Wii U Speculation Thread The Third: Casting Dreams in The Castle of Miyamoto
- Thread starter AceBandage
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Here's the Bloomberg article from October 2011 covering the same matter. This article and Nintendo's announcement predicting a yearly loss came at the end of the first half of their fiscal year. So here we are, six months later, at the end of that fiscal year mentioned in October's statement, and Nintendo's forecast came true. No biggie; this is six-month-old news, in effect.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...loss-in-30-years-after-cutting-3ds-price.html
(and as of last year, Nintendo had a cash reserve of approximately $11 billion. And no debt against them.)
edit: corrected a BIG error. The article is from Oct 2011, not 2006. Sorry!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...loss-in-30-years-after-cutting-3ds-price.html
(and as of last year, Nintendo had a cash reserve of approximately $11 billion. And no debt against them.)
edit: corrected a BIG error. The article is from Oct 2011, not 2006. Sorry!
AceBandage
Banned
The problem is these new rumors go against what we heard earlier this year about the system getting a boost in power. And that doesn't come from some no name sites. It's been coaberated by several members who have been proven reliable.
Add to that Nintendo plays the long game. A short term loss is not going to suddenly shift their entire focus. The 3DS had a "slow" (if you can call it that) start because it launched in March at much more than it should have. Neither of these should be problems with the Wii U.
Thinking Nintendo is panicking over this isn't very realistic. They aren't happy, for sure, but they aren't suddenly going to screwnover years of development, for themselves and third parties, simply because they're posting a loss.
They can't afford to aim casuals only, the biggest problem of Wii was the poor support from 3rd paties, if they don't make that al least is in the same ballpark as next gen they will not get 3rd party support again. If they were Wii route again, it doesn't make too much sense invert all that money in free middleware solutions for 3rd parties.
They couldn't of changed the hardware that fast, the Wii U's chips were designed, coming up with a new design would of taken at least a year, and Wii U would fall into 2013... but since PS4 specs are now rumored to be on par with current gen, I think all the low spec talk about the Wii U from PS360 fans will end up back firing pretty strongly once specs are finally revealed.
bgassassin
Member
Looks like they repeated the IGN rumor. I'll believe it when I see it.
Nintendo isn't panicking. But when you have financial analysts telling investors that Nintendo is not a good company to invest in, Nintendo needs to put investor's worries to rest.
I think Nintendo is a smart company, and overall, I think the Wii U will do just fine. People act like Nintendo is run by complete morons, but if that's the case, they have to be the richest morons I've ever seen.
bah, who cares, 2x-3x ps360 is perfectly fine for me, and I seriously doubt nintendo could make a cheaper console that isn't at least 2x the ps360. These other consoles have dropped drastically in specs too... HD6670 and a HD7670 for gpus isn't going to blow up any modern GPU, so I'm actually pretty excited, by the end of next week the PS4 could actually have a rumor where it is inferior to the Wii U... Especially considering the CPU (A8-3850@2.9ghz is pretty weak compared to something based on current IBM tech, it's saving grace will be the extra cores, but that doesn't exactly help AMD against Intel, so we will have to wait and see what these developers with shotty engines have to say)
Yup. The other companies would love to have Iwata at the helm. He'll make pretty sound decisions that'll ensure that the company is around for a long time. Sure, those decisions might not be the flashiest, but they'll be the most sensible. And when the company makes an error, he'll be quick to see to it that the error is addressed.
I think the 3DS situation last year was a real moment of truth for Iwata (and Nintendo as a whole) as far as testing his(their) ability to handle bad situations. Quite an eye-opener.
(and note: I posted an article above and mis-labeled it as being from 2006. The correct year is 2011.)
bgassassin
Member
I'll reiterate that I'll believe it when I see it.
This reads like you don't want to speculate anymore. what point is there in using an AMD CPU if you don't shoot for APU, and those just aren't going to blow away IBM CPUs. the graphics card makes sense too as you can combined it with the APU's graphics chip for maximum output... a cheap way to hit 1.2tflops but little more.
What do you mean?
If they have been developing the Wii U cpu and gpu for years I'm not sure if they can suddenly change their mind about it.
bgassassin
Member
Or maybe it means something else.
I was wondering if some folks here in the thread had already discussed how much the components inside various consoles would cost. That's all.
bgassassin
Member
It's the same rumor that was already posted.
In response to the first BOM right? Or before?
Saint Gregory
Member
I don't think that any change in plans is directly tied to them posting a loss. I think they may have decided that marketing the Wii U at $400 is not as sure a thing as marketing it at $300 would be based on the bad reception they received from marketing the 3DS at $250.
I shouldn't have to bring up Nintendo's dislike of hardware subsidizing so unless it's your belief that Nintendo always intended the U to $300 or a little more then we have to assume that cuts are being made somewhere.
There's no guarantee either way that Nintendo will see the same level of 3rd party support as the other players. I thought it was strange from the beginning that Nintendo would abandon their successful strategy from this gen to get involved in the tech race with MS and Sony. Focusing on releasing mass market priced hardware should be their #1 goal.
After following the Wii's development I can't help but feel that last minute changes were made to that system to gimp it and lower its manufacturing costs. Prior to its full reveal at E3 2006 several Nintendo execs made it clear that their goal for the system was to be an SD system capable of playing the same games as the HD twins but at standard resolutions. When Perrin Kaplan was pressed on the ball park for the system's specs she placed it around 3x the GC and it ended up being a lot closer to 1.5x the GC. While it could be that she just wasn't familiar enough with the actual specs it could also be that Nintendo lowered them at the last minute to keep costs down.
Louis Cyphre
Banned
I don't think they are run by morons, far from it. I feel they are too reliant on their history, loyalty, and an unwillingness to adapt is what holds them back. Out of all of the three major console players Nintendo seems to continue to try and pave their own path. That's fine but you have to remember that 3rd party content is the dominant factor in the amount of support.
As we move forward to an online universe will Nintendo be able to keep up, or will we continue to see them recycle their same old franchises in new gameplay experiences? What's hard for Nintendo is the 3rd party publishers just aren't going to offer full support of their hardware since it's only one platform. So the gamer is either left to be content with just the exclusive titles or not care that the systems Nintendo releases just can't compete on a technical level with the others and hope the difference in gameplay is enough.
To be fair, no chip in the world can blow away IBM CPUs besides Intel's. Choosing AMD isn't a compromise in their performance. People need to stop giving AMD a bad rep just because Intel is miles ahead of anyone else. I think an AMD CPU is quite likely to outperform the Wii U chip, which is probably cut down so much it's barely a POWER7 any more, or the next Xbox chip, which so far sounds as if it's going to be a Xenos++.
Yep, the first one.
Here's the thing, games are already being made and apparently those making games have stated clearly that the system is fairly powerful, so this notion that the Wii U is going to be on par should be dropped, shot, and put to pasture. It's as silly as believing the next Playstation is going to be on par with the current generation.
I don't think any comment by Perrin Kaplan about tech should mean anything. Anyone who was paying attention during the early days of the Wii should have seen that the system wasn't going to be that much more powerful than the Cube. Devs were dodging questions about power and such. Nintendo wouldn't show tech demos (at least I don't remember any Wii tech demos). This is not the same situation that is going on now.
H_Prestige
Banned
When did this happen? The rumor was a SI AMD GPU, corroborated by brain_stew.
There is a fudzilla article with a dev quoting the system as on par, its as stupid a comment as the Wii u's on par comment, but it puts them on equal footing, so I am going to mention it whenever Wii u is placed on par with current gen
Saint Gregory
Member
I honestly don't know what's going on right now with all the rumors going back and forth but this is revisionist history. Even after the Wii was released there was a lot of reluctance to accept just how low powered it is with many people theorizing that the low visual quality of the games were due to dev laziness and unfamiliarity with the hardware.
I realize that it would be very disappointing to a lot of people if it turned out that the Wii U isn't much more powerful than current gen but the 3DS has convinced me more than ever that Nintendo could release compelling software on a graphing calculator if they needed to so whatever gets released is an instant buy for me.
bgassassin
Member
Since you're not picking up on what I'm saying, target specs can always have adjustments and/or changes. The IGN/Fudzilla info would be a big change.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Should've been, but they forgot to use the damn pointer.Oddduck said:
R
Rösti
Unconfirmed Member
Out of the 2063 Wii titles (including Virtual Console games) released in North America, titles published by Nintendo account for only 7.6%. For Nintendo 3DS Nintendo published titles account for 0.2% of all titles (665). Unquestionably does Nintendo create master class software (Super Mario Galaxy being a prime example) which they use to market their systems. But I think it would be very difficult for them to maintain steady sales with no third party titles at all unless they are aiming to enter the interactive education market where things like I Am a Teacher: Super Mario Sweater, Mario's Early Years! Preschool Fun and Mario Teaches Typing could return, with other characters such as Link and Samus making appearances. They already have a good relation with Starlight Children's Foundation for which the Fun Center Mobile Entertainment Units (featuring a Wii console and a DVD player) are provided, so they have a solid platform if something like that would be in the plans. But this would be a very strange act, so I doubt it will happen.
All these rumors popping up every day regarding the power of Wii U, Orbis and Durango make it rather difficult to speculate due to the ever-changing theme; one day Wii U is 50% stronger than Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the next day it's weaker than these systems. I really hope Mr. Iwata & Co. will provide some firm details about Wii U in the upcoming IR event on the 26th of April. If not for us, then for the investors.
DragonSworne
Banned
You can't just "lower" specs at the last minute to save money. Sure, you can save some money by having less RAM chips in the system, but once you sunk R&D into certain chip sets, you do not save any money right before production by simply lowering the speed of the chips.
Nintendo has already decided to have a certain CPU and GPU, this will not change. The only thing that will vary is their speeds, and this is for heating concerns, not cost cocerns.
The only thing that will save Nintendo money is gutting pheriphal parts and RAM parts. Not lower the specs of any chips.
Nintendo has already decided to have a certain CPU and GPU, this will not change. The only thing that will vary is their speeds, and this is for heating concerns, not cost cocerns.
The only thing that will save Nintendo money is gutting pheriphal parts and RAM parts. Not lower the specs of any chips.
DragonSworne
Banned
Nintendo Network(NIN) is the name of their new online system. It will have accounts.
axisofweevils
Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
Note the "MAY"s..
Wii U may be partnering with MySpace
Wii U may cost $180 to manufacture - including the $50 controller - and may be sold for no less than $300
Wii U may be more or less powerful than current gen and/or next gen
Did I miss anything?
lol myspace.
More or less powerful than current gen and/or next gen? That doesn't even make sense! lol
Which one is it?
That was news. So I guess there haven't been any rumors on it thus far. I see a mention of Myspace, and I ask myself why?
Believe.
Well, in the Forget the Box story claiming Wii U's BOM is $180, there's this:
If there's any truth to this, it's fantastic news because it suggests Nintendo have finally woken up to themselves about the changes taking place in the console space.
Well I obviously missed something, if you want to share.
Big change from what?
jump_button
Banned
Wii U Mii update? ( aka hats)
DragonSworne
Banned
The only thing Nintendo needs is a unified look and feel for match making. Moving away from Friend's code will accomplish this.
The store, demos, and other downloadable content is pretty much on par with the experience on Xbox live and PSN.
DragonSworne
Banned
Yep, seems like only Mocrosft is going crazy for next gen specs.
Sony and Nintendo will be comparable.
axisofweevils
Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
The GPU that IGN/Fudzilla are claiming the PS4 uses is a step down from last year's target box specs.
Now... what are the latest on the Wii U hardwares? lol
Seriously, 1 weekend and 45 pages go by
axisofweevils
Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
A site I can't link to is reporting that a racing game advert was recently shot with a famous race driver, where he used the controller as a steering wheel.
Site I can't link to said:
ShockingAlberto
Member
I imagine the Miyamoto Mii story is going to be something like "How the 3DS turned it around" or "The final year of the Wii" or "How the potential of the Wii was squandered."
Yep, thats my question, especially if it doesn't fit with this rumored 4 core 2.9ghz 1.2tflop ps4.
The good news is that most of that stuff is already available on the eShop. So hopefully we'll see a significant enhancement for Wii U (and 3DS) when all is revealed. TY
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