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Nintendo Businesses Entertainment Games Hardware

ATI Talks Revolution Graphics 94

Posted by Zonk from the controller-shiny dept.
Via 1up, an interview at the site Revolution Report talking with ATI about the power of the Revolution's graphics. From the article: "What I can say is that ATI is focused, as is Nintendo, in making [Revolution] a great, gaming entertainment platform. I know that a lot of journalists are very focused on specs. It's the big thing; as a geek, I look for that too. The key thing to keep in mind is that Nintendo, with ATI's help, is trying to create a game console where you don't have to look at [specs]."
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ATI Talks Revolution Graphics More

ATI Talks Revolution Graphics

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  • As long as it illuminates pixels on a TV I'll be happy :-) btw, first post ;-)
    • As long as it illuminates pixels on a TV I'll be happy :-) btw, first post ;-)

      I can't wait for "Giant White Square" to come out!

      • Re:Spec, schmeks :-P (Score:4, Funny)

        by Fred Or Alive ( 738779 ) on Thursday January 12, 2006 @07:31PM (#14459318)
        Surely the Revolution will at least support widescreen TVs, I'd much prefer to play Giant White Rectangle.
        • I hope it does. Some of the titles on the Cube support widescreen (of the title I own...Starfox adventures, Burnout 2, NFS Most Wanted)
          • I'm really hoping for a more system-wide level, the Xbox has a fair number of widescreen titles, and I wonder if that's partly becuase the Xbox Dashboard has a universal setting for TV type in it, so games don't have to mess around asking what type of TV the user has etc.

            But you could do widescreen on the N64 (Goldeneye, I think it might be a Rare thing) and Saturn (NiGHTS and Panzer Dragoon Zwei) as well (and theoretically, anything using polygons is easy), it's just a case of squashing everything horizont
  • What do you mean by not have to look at specs? Will the graphics hardware be included with the game? ;-)

    But seriously folks, what exactly does that mean.

    • Re:Um... (Score:5, Informative)

      by pnice ( 753704 ) on Thursday January 12, 2006 @06:45PM (#14458931)
      I think they mean the games will be fun enough to not care about what the specs are. If the games look good/decent and the games are great specs won't really matter.
      • It is like one of the british luxury car makers (bently, RR, aston martin, I forgot) who doesn't say how many horse power the engine has, it just says "it is enough".
    • the games will be perfectly so there is no need to advertise "revolution" with bla bla bla graphics...

    • Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just as a question, how many flops does it take to generate a good videogame?
      How many polygon's make a model which is attractive?

      The point is that Numbers are meaningless now, it is the creativity and talent of the game developers that matters. World of Warcraft isn't nearly as technically as impressive as Everquest 2 but it sold better because it played a lot better and looked a lot better (because Blizzard had a better art team); and no game on the Nintendo DS looks as good as Quake 4 or Doom 3 but the Ni
  • What he meant to say was, "Nothing to see here folks, move along."

    Why do an interview if they aren't going to give any new information? Great, we understand ATI and Nintendo don't care what the specs are... but we do! GIVE US ZE INFORMATIONS!

  • Um, ATI, that's worrisome (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hambonewilkins ( 739531 ) on Thursday January 12, 2006 @07:19PM (#14459226)
    When a company whose entire business is based on specs (look at our mhz compared to NVidia!) and upping those specs every couple months, it is a bit disingenous to say "specs aren't important" just because you a) don't have them or b) don't want to release them because they are worse than PS3/Xbox360.

    Something similar happened a couple years back (IIRC) when AMD was losing the MHz battle and stated that MHz isn't everything. Well, sure, it isn't. But your whole argument this entire time has been that it is. So, when you shift your argument only when your losing... probably means the argument isn't all that good.

    • Re:Um, ATI, that's worrisome (Score:5, Interesting)

      by -kertrats- ( 718219 ) on Thursday January 12, 2006 @07:31PM (#14459320) Journal
      Nintendo's specs certainly will be worse than the 360 and PS3. However, I don't have a dual-screen 1080i setup, either, just a plain old 21-inch CRT television. In all likelihood, the extra power that I would get from a 360 and in all likelihood will get from the PS3 will go to waste on me. The Revolution is just fine.

    • Re:Um, ATI, that's worrisome (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sigloiv ( 870394 ) on Thursday January 12, 2006 @07:53PM (#14459483)
      Something similar happened a couple years back (IIRC) when AMD was losing the MHz battle and stated that MHz isn't everything. Well, sure, it isn't. But your whole argument this entire time has been that it is. So, when you shift your argument only when your losing... probably means the argument isn't all that good.

      There's just one porblem with your analogy: the AMD processors with less Mhz actually did run faster than the higher Mhz Intels. So, technically, Mhz didn't matter. AMD just had one period of time when their processors were faster than Intel's processors with higher clock speeds (IIRC, AMD was the first one to release a desktop x86 processor at 1Ghz).

      • Sure, that's true. My point, I guess, was about changing your marketing to the exact opposite of what you've always marketed on. In this case, ATI always saying - it's faster, it's better, more pipelines, more RAM, etc, but now saying "Woah, specs don't matter."

        In the end, AMD having better chips that run more efficiently at lower clock speeds necessitated changing their marketing message, which is tough when you've conditioned the market to only care about MHz speed, n'est pas?

        • But that's not true either. In the graphics-card world's past, it was all about the number of pipelines, and the clock speed, which by knowing would tell you the fill rate. It's recently become more complicated as to what exactly a "pipeline" is in a graphics card, and what exact duties it performs; also, the raw fillrate has become less important than implementation of features such as Shader Model 3.0, OpenEXR HDR compliance, special antialiasing modes, etc. Additionally, ATI's graphics processor in th
      • Maybe the same thing will happen here. Let's say that the new ATI-Nintendo gfx chip won't use polygons but use spline patches instead. Then you can't compare specs (you could, in a way, but no-one would accept that the results weren't biased in one way or another).

        Nah.
        • That would certainly be a new approach as even high-end rendering apps currently convert higher order surfaces to polygons before rendering them. Maybe CSG isn't converted within raytracers but if Ati was capable of making realtime raytracing graphics chips I'm sure we'd have heard something by now.
      • And furthermore, Intel itself is getting away from the MHz wars. They desperately want to be measured by another means, because their Pentium-M kicks the Pentium-4's ass... at a much lower clock speed. The worry is that people are going to be massively confused, and taken advantage of, while the transition is taking place.

    • Except that (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Strell ( 877448 )
      Nintendo has never, ever said that games were about power. They've always said they are about gameplay, pure, simple, and only. There's never been any reason for them to say anything else, they never have, and they never will.

      The funny thing about this is that Nintendo says "we need to focus on gameplay," people tell them to piss off and say it's an effort to avoid the power argument, and then, later on, when everyone else comes back and says "well it's not about the power, it's about the gameplay," eve
      • Agreed. Let's consider though, that thier two (arguably) most successfull machines were juggernauts of power for their times. The NES and SNES were superior to almost everything you could get at the time. Of course, this was also back in a time where you NEEDED to have that power. Back then better presentation and the ability to have some sort of AI was necessary and you didn't have a lot to work with. And I don't think the SNES would have lived as long as it did without its Mode 7 graphics... let alon
        • that's one thing i miss about carts. The ability to put new features on the carts themselves. I had Intellivision games that had speech synths built into their carts (b-52 bomber?), not to mention the various chips in genesis and super nes chips that have been there lately

    • In this case it was a conscious decision to create cheap relatively low-end hardware instead of expensive high-end hardware. It's not like they had set out to create a really powerful graphics chip, and then realized that their product costed more and was less powerful than the competition, so they had to spin things, like you imply.

      And in the processor war, at the time you mention it was Intel that had the more expensive and less powerful processor, so they had to generate spin.

    • So, when you shift your argument only when your losing... probably means the argument isn't all that good.

      Uhm... Nintendo isn't losing. They made a conscious decision to have slower hardware. They weren't forced to have slower hardware. They decided on it.

      It's a tradeoff: If you want the fastest hardware, get a PS3. If you want adequate hardware at a lower price with a funny controller, get the Revolution.

      Neither of them wins, it's a design decision.

    • I disagree.

      I work for a company that sells scientific equipment. Without being too specific, I'll give you an example:

      We sell dynamic light scattering systems - they are used to characterize sub-micron particles. About 5 years ago, the war was on between the vendors - all ths specs, regardless of how irrelevant they were to the end user, were up for debate. People wanted to know correlator brands, how many channels it had for making the analysis, what kind of laser, at what angle the detector was located
    • The key thing to keep in mind is that Nintendo, with ATI's help, is trying to create a game console where you don't have to look at [specs].

      TRANSLATION: Our specs suck.

      -Eric

  • Sony & MS killed fanboism! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Orochimaru ( 945515 ) on Thursday January 12, 2006 @09:21PM (#14460096)
    With the lack of exclusive games on consoles these days all we have left to argue about is console specs. It's sad that todays generation of kids will not experience what it means to be a true fanboy. For the record, Sonic could kick Mario's ass anytime, anywhere ;)

    • Re:Sony & MS killed fanboism! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Supurcell ( 834022 ) on Thursday January 12, 2006 @09:34PM (#14460174)
      For the record, Sonic could kick Mario's ass anytime, anywhere ;)
      Maybe in a footrace, bitch.
    • Porting is why I will be getting a Revolution (most likely).
      With the weird controller, there will be a lot of games that come out on the Revolution that will not translate well to either of the other systems, I'm thinking. Meanwhile, PS3 and XBox 360 will be sharing titles. I'll just wait and see if there's a list of must-have games and get whichever system has more of them. Costs should have fallen (and supply risen) by that time anyway.
    • Wow! I remember in 7th grade (1993-1994) I would sit in study hall and argue that the SNES and Mario were superior to Sonic and the Genises. This was a daily event. The arguements were as such:

      For SNES are my arguements:
      Six buttons. Better graphics and sound. Better response from controllers. Light BAZOOKA!!!
      Mario can spit fire, grow, turn into animals (raccoon, frog, hammer bro), and occationally fly (rocking with the P-Wings).
      Against Genesis:
      Standard controller has three puny buttons. No light gun.

  • This is actually a fairly expected answer. They are working on a product for Nintendo, who is notorious for having quality games for their consoles but not necessarily the flashiest, prettiest games. So we should have seen a comment along these lines. Now, it is also sort of intersting to look at it from another angle. Here you have a chance to create a product that by looking at the numbers you would suspect is slower and underperforming, while in reality it is actually better then its competitors.

    I
  • Since they don't claim to be breaking any records this can meanly only one thing. In raw performance this baby is going to suck.

    We already know that it is not going to do High Def. Sure sure, you don't have a High Def set right now so why do you need it? Becomes in a few years DIGITAL tv WILL replace ANALOG tv and you will have to ditch your current setup anyway so why not go high def at the same time? Tech moves faster then you think. Just try to remember back when was the last time you saw a movie in TV

    • > Will Nintendo deliver? Who knows, they succeeded with the DS in deliviring fun games on inferior hardware BUT not with the gamecube.

      The GC is in no way inferior hardware. It is better than the PS2 performance wise and, depending on your point of view, a bit better, as good or a bit worse than the xbox. The DS on the other hand is fairly limited compared to the PSP, yet sells better.
    • We already know that it is not going to do High Def. Sure sure, you don't have a High Def set right now so why do you need it? Becomes in a few years DIGITAL tv WILL replace ANALOG tv and you will have to ditch your current setup anyway so why not go high def at the same time? Tech moves faster then you think. Just try to remember back when was the last time you saw a movie in TV screen format vs widescreen? Do you have a widescreen tv?

      The transition to digital television only affects people watching broadc
    • ### As for people not looking at specs. Right. Nice try. Specs matter. Specs determine a lot of gameplay. The simplest thing of level size and level load is determined by the specs.

      Even my NES could display a whole 3D *universe* in Elite, just a matter of clever programming. In the end it makes little difference if a wall is rendered flat-shaded or instead build out of thousands of bump-mappeded polygons, it might look prettier, but from a gameplay point of view its both the same. Only in the times where th
    • Becomes in a few years DIGITAL tv WILL replace ANALOG tv and you will have to ditch your current setup anyway so why not go high def at the same time?

      'scuse me? Ditch my TV? Have you heard of external DTV receivers?
  • While I understand that the hardware is functionally different, my main concern with ATI is their written drivers.

    I have 2 'gaming' computers in my home LAN - one with a pretty good ATI card, the other with a slightly older Nvidia card. IMO ATI and Nvidia have been relatively neck and neck technologically for years now. ATI advances half generation with this new product, Nvidia leapfrogs that 6 months later, ATI leapfrogs Nvidia 6 months further on, etc.

    Where there is a HUGE difference is the drivers. Nv
    • Those are drivers for PC systems that have to take into account the 50 different motherboard chipsets and have to compete with resources with any other device with drivers you have in there that are assigned IRQs and DMAs at bootup. Not to mention you are more than likely refering to a windows system which isn't know to be the most stable to begin with.
      Drivers like these are written and designed for non-static systems where hardware can change.

      Consoles are a whole different ball game. You have a very defi
      • Maybe but my friends company designs games with a Compiler that will create 4 differenet executables, GC, XBox, PS2 and PC. Also most modern games on the consoles don't really push the specs all that much, mainly because of deadlines and they don't see the need too.
    • So you put ATI hardware into a box that CAN'T be upgraded, can't easily be patched by the user?

      That's exactly why it works well. The game disc includes the specific version of the graphics driver it was developed with. Each console is 100% identical hardware. You've now removed the factors that make ATI's PC drivers suck.
  • openly stated that they wont be making a major graphical increase in their games, that instead they "are relying on developers to create new and innovative games". Now, I realize that graphics aren't everything, and that storyline and the amount of fun provided by the gameplay are some of the biggest factors in a game being successfull, but, hell so are graphics. The Gamecube was in my opinion a kiddie machine for kids whos parents were either to stupid to buy a PS2 or Xbox (ya, I hate the Xbox also, but fo

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