Topic: What's next after Wii?

[Kairon]

Nintendo isn't about moving the PC into the living room. It may look like that but it really isn't. Nintendo is giving the Wii "lifestyle" functions in order to make it more friendly to the family at large for "playing." These are basically trojan horses to get people playing games, not the other way around.

The reason I say lifestyle is because we need to look at the Wii's major points: It can show us our photos, it can show us the weather quickly before we leave, it can show us some of the latest news at a glance, it can let us leave notes for family members refridgerator style... compare to the DS' big points: it can improve our memory/thinking, it can read recipes to us out loud, it can teach us english, etc.

These aren't things that dominate the living room, these are things that dominate our lifestyles!

The point is NOT to bring the PC to the living room, the point is to bring useful functionality to all members of the family so that they can learn to interact in a game-like fashion with the console, and every once in a while to buy games that appeal to them.

Today: Photo/Video jigsaw puzzles on the Wii ............................ Tomorrow: Tetris
Today: Mii character avatars ........................................................ Tomorrow: Animal Crossing
Today: Point & Shoot user interfaces ........................................... Tomorrow: Battle Clash 3

The Wii2 will, in my opinion, NOT become a PC in the living room, but instead better work as a lifestyle helper device.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Kairon]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ceric
I'm going to re-mention that I believe the next time they will ditch optical to favor Flash based game storage.

I just realized the BIG advantage to this: If they can get high-capacity cheap flash memory... then they no longer need a thick, hot, highly-fragile, big optical drive. The console can get even smaller!

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Ian Sane]

"One day digital distribution will take over, but we're probably not gonna have that kinda bandwidth yet."

I don't think that's ever going to completely take over.  People like having something physical.  Otherwise it feels like you don't really own it and with all these piracy issues the companies selling you the product will ensure you never really own anything they can't change or take away at will.  If it ever does take over I don't think it would be until our generation has died out and no one alive has ever experienced a world without internet.  

[Ceric]

Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon

Quote
Originally posted by: Ceric
I'm going to re-mention that I believe the next time they will ditch optical to favor Flash based game storage.

I just realized the BIG advantage to this: If they can get high-capacity cheap flash memory... then they no longer need a thick, hot, highly-fragile, big optical drive. The console can get even smaller!

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

Yep.  I mentioned that in my original post in this thread.  It also means that there wouldn't really be a need for memory cards of any sorts because saves can go back to being on the game.  Also Patches, extra content, and the like could go with the game.  You could have it all even at a friends house.

[Kairon]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ceric
It also means that there wouldn't really be a need for memory cards of any sorts because saves can go back to being on the game.  Also Patches, extra content, and the like could go with the game.  You could have it all even at a friends house.

W-w-w-WOW. Solid state memory rocks!

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[BigJim]

Not that it wouldn't be cool, but there's no chance of the ROM being cheaper than a disc at comparable capacities. 3rd parties would bitch again.

[Kairon]

No, no Bigjim. Give it time. We ARE moving back towards solid state memory nowadays. Already, Hard Disks are starting to be replaced by Flash Memory in some Sony Vaio laptops, in the One Laptop Per Child project, and in Nintendo's own Wii.

It's only a matter of time...

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[BigJim]

I'm aware, but the cost advantage won't be there in 5 yrs. Otherwise we'll be picking up iPods out of prize gumball machines.

Notice that NAND technology will replace and/or become a hybrid part of the hard drive... hardware that is only purchased once and absorbed as part of the platform price.

Nobody's talking about it being a viable replacement for the actual media of software, DVD, HD-DVD, or BRD movies. Because even 30GB HD-DVD discs will cost pennies on the dollar before too long.

It's estimated that the 4GB NAND in an iPod Nano costs Apple $46 today. There's zero chance of increasing capacity 8x and reducing the cost to $1 in 5 years.

It'll have good applications in platforms as an HDD alternative, but not yet as a media alternative.

[Kairon]

/schooled

/sad

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Shorty McNostril]

Any chance it could be an upgrade that somehow connects into the current unit? I reckon it should follow the mitsubishi path and be called the WiiVo. (evo)  

[JonLeung]

I love the price drops in media.  I remember when a CD-R was around $15 (Canadian).  Now you can get several DVD-Rs for that.

I read about how they can now fit like twenty GBs of data or more on these things that are the size of sticks of gum...and they kind of look like sticks of gum! At least if I remember correctly and they weren't just showing some gum.  But I know there's some biological process to grow this gunk that memory can be saved on so it wouldn't be surprising.  Soon we could have iPods that have, like, lots of terabytes or yottabytes or whatever.