Support NeoGAF

[a176]

Judging by current rumours, it's likely to be somewhere between 3 and 4 (probably closer to 4).

Here's a quick spec comparison of the Radeon 4850 GPU with the XBox 360's Xenos GPU:

This should only serve as a very rough guide to relative power, as, even if the Cafe GPU is based on the 4850, it could have any number of changes compared to the PC GPU, such as a smaller fabrication process, a higher clock speed, or added features like the Xenos's 10Mb of eDRAM.

Regarding the CPU, you have to take into account that, if the Cafe is backwards compatible with the Wii (which is very likely, especially as they're sticking with an IBM PowerPC processor and an ATI GPU), then the CPU is almost certainly an out-of-order processor. This would mean that, even with the same clock speed and number of cores, it would be significantly faster than the XBox 360 CPU for many applications. It wouldn't make much of a difference for heavily linear code like physics simulation, but would be a huge improvement when it comes to AI, and many aspects of game logic. If there's a modest speedbump over the XBox 360 CPU, a larger cache, and an improved architecture (probably a stripped-down POWER7), then we'd be looking at a much more powerful processor overall.

RAM is hard to judge. There'll be at least twice as much RAM as the XBox 360, perhaps more, and probably quite fast. Not much more we can say at this stage, really.

It's also worth considering that, the last time Nintendo actually tried to produce a powerful console (the Gamecube), they did an incredibly good job of designing it, producing a machine that was significantly cheaper to make than the XBox, but was still powerful enough for games like Rogue Leader (and easy enough to program for that Rogue Leader was there near launch). It's very unlikely that they'll do anything stupid when designing Cafe, like a significant mismatch in capability between the CPU/GPU/RAM.

Furthermore, people shouldn't be expecting every game to run at 1080p. Even if the console's capable of it (very likely), most devs will stick with 720p for the simple reason that the considerable majority of TVs are 720p. Might as well squeeze as much as possible out of the console at 720p, rather than have to trade off a lower framerate/fewer effects/etc. to render at a resolution that most TVs don't support.

Personally, I'm most interested in those 160 VFPUs. Nintendo made arguably the best cel-shaded visuals ever (Wind Waker), but the Gamecube and Wii were fairly gimped in terms of shader capabilities, so I'd love to see what they can do with a far more capable GPU. (I'd give any amount of money for a 3D Yoshi's Island sequel with crayon-drawing style graphics made by the Mario Galaxy team)

What about cost?

 

[AceBandage]

What about cost?

Cost for what? It's impossible to know what the components in the Cafe will cost.

 

[carlo6529]

Isn't it possible that the "Skyward Sword" that we have now is handled at least partially by the portable team and there's another Zelda team doing something else? That could help explaining the long development time.

They have to be working on a 3DS zelda by now. As for Cafe, probably not. If Skyward Sword was released already I would say maybe.

 

[AceBandage]

I'm sure they're already in the planning stages for Zelda on the Cafe. But it won't start production until after SS is finished later this year.

 

[herzogzwei1989]

I'm sure they're already in the planning stages for Zelda on the Cafe. But it won't start production until after SS is finished later this year.

No doubt.

 

[Bisnic]

I'm sure they're already in the planning stages for Zelda on the Cafe. But it won't start production until after SS is finished later this year.

Unless they have 2 teams working on Zelda titles. I mean, it is the 25th anniversary and we still don't know what they're gonna do about this. Releasing a new Cafe Zelda next year would be a nice surprise.

 

[Boney]

I wonder what's in store for 2d Zelda...

Unless they have 2 teams working on Zelda titles. I mean, it is the 25th anniversary and we still don't know what they're gonna do about this. Releasing a new Cafe Zelda next year would be a nice surprise.

rom dump

 

[Father_Brain]

In the interest of fairness to Nintendo on Zelda dev times, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that Skyward Sword is already complete and that it was delayed simply because Nintendo didn't have anything else in development for Wii that could fill the holiday tentpole role.

 

[AceBandage]

Unless they have 2 teams working on Zelda titles. I mean, it is the 25th anniversary and we still don't know what they're gonna do about this. Releasing a new Cafe Zelda next year would be a nice surprise.

There are two teams, but we won't see a new Zelda period next year, for any system.
As for the 25th Anniversary, I think it'll be something on the 3DS eShop.

Edit: And Reggie already said that they would do something different from Mario for the Zelda Anniversary.

 

[Bisnic]

I wonder what's in store for 2d Zelda...


rom dump

I'm not sure about this.. what's the point of this when you can already buy them on the Wii's Virtual console. If they're just gonna sell them in a pack for a smaller price, that would be pretty lazy.

 

[lunchwithyuzo]

rom dump

BSX or bust!

 

[FoneBone]

There are two teams, but we won't see a new Zelda period next year, for any system.

2012 seems totally possible for a 3DS Zelda...

 

[KrawlMan]

I'm not sure about this.. what's the point of this when you can already buy them on the Wii's Virtual console. If they're just gonna sell them in a pack for a smaller price, that would be pretty lazy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this exactly what they did w/ the Mario anniversary collection?

It's not what I'm hoping for, but I won't but shocked if that's what we get. The pipedream scenario for me would be for Nintendo to show off a 3D remake/re-imagining of the first Zelda game for Cafe. Will that happen, nope .

Man, E3 can't come soon enough.

 

[herzogzwei1989]

After watching the Skyrim gameplay trailer, I hope that a.) Cafe can run it at 60fps (even if 720p) and b.) that Zelda Cafe looks better (even if it's 30fps) That will satisfy me.

 

[lunchwithyuzo]

2012 seems totally possible for a 3DS Zelda...

Maybe if it's just Majora's Mask 3D. I can't see an original Zelda being doable so soon after Skyward Sword.

 

[From The Dust]

they should form a new team with Capcom to make portable Zeldas. I miss Flagship

 

[Instro]

In the interest of fairness to Nintendo on Zelda dev times, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that Skyward Sword is already complete and that it was delayed simply because Nintendo didn't have anything else in development for Wii that could fill the holiday tentpole role.

Most likely after it missed 2010 holidays they just held it back for the 2nd half of this year. Considering they only started working on the the game sometime in 2008 its not that bad though.

I imagine all of Nintendo's Cafe titles will take a bit longer since they will be needing completley new engines.

 

[AceBandage]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this exactly what they did w/ the Mario anniversary collection?

It's not what I'm hoping for, but I won't but shocked if that's what we get. The pipedream scenario for me would be for Nintendo to show off a 3D remake/re-imagining of the first Zelda game for Cafe. Will that happen, nope .

Man, E3 can't come soon enough.

Like I said before, Reggie said they'd do something different for Zelda than they did with Mario.

 

[beelzebozo]

i would gladly buy a rom dump disc if they also included tons of extra retrospective video content on it--interviews, drawings, maps, and so on. i wish there were more "special features" that came with rereleases of old games. what i want is not just the games, but the perspective, the all-encompassing picture of how the game started, how it progressed, what impact it's had, why it still matters, and so on.

rom dump, fine. but give me the historical angle, too.

 

[Chet Rippo]

I mean, it is the 25th anniversary and we still don't know what they're gonna do about this.

They're releasing Skyward Sword and Ocarina of Time 3D this year, what more do you want?

 

[Jocchan]

They're releasing Skyward Sword and Ocarina of Time 3D this year, what more do you want?

A ROM dump, of course.

 

[From The Dust]

Like I said before, Reggie said they'd do something different for Zelda than they did with Mario.

3D classic versions of Zelda 1, 2, Link to the Past, and Majora's Mask with bonus features

 

[AceBandage]

They're releasing Skyward Sword and Ocarina of Time 3D this year, what more do you want?

All the handheld Zeldas on eShop day one.

 

[Easy_D]

3D classic versions of Zelda 1, 2, Link to the Past, and Majora's Mask with bonus features

Is confirmed, isn't it? Or at least heavily hinted at.

 

[JohnTinker]

i would gladly buy a rom dump disc if they also included tons of extra retrospective video content on it--interviews, drawings, maps, and so on. i wish there were more "special features" that came with rereleases of old games. what i want is not just the games, but the perspective, the all-encompassing picture of how the game started, how it progressed, what impact it's had, why it still matters, and so on.

rom dump, fine. but give me the historical angle, too.

Rom dump + the

Spoiler

timeline

 

[From The Dust]

Is confirmed, isn't it? Or at least heavily hinted at.

Miyamoto said he wants to do it. but that's about it

 

[Boney]

Is confirmed, isn't it? Or at least heavily hinted at.

I think Miyamoto said he'd love to have in 3d or something

fucking june 7th

 

[Hot Coldman]

Like I said before, Reggie said they'd do something different for Zelda than they did with Mario.

Remaking the best Zelda game is good enough, really, as far as anniversaries go, but you know what would be cool?

Majora's Mask, as a Persona game.

Think about it. Both games are about building relationships and learning about the world around you, in order to save it. Replace mask transformations with party members from other races, and the Bomber quests with S-Links. Change the apocalypse mechanic to death in a month rather than 3 days, with S-Links erasing on time reset. Dungeons would be roguelike dealios, just like in Persona, but your party members would travel back with you (like Link's items). Personas, however, wouldn't- with each reset, you'd need to reassemble your arsenal from the Compendium, dungeon grinding and S-Links. (The masks could still be included, actually, with each mask earned giving you access to a Persona. Imagine a Keaton or Bremen Persona.)

The whole game would be about making as much progress with S-Links as possible, building up strength to use for Personas and such, before you spend time trawling through a dungeon to take it out. Up the dungeon difficulty, so it doesn't take 2/3 days to wipe through one, instead maybe like a week or something game time. Obviously, it wouldn't be a Zelda game as much as a straight up Persona game, but seeing the themes and mythology of that game re-imagined through the lens of a very different game would be fantastic. As far as mash-ups go, I've heard worse ideas.

Just my crazy idea...

 

[AceBandage]

I think Miyamoto said he'd love to have in 3d or something

fucking june 7th

Just hours before their conference...
So glad I took the 7th off!

 

[RedSwirl]

I think if any company can maintain tight development cycles for even HD games, it's Nintendo. Yes Nintendo games often delay, but almost never past three years, which is often about the right amount of time needed for top-tier games.

 

[From The Dust]

I think if any company can maintain tight development cycles for even HD games, it's Nintendo. Yes Nintendo games often delay, but almost never past three years, which is often about the right amount of time needed for top-tier games.

they would be better at management than Squeenix at least :lol

 

[AceBandage]

they would be better at management than Squeenix at least :lol

And the ability to make HD Towns.

 

[apana]

For Zelda anniversary I want all 2D Zeldas on one disc, including all the gameboy and gameboy advance Zeldas.

 

[ReyVGM]

For Zelda anniversary I want all 2D Zeldas on one disc, including all the gameboy and gameboy advance Zeldas.

Not gonna happen. Unfortunately.

 

[From The Dust]

And the ability to make HD Towns.

I hope it's better than TP's Castle Town. loved the look and the crowd, but you couldn't interact with all of them

 

[DragonKnight]

So fucking true.

Seconded. If the game is fresh and engaging who really gives a shit.

 

[Thraktor]

What about cost?

A million billion dollars!

Seriously, though, not a clue, as there are far too many variables still unknown. We don't know what sort of customizations the GPU will have, we don't know what kind of RAM will be used, and we don't know what architecture the CPU will be based on. Most importantly, the whole crazy-controller-with-a-screen thing will add some unknown extra cost to the system.

 

[OG_Original Gamer]

Judging by current rumours, it's likely to be somewhere between 3 and 4 (probably closer to 4).

Here's a quick spec comparison of the Radeon 4850 GPU with the XBox 360's Xenos GPU:

This should only serve as a very rough guide to relative power, as, even if the Cafe GPU is based on the 4850, it could have any number of changes compared to the PC GPU, such as a smaller fabrication process, a higher clock speed, or added features like the Xenos's 10Mb of eDRAM.

Regarding the CPU, you have to take into account that, if the Cafe is backwards compatible with the Wii (which is very likely, especially as they're sticking with an IBM PowerPC processor and an ATI GPU), then the CPU is almost certainly an out-of-order processor. This would mean that, even with the same clock speed and number of cores, it would be significantly faster than the XBox 360 CPU for many applications. It wouldn't make much of a difference for heavily linear code like physics simulation, but would be a huge improvement when it comes to AI, and many aspects of game logic. If there's a modest speedbump over the XBox 360 CPU, a larger cache, and an improved architecture (probably a stripped-down POWER7), then we'd be looking at a much more powerful processor overall.

RAM is hard to judge. There'll be at least twice as much RAM as the XBox 360, perhaps more, and probably quite fast. Not much more we can say at this stage, really.

It's also worth considering that, the last time Nintendo actually tried to produce a powerful console (the Gamecube), they did an incredibly good job of designing it, producing a machine that was significantly cheaper to make than the XBox, but was still powerful enough for games like Rogue Leader (and easy enough to program for that Rogue Leader was there near launch). It's very unlikely that they'll do anything stupid when designing Cafe, like a significant mismatch in capability between the CPU/GPU/RAM.

Furthermore, people shouldn't be expecting every game to run at 1080p. Even if the console's capable of it (very likely), most devs will stick with 720p for the simple reason that the considerable majority of TVs are 720p. Might as well squeeze as much as possible out of the console at 720p, rather than have to trade off a lower framerate/fewer effects/etc. to render at a resolution that most TVs don't support.

Personally, I'm most interested in those 160 VFPUs. Nintendo made arguably the best cel-shaded visuals ever (Wind Waker), but the Gamecube and Wii were fairly gimped in terms of shader capabilities, so I'd love to see what they can do with a far more capable GPU. (I'd give any amount of money for a 3D Yoshi's Island sequel with crayon-drawing style graphics made by the Mario Galaxy team)

If I remember correctly a higher GPU clockspeed increases pixel-fillrate and texture fill-rate.

 

[WonderbreadUSA]

I hope it's better than TP's Castle Town. loved the look and the crowd, but you couldn't interact with all of them

Personally, I liked the way they did Castle Town. It's more realistic that way. If you walk down the street and try talking to random people irl, most of them won't take time to talk to you either. Besides, I don't want to spend an hour trying to talk to every person in Castle Town. I would like to see Zelda with larger towns, however.

 

[shadyspace]

I know they said they wanted to do something different then what they did for Mario (i.e. ROM dump) but what else could they do? Mail out replica Master Swords?


Also, probably my biggest problem (of many) in TP was the totally dead towns. Even the ones that were populated like Castle Town. I want MM/WW-style NPC interaction in my Zelda games. I want to relate and forge relationships with the people I'm working to save. I need motivation for that shit. Otherwise I just feel like I'm pressing buttons.

 

[methodman]

Seconded. If the game is fresh and engaging who really gives a shit.

The thing about it though, is that there are no other games like Zelda out there. Only one that is slightly comparable, Darksiders, IMO did not come close in many of the facets every console Zelda has.

Zelda is my favorite game series ever, and George RR Martin's A song of ice and fire is my favorite book series ever (so far), the latter is releasing book 5 in July, I hope Skyward Sword is also released this year.

 

[antonz]

Keep telling that and it might become true. Epic has very close ties to MS/Sony and knows exactly whats going on. They told MS to double the memory in 360.

UE4 is not possible at all on Generation 8consoles as is. Nvidia has plainly said to get the kind of performance you see in the demo will take another generation of video cards before it reaches single card capable.

Can UE4 be nerfed to hell and back to run on Gen 8 Consoles? You Betcha but it wont be anywhere near the quality of the demo.

Probably 0.000000005% of PC owners even have Triple SLI 580 cards at this point.

 

[AceBandage]

The thing about it though, is that there are no other games like Zelda out there. Only one that is slightly comparable, Darksiders, IMO did not come close in many of the facets every console Zelda has.

Zelda is my favorite game series ever, and George RR Martin's A song of ice and fire is my favorite book series ever (so far), the latter is releasing book 5 in July, I hope Skyward Sword is also released this year.

Of course it is. It'll be their holiday title and last hurrah before Cafe.

UE4 is not possible at all on Generation 8consoles as is. Nvidia has plainly said to get the kind of performance you see in the demo will take another generation of video cards before it reaches single card capable.

Can UE4 be nerfed to hell and back to run on Gen 8 Consoles? You Betcha but it wont be anywhere near the quality of the demo.

Probably 0.000000005% of PC owners even have Triple SLI 580 cards at this point.

Likely, next gen will see UE3.5 as the major focus, which of course the Cafe will easily be able to run.
Gen 8 is likely going to be the smallest upgrade in graphics ever. Gen 9 might be bigger, even.

 

[Stephen Colbert]

So fucking true.

Not really, the people who complain that Nintendo rehases too many games, are the same people that feel Activision and Ubisoft rehash too many games.

There's probably a few hypocrites, but I think for the most part, those gamers are pissed off about the 800 different iterations of Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Assassin's Creed, Tony Hawk etc.

 

[herzogzwei1989]

If I remember correctly a higher GPU clockspeed increases pixel-fillrate and texture fill-rate.

Of course.

 

[bgassassin]

Going back to the memory debate, Sony decided to go with 256MB of XDR RAM main and 256MB of GDDR3 for main, while MS went with 512MB of unified GDDR3. Which is/was the better decision for a console?

 

[AceBandage]

Going back to the memory debate, Sony decided to go with 256MB of XDR RAM main and 256MB of GDDR3 for main, while MS went with 512MB of unified GDDR3. Which is/was the better decision for a console?

For a console, unified is probably better.
That way, you can allocate different amounts for different games.

 

[Stephen Colbert]

The AMD 4850 is called the RV770. Here is a comparsion of that, with modern day gpus, to serve as a reference point.

This is why I'm hoping Sony and MS wait for the 22nm process to be complete before releasing their next console.

At 22nm, they could release something roughly 4x as powerful as whatever gpu shows up in the Wii 2, while maintaining a similar die size and power requirement to the Wii 2's gpu.

 

[antonz]

The AMD 4850 is called the RV770. Here is a comparsion of that, with modern day gpus, to serve as a reference point.

This is why I'm hoping Sony and MS wait for the 22nm process to be complete before releasing their next console.

Well if AMD is to be believed they have a Game Console using their APU coming. Since we can safely rule out Nintendo now its very likely as has been long rumored that its Microsoft.

That gives us a general idea of where they are going GPU wise as the APUs based on DX11 are in the 65XX-66XX series gpu

 

[Cow Mengde]

Edit: And Reggie already said that they would do something different from Mario for the Zelda Anniversary.

A rom dump of the BS Zelda games. We never got those games.