Topic: E3 2011 Nintendo Press Conference Thread

[Ymeegod]

Luigi's Mansion 2 was a great shocker :0.

Still a little disappointed with the lack of WII/DS news at all? 

As for the Cafe, it's not really meant for me--I play mostly single player games, it's designed mostly for multiplayers--take that pitching demo for example.  Now you can program your pitch without the other guy getting an heads up.  Sega did the same thing with the DC/VMU.  Also think about Co-op RPG's. 

It's nintendo and it's 100% their idea so at least they get credit for that but I kinda wanted to see what horsepower was under the hood. 

[Sarail]

Luigi's Mansion 2 was a great shocker :0.

Still a little disappointed with the lack of WII/DS news at all? 

As for the Cafe, it's not really meant for me--I play mostly single player games, it's designed mostly for multiplayers--take that pitching demo for example.  Now you can program your pitch without the other guy getting an heads up.  Sega did the same thing with the DC/VMU.  Also think about Co-op RPG's. 

It's nintendo and it's 100% their idea so at least they get credit for that but I kinda wanted to see what horsepower was under the hood. 

Dude. It's got some major horsepower under the hood, ok? Sheesh.  Your third-party single-player romps will make their way to this console, too. Guarantee it, as I'm looking forward to it, too.  As a matter of fact, I've already sworn off buying Darksiders 2 and Arkham City for my PS3, because I can't wait to see what innovations are brought to the Wii U versions of each game -- Batman especially.

Thing supposedly houses an IBM Power7 chip under the hood -- it'll smoke the PS3 and 360. Hang tight... developers will show off what this beast can do very soon. Just be patient. We got a decent sampling from third-parties at the conference, too. So I can only imagine what's around the corner.

I'm all too thrilled with this new console. Can't wait. Casual stuff for the casuals, and core games for the core crowd. Best of both worlds is how one should look at it. Like I said... can't freaking wait.

[Ymeegod]

It doesn't use Core 7 series, it's an multi-core Watson that's rumored to be 3 cores at 3.5ghz with extra Dram?

Spec wise Sony's Cell still outmatches it (at least on paper--hard to notice in games but if you ran Folding homes you'll see the difference). 3.2ghz with 7 useable cores.

And that's just the CPU which in gaming means just about squat nowadays--it's all up to the GPU and there's little to nothing about what AMD is sticking under the hood?

Metro is actuallly the best example of next generation gaming since it has DX11 support.  Still not sure if the WII 2 is running DX11 or it just getting an port from it's DX9 Xbox 360 counter part?

[BlackNMild2k1]

Wut?

Watson was built from 2880 Power7 CPU cores
if Wuu uses the same tech as Watson then it is also has a multi-core Power7 CPU.

Watson is the name of the computer that played Jeopardy and won a while back. It's not a type of CPU.
and it's Power7 not Core7

[Ymeegod]

Watson is 32 cores, like I said, from what people are saying this is an Powerpc 3 cores chip, I7's have 4 cores.

Maybe it is an 4 core chip with 3 cores used for gaming?  Not sure.  Have to wait until the spec sheets are available.

[BlackNMild2k1]

No it's not. It's 2,880 (two thousand eight hundred and eighty) Power 7 cores.  You called Watson a chip. Watson is a computer. An AI system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(artificial_intelligence_software)#Hardware

According to IBM:

Watson is a workload optimized system designed for complex analytics, made possible by integrating massively parallel POWER7 processors and the IBM DeepQA software to answer Jeopardy! questions in under three seconds. Watson is made up of a cluster of ninety IBM Power 750 servers (plus additional I/O, network and cluster controller nodes in 10 racks) with a total of 2880 POWER7 processor cores and 16 Terabytes of RAM. Each Power 750 server uses a 3.5 GHz POWER7 eight core processor, with four threads per core. The POWER7 processor's massively parallel processing capability is an ideal match for Watson's IBM DeepQA software which is embarrassingly parallel (that is a workload that is easily split up into multiple parallel tasks).[13]

[Ymeegod]

What are you missing?  It's going be based on i7 design but it's lacking a core making it new but weaker?  Not sure if it matters because gaming really doesn't use CPU power besides MMO's and RTS games which there's how many on the consoles?

It's all about the GPU and that's still the ? that needs to be answered.

[BlackNMild2k1]

What am I missing? WTF are you talking about? Now you're saying that it's gonna be based on an Intel Core i7 design?

Are you running on 36 hours straight of no sleep right now?
IBM is making the CPU. Watson is made up of POWER 7 CPU cores
if WiiU is based on the same tech as Watson, then it will be using an IBM POWER7 CPU
not an Intel CPU design.

[bustin98]

I'd think games utilize the CPU for things like AI, tracking user interactions, and other logic based applications. And there is still a relationship between the CPU and GPU as far as getting the output to the screen. I'm not discounting the GPUs importance though. The GPU draws the scene, the CPU tells the GPU what to draw and when.

[ymeegod]

Sigh, Watson was using I7 8 cores/16 threads and the WII U rumored specs is using 3 cores?  What don't you get?  It's still uses the same technology minus the core which makes it less powerful.  So it's not an I7 or even an I5 it's something between an I3 and I5 processor?

[Chozo Ghost]

Are you guys talking about the processor in the console? I think it also needs to be discussed what sort of processor is going to be in the controllers too. I'm sure the controllers will support some of the load themselves. It might even end up like a cluster type deal where the more controllers there are the more powerful the system becomes.

[BlackNMild2k1]

You have got to be joking....

No it's not. It's 2,880 (two thousand eight hundred and eighty) Power 7 cores.  You called Watson a chip. Watson is a computer. An AI system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(artificial_intelligence_software)#Hardware

According to IBM:

Watson is a workload optimized system designed for complex analytics, made possible by integrating massively parallel POWER7 processors and the IBM DeepQA software to answer Jeopardy! questions in under three seconds. Watson is made up of a cluster of ninety IBM Power 750 servers (plus additional I/O, network and cluster controller nodes in 10 racks) with a total of 2880 POWER7 processor cores and 16 Terabytes of RAM. Each Power 750 server uses a 3.5 GHz POWER7 eight core processor, with four threads per core. The POWER7 processor's massively parallel processing capability is an ideal match for Watson's IBM DeepQA software which is embarrassingly parallel (that is a workload that is easily split up into multiple parallel tasks).[13]

Watson is an IBM computer not an Intel computer.
Intel makes i7's
IBM makes POWER7

Watson was made up of Two Thousand Eight Hundred and Eighty POWER7 CPU Cores inside of 750 servers. Each Server contained an 8core POWER7 CPU clocked at 3.5Ghz. Why is that so hard to understand? I even gave you the wikipedia link to back it up.

You are just messin with me aren't you!? You have to be messing with me.

Are you guys talking about the processor in the console? I think it also needs to be discussed what sort of processor is going to be in the controllers too. I'm sure the controllers will support some of the load themselves. It might even end up like a cluster type deal where the more controllers there are the more powerful the system becomes.

It will be some small AMD or ARM processor made just for sending receiving data from the console. I doubt it will be anything to really discuss.

[RedBlue]

Sigh, Watson was using I7 8 cores/16 threads and the WII U rumored specs is using 3 cores?  What don't you get?  It's still uses the same technology minus the core which makes it less powerful.  So it's not an I7 or even an I5 it's something between an I3 and I5 processor?

why would IBM use intel processors in their servers?

[Sarail]

You have got to be joking....

No it's not. It's 2,880 (two thousand eight hundred and eighty) Power 7 cores.  You called Watson a chip. Watson is a computer. An AI system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(artificial_intelligence_software)#Hardware

According to IBM:

Watson is a workload optimized system designed for complex analytics, made possible by integrating massively parallel POWER7 processors and the IBM DeepQA software to answer Jeopardy! questions in under three seconds. Watson is made up of a cluster of ninety IBM Power 750 servers (plus additional I/O, network and cluster controller nodes in 10 racks) with a total of 2880 POWER7 processor cores and 16 Terabytes of RAM. Each Power 750 server uses a 3.5 GHz POWER7 eight core processor, with four threads per core. The POWER7 processor's massively parallel processing capability is an ideal match for Watson's IBM DeepQA software which is embarrassingly parallel (that is a workload that is easily split up into multiple parallel tasks).[13]

Watson is an IBM computer not an Intel computer.
Intel makes i7's
IBM makes POWER7

Watson was made up of Two Thousand Eight Hundred and Eighty POWER7 CPU Cores inside of 750 servers. Each Server contained an 8core POWER7 CPU clocked at 3.5Ghz. Why is that so hard to understand? I even gave you the wikipedia link to back it up.

You are just messin with me aren't you!? You have to be messing with me.

Are you guys talking about the processor in the console? I think it also needs to be discussed what sort of processor is going to be in the controllers too. I'm sure the controllers will support some of the load themselves. It might even end up like a cluster type deal where the more controllers there are the more powerful the system becomes.

It will be some small AMD or ARM processor made just for sending receiving data from the console. I doubt it will be anything to really discuss.

Hah. Thank you, man. I don't understand how he's not comprehending how we're talking about IBM's POWER7 processor. :

This is going to trump the 360 and PS3 quite easily. Very excited.

[cubist]

Sigh, Watson was using I7 8 cores/16 threads and the WII U rumored specs is using 3 cores?  What don't you get?  It's still uses the same technology minus the core which makes it less powerful.  So it's not an I7 or even an I5 it's something between an I3 and I5 processor

Are you talking IBM or Intel here?

It doesn't matter.  Wuu has been touted by Nintendo and confirmed by third parties as being the most powerful console when it's released.  We all know that Sony and MS will release more powerful machines, but this time Wuu gets the third party port. 

Nintendo IPs are still my favorite.

[Stogi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMMbpE0iXjI

THQ talking about having 4 titles for launch including Darksiders II. Pretty amazing.

Aslo, Ubisoft has pledged 5 games including a FPS that has yet to be announced and a Sports packaged.

Mark Rein might be on board as well if we are to believe his twitter account:

"RT @Michael_French @MarkRein So that means you're supporting Wii U? < --No announcement to make today but let's just way "Water meet fish""

[BlackNMild2k1]

Nintendo's 3rd Party Games Reel was not running on Wuu Hardware.
PS360/PC footage was shown at the Nintendo E3 Press Conference instead.
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/08/wii-u-third-party-sizzle-reel-composed-of-360-ps3-pc-footage/

When Nintendo showed off a reel of major third-party games currently in development for its newly announced console, the Wii U, the footage wasn't actually playing on Wii U hardware. Nintendo of America prez Reggie Fils-Aime casually admitted as much in a post-presser interview with GameTrailers, excusing it by saying, "We're talking a year away from when the system's gonna launch" -- a hard to argue point, considering developers probably need some time to, ya know, actually make games for it.

We're hoping to see some actual third-party game footage soon, but aren't exactly expecting it in the upcoming weeks. Nintendo's Wii U is expected to launch at some point in 2012, with Nikkei predicting the latter half of the year.

Also sounds like a soft confirmation for a June 2012 launch to me.

[Stogi]

I like Nintendo's new policy on releasing early in the year. It gets all the rabid fans from buying all the stock they intend to sell to new comers during the holiday season.

[johnn]

I really believe that releasing first will put Nintendo in the lead again in the home console race.

[Adrock]

(Edit: Sorry, I was a page behind on the mobile site. Fail on my part)

Has anyone definitively confirmed what IBM is providing Nintendo?

[BlackNMild2k1]

(Edit: Sorry, I was a page behind on the mobile site. Fail on my part)

Has anyone definitively confirmed what IBM is providing Nintendo?

There was an IBM Press Release
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=34638.0

and I posted the AMD press release in that same thread.

[Adrock]

I'm on the mobile site via my phone so I can't click links. That said, I assume that's a yes.

[BlackNMild2k1]

IBM Microprocessors to Power the New Wii U System from Nintendo

ARMONK, N.Y., June 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it will provide the microprocessors that will serve as the heart of the new Wii Uâ„¢ system from Nintendo. Unveiled today at the E3 trade show, Nintendo plans for its new console to hit store shelves in 2012.

The all-new, Power-based microprocessor will pack some of IBM's most advanced technology into an energy-saving silicon package that will power Nintendo's brand new entertainment experience for consumers worldwide. IBM's unique embedded DRAM, for example, is capable of feeding the multi-core processor large chunks of data to make for a smooth entertainment experience.

IBM plans to produce millions of chips for Nintendo featuring IBM Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology at 45 nanometers (45 billionths of a meter). The custom-designed chips will be made at IBM's state-of-the-art 300mm semiconductor development and manufacturing facility in East Fishkill, N.Y.

The relationship between IBM and Nintendo dates to May 1999, when IBM was selected to design and manufacture the central microprocessor for the Nintendo GameCubeâ„¢ system. Since 2006, IBM has shipped more than 90 million chips for Nintendo Wii systems.

"IBM has been a terrific partner for many years. We truly value IBM's commitment to support Nintendo in delivering an entirely new kind of gaming and entertainment experience for consumers around the world," said Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director, Integrated Research and Development, at Nintendo Co., Ltd.

"We're very proud to have delivered to Nintendo consistent technology advancements for three generations of entertainment consoles," said Elmer Corbin, director, IBM's custom chip business. "Our relationship with Nintendo underscores our unique position in the industry -- how we work together with clients to help them leverage IBM technology, intellectual property and research to drive innovation into their own core products."

Built on the open, scalable Power Architecture base, IBM custom processors exploit the performance and power advantages of proven silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology. The inherent advantages of the technology make it a superior choice for performance-driven applications that demand exceptional, power-efficient processing capability – from entertainment consoles to supercomputers.

IBM told Engadget
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/07/ibm-puts-watsons-brains-in-nintendo-wii-u/

Nintendo's new console, the Wii U, was finally unveiled to the world today at E3 2011, and we got a glimpse of its graphical prowess at the company's keynote. Details were scarce about the IBM silicon Nintendo's new HD powerhouse was packing, but we did some digging to get a little more info. IBM tells us that within the Wii U there's a 45nm custom chip with "a lot" of embedded DRAM (shown above). It's a silicon on insulator design and packs the same processor technology found in Watson, the supercomputer that bested a couple of meatbags on Jeopardy awhile back. Unfortunately, IBM wouldn't give us the chip's clock speeds, but if it's good enough to smoke Ken Jennings on national TV, we imagine it'll do alright against its competition from Sony and Microsoft.

This means that WiiU is packing a POWER7 if Kotaku is to be believed.
I break it down in the Rumor thread

AMD and Nintendo Join Forces in Creating a New Way to Enjoy Console Gaming Entertainment

AMD's Custom HD Graphics Processor Enables Immersive HD Multimedia Gaming Entertainment for Nintendo's New Wii UTM Console

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - Jun 7, 2011) - Today at E3, AMD (NYSE: AMD) announced its support for Nintendo's newly-announced Wii Uâ„¢ system, as a new way to enjoy HD console gaming entertainment. The custom AMD Radeonâ„¢ HD GPU reflects the best characteristics of AMD's graphics technology solutions: high-definition graphics support; rich multimedia acceleration and playback; and multiple display support. As an industry leader, AMD has supplied the game console market with graphics expertise and ongoing support for more than 10 years.

"We greatly value our synergistic relationship with the AMD design team. The AMD custom graphics processor delivers the best of AMD's world-class graphics expertise. AMD will support our vision of innovating play through unique entertainment experiences," said Genyo Takeda, senior managing director, Integrated Research & Development of Nintendo Co. Ltd.

"AMD shares Nintendo's excitement for the new HD entertainment experience planned for the Wii U console," said David Wang, corporate vice president of Silicon Engineering, AMD. "We're proud to provide our leading-edge HD multimedia graphics engine to power the new entertainment features of the console. Nintendo is a highly-valued customer and we look forward to the launch in 2012."

AMD custom graphics enable the new Nintendo system to provide exciting, immersive game play and interaction for consumers around the world. The AMD custom graphics processor features a modern and rich graphics processing core, allowing the new console to shine with new graphics capabilities.

[Adrock]

Why, thank you, kind sir. You are, as always, a gentleman and a scholar.

[alegoicoe]

I think nintendo did a great job at the conference covering all the basics, the 3ds had a great showing with many great titles ready for this year, the wii u although we got a lot of info i would have like to see some more third party games, but other than that i give them an A.