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Originally posted by: pudu
Alright I need to go to bed but here is what is going through my head right now (which I already posted @ gonintendo.com):
What gets me is why would someone under an NDA, with their job on the line, leak this information to one of the biggest game-related sites on the web? Why would Nintendo put all this time and money into R&D and not even produce a graphics card that could utilize the newest shader funcitons and whatnot to help with graphics and ease system strain? How in the world could they stress to no end that gameplay is #1 and not discuss/acknowledge that CPU performance has to do with MANY aspects of a game that directly affect GAMEPLAY (ai, physics, framerate, etc.) Would this create similar gameplay limitations due to hardware specs, just with a new way of controlling those limited characters/objects?
These are but many of the questions that are frantically buzzing around in my head. I'm sorry if I've been a bit negative for some of you to handle but these are all legit things I think Nintendo will have to explain and/or justify somehow. I already know I'm getting the console, I just am now worried this choice in hardware power might unessarily limit the creative freedom and potential of the Revmote. It almost seems with such an intuitive device that it is almost begging for some decent power to back it up!
--anyway I'll post again tomorrow when I can think more logically (2:30am now)
I'd like a chance to address these topics, if I may.
There have always been leaks. I don't know why they happen, but they happen. *shrug* Right now I just accept their existence.
Nintendo's major R & D budget seems to have gone into developing the Revolution controller. This appears to have been a difficult process, with latency issues apparently being a real major hurdle. Also, it appears that Nintendo never intended to compete with Sony or MS in terms of hardware prowess this generation. They had originally intended to release the freehand controller as a GC expansion that would extend the GC's life another generation, then had to scrap that plan when faced with the inevitable march of hardware. Then, they opted to continue on their tact of ease of development and the GC's ultra streamlined design instead of brute power, it appears that Nintendo requested hardware that would provide them the most bang for their buck: not expensive to make, powerful for stndard definition, easy to develop for. There may have been some oversights, or tricky cost-cutting decisions, which I suppose is where the shader functions were scrapped. Still, these were probably made on a value analysis taking into account the rate of diminishing returns on graphics these days.
And I think it's ridiculous to wonder whether the Rev's hardware will cripple games. AI in videogames is a result of good design and smart algorithms, not CPU thunder. Physics seemed to work well enough on the last generation of games, this generation will be fine too, just the Rev won't be able to cram 1 million rubber duckies in your bath like the PS3 can, or bounce that many ping pong balls or whatever. And framerate, did the last generation give you any indication that framerates were suffering in Nintendo games? Isn't 30FPS, 60 FPS enough? If not, the PS3 does have that 120 FPS claim...
The revolution hardware is exactly what it needs to be. IGN describes it as a vehicle for the Revmote, and I think this is true. The hardware does everything it needs to do to put a pretty nice visual on your Standard Definition TV and little else. It doesn't need the 3X RAM count for HD textures, nor does it need heaps upon heaps more of headache-inducing multi-threaded multi-core complex and expensive computing brute force just to throw enough millions of characters on the screen for players to slaughter by pressing one button like X360's Ninety-Nine Nights. All that would be a waste, it would increase the risk for Nintendo and it would increase the Price for buying and developing on the Revolution, things that would limit the Revolution controller's exposure to gamers, casuals, and non-gamers, adoption by developers, and ultimate success.
The Revolution basically IS the controller, it seems. Everything else is just there to complement it, and anything more would only hinder it. In contrast to your ending thought, The Revolution controller actually calls out for the mainstream price of widespread adoption, and for the risk-reducing safety of non-bleeding edge hardware and easy development environments.
~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com 
Topic: IGN Promises Rev Specs: Evening 3/29/06 (Read 96893 times)
