Xbox 360 (a few PowerPC cores), physics and AI shouldn't be a problem.
Besides, simple stylized physics can be more fun for players. Compare the cylindri
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
But a crap game with crap graphics with a crap controller: nightmare in a box. Would you rather play 18 Wheeler or Smurf Rescue?
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
I will say that the more system resources available, the lazier programmers are allowed to be. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good or bad thing, but it is pretty ridiculous to be hearing that a DVD-9 is not enough room to store a game.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
The only other thing I have heard from developers is that Nintendo is undercutting their performance on purpose in order to send the message to developers that they're not going to pressure them to produce games which they can not afford to make and to send the message that they want more creative and enjoyable games rather than prettier games.
Now, everything I have been told could have been a pack of lies but none of it sounds unreasonable; the initial development kits for the 360 were just Power Macs (and in a tight NDA agreement several people might be under the impression that this is the final hardware and leak it to news sites), and Nintendo announced that the Gamecube would only produce 12-15 Million Polygons per second (While Microsoft promised 155 Million with the XBox and Sony Promised 66 Million with the PS2; the XBox 360 may approach 40-60 Million and the PS3 may get into the 60-100 Million range but no hardware can sustain 100 Million + Polygons per second in a game situation) so it's not unreasonable to say Nintendo may make claims at the lower end of what is possible on their system.
Re:Why? (Score:1, Informative)
The best part is the MS still claim 125 million judging by the comparison chart in the official xbox360 launch guide and now they claim that the 360 can do 50
Easy To Port To? (Score:2)
Re:Easy To Port To? (Score:1)
Re:Easy To Port To? (Score:2)
The impression I got was that they were referring to the much-talked-about claim that games designed for the XBox 360 and PS3 will be too demanding for the Revolution hardware. This article seems to refute that.
This has always been the case (Score:1)
Why do people still want to believe that the extra cores and slightly better GPU's in the 360/PS3 are so massively different? THEY AREN'T. They offer a DIFFERENT way of accomplishing things, but they really are only about 2-3x as powerful as current gen systems in REALITY. The Revolution will be about 2-3x the power a
Re:This has always been the case (Score:1)
I would agree with you that the games aren't spectacularly different...NOW. There is a reason for that: Just about every single 360
Re:This has always been the case (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This has always been the case (Score:1)
Sure HD on a console doesnt beat the resolution on a PC, but what size is you're monitor? 19"? 21"? On avg,
Re:This has always been the case (Score:1)
Re:This has always been the case (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This has always been the case (Score:1)
The 360 is using an ATI video card this time
Re:This has always been the case (Score:1)
You are correct that at 1280x720 the 360 may not be able to render 8x as many polygons compared to 640x480. However since the card
Re:This has always been the case (Score:2, Insightful)
You are making the same errors in reasoning in regards to the CPU and it's cores. Each core is not a whole new CPU... it is just like hypertrhreading except LESS efficient. Also if you do the math for HD texture size and resolution and effects you will quickly see that I/O bandwidth becomes a limiting factor quite quickly. Same with the GPU. While it is i
Re:This has always been the case (Score:2)
Now I found some benchmarks for those games tested with cards from a GF4200 to a 6800. Keep in mind that the GF3 was even slower and paired with a 733 chip, not the latest and greatest. Also remember that the 7800 can do twice as many frames as the 6800. So just from the benchmarks alone, the 6800 on Far [firingsquad.com]
Re:This has always been the case (Score:1)
Consoles are not computers (except for the Xbox 1) and do not work even remotely similar. The fact is that you can take the three cores and throw that right out the window. The system will run as a single 3GHz CPU, the extra cores will take some load off once utilized but the net gain is minimal.
So now we are comparing a 733MHz CPU to a 3GHz CPU. While this alone is a 4X theoretical increase, we all know that it is not a
Re:This has always been the case (Score:2)
Now I know both CPUs aren't made by Intel, but clock for clock the PPC is supposed to be faster than than the P4. Furthermore, take any benchmark and a 3.2GHz P4 or PPC will be at least 3x as fast as a 733MHz P3. Photoshop filters, mp3 compression, AI routines, it will be 3x or faster. Not 2x. I can find pages on the net fo
Re:This has always been the case (Score:1)
It's just like how the number of bits a console had was a huge deal in the days before and shortly after the SNES. However, after the playstation and n64, no one really cared about them anymore because they were obviously not really that important.
The same thing will happen after this generation, as people will realize the CPU/GPU are not all there is to a console, important as they may be.
Re:This has always been the case (Score:1)
Lets bring a whole sack of salt for this. (Score:2)
Re:Lets bring a whole sack of salt for this. (Score:2)
"Pretty constricted" is subjective at best. The PS2 is "pretty constricted" compared to the GCN and Xbox.
"add that to the fact that it uses a completely unstandard controller"
They've already stated the system comes with the thumbstick dongle, giving you a pretty standard controller for unoriginal ports.
Re:Lets bring a whole sack of salt for this. (Score:2, Insightful)
Give it time, ports will be very common actually among these next-gen systems due to the high development costs, they need as much exposure as possible to even begin to recoup costs.
Won't be nearly as easy to port to .. (Score:1)
GameCube? (Score:2)
[I own one of each, thanks.]
Re:GameCube? (Score:2, Interesting)
I dare say Sony won't have that big of a lead this generation, so yes, now it is relevant for them.
Re:GameCube? (Score:2)
Yes, console market share leads to manufacturers making games for the console.. but equally, games for the console lead to console market share.
Courting Third Party Vendors (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a key fact to keep in mind. The preliminary development kits were actually tweaked 'Cube kits. I cannot speak to the fulfledged dev kits, but they should be very similar in practice. Nintendo is hoping to see their efforts at courting to third party vendors to start coming to fruition here. If it is easy to develop for, third party vendors will develop for it, right? This generation should begin to answer that question.
Early release games are always inferior to late lifecycle games. This is partially due to the learning curve inherent in new development kits. If a developer has learned the 'Cube dev kit, they should be able to easily come up to speed on a Revolution dev kit. Hardware optimizations will take some time. This could also explain why the current 360 games are so similar to current Xbox games. The development kits must have changed drastically from one console to the next. It is an entirely different chipset. I am making some assumptions and have no personal experience with either dev kit.
As for the controller, if you have not read about the controller shells that will be available for the control stick, you have not business commenting on any story about Next Generation consoles. I am sure a Wavebird shell, 360 shell and a Dual Shock shell (or something very similar to each, probably released by MadCatz or someone similar) will be available soon after the console launch. Ironically enough, the Revoltion may have a traditional Playstation controller before the PS3 if Sony sticks with that boomerang design.
I always liked the N64 controller. It was big enough for my ginormous bear paws.
Re:Courting Third Party Vendors (Score:1)
The Revolution will finally have the hardware to handle these graphics so really nothing needs to change as far as the dev kit goes. The GC had the better graphics chip of bo
Re:Courting Third Party Vendors (Score:1)
But is that a good thing? (Score:2)
I wonder, do I really want to play the games that are going to be coming out for all three platforms? Or would I rather play games that have been designed from the ground up to take advantage of the exciting new features of the Revolution?
About the only benefit I can see
Re:But is that a good thing? (Score:1)