HDD, Full Digital Distribution May Come to Wii

[exfileme]

Full Wii games may be heading to the Wii Shop Channel.

HDD, Full Digital Distribution May Come to Wii : Read more

 

[hellwig]

Wii's in hotel rooms? How do they keep people from stealing the wireless remotes?

I remember some kid in highschool had a development PSX, including internal harddrive to store developmental copies of games. Just because these machines exist, doesn't mean Nintendo is going to start selling them to the public.

 

[sliem]

Who else read this as "hi def games coming to wii"?

 

[JohnnyLucky]

The ehck with the article. I liked the image of Mario.

 

[zak_mckraken]

There has been some rumors that Nintendo is working on "new hardware". That might as well be an external drive.

 

[pizzacheeks]

And other news Japan engineers have cracked the Wii's AV port and found it to have the correct pin assignment to HDMI video and audio further confirming that the Wii will be able to do full HD output in the near future. Meaning the new hardware rummor is an external 1tb HD with additonal USB port built in. It will clip onto the bottom of the Wii and include a new stand for those who like their Wii vertical.

 

[TheDuke]

i see them trying to make a DS out of this.
every now and then add a feature not present in the past and market the crap out of it and then it sells like hotcakes

 

[Guest]

Even better would be the option to rip existing discs to the hard drive.

 

[Guest]

Yeah right...WII with hdd in hotels...With UsbloaderGX in channel Menu lol

 

[pochacco007]

they said it was on a hard drive to manage discs. so why is it that when it's by internet, it isn't by saving on postage but by a reference that a new wii console is on the verge?

it's stupid. they are doing it for quick access to these reviewers. it's cheaper and more convenient for these reviewers and the company.

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]Wii's in hotel rooms? How do they keep people from stealing the wireless remotes?I remember some kid in highschool had a development PSX, including internal harddrive to store developmental copies of games. Just because these machines exist, doesn't mean Nintendo is going to start selling them to the public.[/citation]
Well, preventing the theft of wireless controllers will probably be done just like how they prevent the theft of other such devices; probably embed an RFID tag inside the casing, and a scanner near the doors.

Alternatively, they could, like many hotels do, simply over-charge for the theft of a Wii-mote as an "incidential;" after all, they DO ask for a credit/debit card at check-in at all hotels I know, even if you're paying with check or cash.

[citation][nom]sliem[/nom]Who else read this as "hi def games coming to wii"?[/citation]
Not gonna happen. Sure, the GPU's capabilities on their own could readily get HD resolutions, (let alone the sub-HD resolutions the 360 uses for most games, like 576p for Fallout 3 and 640p for Halo 3) but there's one limiting factor: the GPU has an embedded, fixed frame buffer of 1MB. (1,024KB) At full color, a 720x480 frame needs 1012.5KB, just BARELY below what can fit in there.

In other words, because of that ONE limitation, the Wii can't do an HD resolution. It can have detail levels out the wazoo, on a level with the PS3 and Xbox 360, (see The Conduit) but it has a hard-limit on its resolution, being 720x480.

[citation][nom]pizzacheeks[/nom]And other news Japan engineers have cracked the Wii's AV port and found it to have the correct pin assignment to HDMI video and audio further confirming that the Wii will be able to do full HD output in the near future.[/citation]
No, it won't be doing full-HD output. A console needs more than the correct pin-outs. (that, and American enthusiasts have known that the Wii has used industry-standard pin assignments for its ports for 3 years now )

As I mentioned above, the Wii has a fixed, on-die frame buffer, contrast to the PS3 and Xbox 360, which can arbitrarily place their frame buffer in any spot in their video RAM array, and make it pretty much any size they want. Hence, there is a physical limit to how big a resolution the Wii can do with games, unfortunately. Potentially a bad decision on their part, but it's how it worked out.

Of course, I'll grant that depending on the way the software/firmware works, it could be possible to do HD video instead of games, if the video player skips the normal graphics pipeline, and hence places its frame buffer in main memory.

 

[m-manla]

They finally realize they need to adapt a HDD in their system?

 

[JonathanDeane]

I really doubt Nintendo is going to allow games to be downloaded or ripped to a hard drive. Although this would be cool and for some people its really cool right now.... just click an icon and your game loads up faster then normal...

 

[notsleep]

no. just no. wii should be burned. it's essentially a gamecube with gimmicky control scheme. that tech is so ancient.

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]notsleep[/nom]no. just no. wii should be burned. it's essentially a gamecube with gimmicky control scheme. that tech is so ancient.[/citation]
Actually, that's false information; careful examination of some features in certain games show that they're doing things that you couldn't do with even the Xbox. For instance, the fact that Wii games virtually NEVER lag below 60fps, which requires double the processing of 30fps, the typical cap for 360 and PS3 games, even in situations with intensive physics processing. Another example would be The Conduit, which has graphics effects and shaders readily on a par with top-shelf 360 and PS3 titles.

The fact remains that the Wii has almost quadruple the usable RAM of the Game Cube, and paying attention to the actual chips in it, one finds that the transistor count of the CPU is increased by around 75-100%, while retaining the same cache amount as the Game Cube, which means that the extra silicon is used ENTIRELY for additional logic. Also, the main GPU core, even AFTER moving the ROPs over to the daughter die (in the same manner as the Xbox 360's GPU did) is still 3-4 times as complex as the Game Cube's, as it occupies about the same amount of space even AFTER shrinking it two full nodes (180nm->130nm->90nm)

So clearly, while it may be based on the same architecture as the Game Cube, the same is said of the Core i7 versus the i386; the former will natively run all code written for the latter. Even though the Wii may have a hard-cap that prevents it from HD gaming, it still is rather capable. What developers DO with that capability, though, is a completely different story.