These specs don't seem to be far-fetched at all to be honest with you. Remember that this console won't be coming out for at least a year or a year and a half, and just as speed doubles every 18 months, the cost of comparative chips half. A G5, or at least G5-based processor is a very good bet, as they've already announced backwards-compatibility a PowerPC processor is pretty much guarenteed and a G5 would make the most sense in the power/price ratio in a year from now. Quad-core I'm not so sure about, unless the system is liquid-cooled (which we may well see in this gen of consoles). A PPU is a very likely possibility, and would be a good move by Nintendo, IMO. We're going to be seeing alot of big physics-intensive games in the next gen of consoles, and if these PPUs are at all as beneficial as they are made out to be, then even a relatively cheap dedicated processor of a couple of hundred Mhz could take a lot of strain off the CPU as well as providing a huge leap in physics simulation over other consoles. The dual-core graphics card and 512MB shared RAM are also fairly good bets, as is the HDTV support (expect HDMI-out).
On the games front, Mario and Smash Bros., both being very high-selling franchises, would do Nintendo well within the launch period, as would any Retro-made FPS. Squeenix would also be likely to be devloping a game for the machine, although don't expect it to be FF:XIII or even FF:CC2, as they wouldn't be willing to risk giving the first to a console that isn't the market leader, and the second will most probably be shown off fo the DS at E3. And if there is a PPU, then you can expect a new Waverace to be almost guarenteed, as it's the perfect way to show off the console's capabilites in handling high-end physics. All the other publishers/developers listed are pretty obvious too, as they've never failed to support a major console.
But the reason it looks most like this info has actually come out of Nintendo has to be this:
- Some completely new franchises are still at the works at Nintendo which will be featured on DS as well. Most of them are more mature-themed than we are used to with Nintendo
It just wouldn't be a new Nintendo console without them hyping themselves up to be moving to developing games for a more mature audience and then completely failing to do so. And quite thankfully, too, I don't think I'd really want to see Link threaten to pop a cap in someone's bitch ass. So long as there are third parties willing to develop games where I can drive around shooting up the place, I perfectly happy with Nintendo sticking to what they do best.
