Tendo City

Revolution's Horsepower aka Revolution really is a souped up Xbox.

If they really want to focus entirely on the gameplay experience, I say Nintendo shouldn't bother with what seems basically to be a token gesture of a performance upgrade and simply release the controller and a hard drive for the Gamecube, with perhaps some USB ports in the hard drive part.

It's all about the pretty white case. Can we start calling it GameCube Turbo now?

Didn't IGN release different specs several months ago?

These are updated specs. Also the last time there wasn't as much info.

Whatever the specs, they need a new image, and the new case does that, so a GC addon would be a really stupid idea... obviously... yeah, if those specs are true it's a bit dissapointing. But it's not like we were expecting great third party support or graphics equal to the PS3 and X360 anyway, with all we've heard, so... um... let's hope they end up a bit better than that, and also hope that Nintendo can pull off its promises to make the platform great based on its innovative new controller? With those specs, it'll sure need that (convincing people that the new games for it are worth the purchase through how the new controller advances game controls) in order to succeed...

A Black Falcon Wrote:But it's not like we were expecting great thrid party support or graphics equal to the PS3 and X360 anyway

You just gave me an idea. Nintendo's new slogan for Revolution should be:

Nintendo: Lowering expectations.

Or

Nintendo: Now you're playing with a souped up Xbox power

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Revolution sparking quite a bit of interest with developers? Third party support may come easier this gen for Nintendo.

Ah, you naysayers will never be happy. The new controller is Nintendo's big draw. All the competition is offering are some slightly prettier graphics. Yawn. Nintendo actually has the stones to try something different. Maybe it'll succeed, maybe it will fail, but it's better than the same-old.

Who knows where we'd be without the analog stick? Sometimes the change of a standard is good.

Quote:The new controller is Nintendo's big draw.

Yes, I said that.

Quote:All the competition is offering are some slightly prettier graphics.

If these stats are correct, the Rev to PS3/X360 gap will be almost as large as Xbox to X360 is: pretty big, and getting larger as companies get better at getting more out of the more powerful hardware. Oh, graphics aren't the most important factor, but don't underestimate how hard it will be for Nintendo to win if it's graphics are as far behind as these stats suggest... they'd better hope that they succeed in getting the new market they're going after, because selling this to hardcore gamers, based just on stats, might be tough... and particularly for people who can only afford one console. I'm not trying to be negative, but stats, and system performance, do matter... of course Nintendo has failed to win with a powerful console the last two generations so it makes sense to try a different strategy, and the new controller is a true chance to change things for the better, but even so, with graphics that far behind, it might be a tough sell to some...

Of course, nongamers won't care about graphics, they'll be drawn by the unique uses of the hardware (like the DS). And hardcore Nintendo fans (see: us) won't either. But trying to attract much of the PS2/Xbox Western serious gamer market? Good luck Nintendo... you'll need it...

Hopefully it will be cheap...cheap and fun...

If the Gamecube looks almost as good as the Xbox and you double that for the Revolution and give developers a platform they're already familiar with and eliminate the need for HD textures, what do you end up with?

omg111 teh speks r horrabel111 wat si N thinkeng111 tey r goeng 2 go sega1111 teh wurst news evar111

Anyways, if these are the final specs then there's really nothng to worry about. Looking at specs you would say that the XBox is twice as powerful as GC, yet GC competes and even exceeds the Xbox. The Revolution is using completely new chipsets while the main base of the unit is a GC (very different architechture than XBox), so look at RE4, Zelda TP, Metroid Prime, etc and imagine it with double the polygons and effects, no compressed textures (and more textures) and *gasp* it just may end up looking like a 360 game running in standard definition.

this very same news happened right before the screenshots for the GC were revealed, everyone was saying that the GC wont compete with XBox because the XBox is vastly superior and yet the GC often times looked better. Of course, third parties would spend less time on GC ports so we'd end up with better looking third party titles on Xbox and sometimes even PS2 outclassing the XBox versions, that sucked, but Nintendo and their second parties proved what GC can do.

look at PS3, look at boxman or the soldiers in Warhawk, they look subpar and with the power of that system you could make people that look as good as the real thing, but it comes down to craftmanship and artistic skill that will make the difference this generation. What Nintendo did is wreck the learning curve, and made an easy to develop for system so that artists and programers know exactly what they're doing instead of being drowned in weird setups and development nightmares. remember this one? 'the game (PDZ) slows down and chugs at around 10 frames per sec... and we cant figure out why. Everytime we think we've fixed it, it comes back." or Kutagari's dream of games that cost upwards of 35 million to develop, intendo is entering this coming gen with a console that developers can easily communicate with and make huge games for it around the $10,000 mark instead of the 10 million.

and if you want evidence to prove the ideal of graphics power or specs not being an issue, just look at the PS2 and Shadow of the Collosus, or yunno, their world wide strangelholding dominance of all things. :D and that dominance is from alot of factors, but the end result is that the PS2 has nine thousand games released every hour for it, and that's what makes the system sell to every gameplayer. Even if you hate Sony, you'll still find exclusive games that you'll enjoy on the system, because scientist's have theorized between one trillion trillions (10*) games are available for it. And that's exactly what Nintendo is aiming for, even at this point, every third party developer is interested in making games for it or have already started.

I'm definitely not worried about specs yet, when I think of a GC game running at twice the polys and effects I orgasm a little, but the coming onslaught of screens and movies of it in action will solidify and disarm any rumors or worries about horsepower. Once we see what the games will look like and more importanntly play like, i dont think anyone will bring up specs or horsepower

Quote:Anyways, if these are the final specs then there's really nothng to worry about. Looking at specs you would say that the XBox is twice as powerful as GC, yet GC competes and even exceeds the Xbox. The Revolution is using completely new chipsets while the main base of the unit is a GC (very different architechture than XBox), so look at RE4, Zelda TP, Metroid Prime, etc and imagine it with double the polygons and effects, no compressed textures (and more textures) and *gasp* it just may end up looking like a 360 game running in standard definition.

Yes, this is a good point... the GC very nearly matches the Xbox with what seems like much lower numbers, so with numbers that look 'similar' to the Xbox'es, GC should be able to do more... but still, it's no competition for the PS3 or X360. As I said, gameplay, and expanding the market, will be vital, because they won't win on graphics, that much is clear...

Quote:I'm definitely not worried about specs yet, when I think of a GC game running at twice the polys and effects I orgasm a little, but the coming onslaught of screens and movies of it in action will solidify and disarm any rumors or worries about horsepower. Once we see what the games will look like and more importanntly play like, i dont think anyone will bring up specs or horsepower

Really, the main problem is putting so much thought and discussion into something we know so little about... really, the best thing would be to wait until we know more, and not judge it until then... I know though, waiting and waiting gets old and one wants to speculate... but when you know as little as we do, you quickly run out of things to say that are actually based on fact.

well, when speculating is all you can do... :D

if you think about it, the GC is like half an Xbox as far as numbers go, yet it looks as good or better. So take a system twice as powerful as the GC, and it should be pretty amazing.

How many argumental flaws can we count here? Two, two argumental flaws!

Argument from ignorance, and non sequiter!

Actually it's completely factual and logical. We can take side by side comparison shots of SFA and Conker Reloaded, RE4 and *insert 3rd person shooter on XBox* or Metroid Prime to Doom 3 or half life, etc. These games look as good or better in comparisons and the GC, going by numbers, is half as powerful as XBox. if the Revolution is twice as powerful as GC (based on the above specs) and 360 is '3 to 4' times more powerful than Xbox, the conclusion is that Rev games will look '2 to 3' times better than XBox, putting the Revolution in the same bracket. After talking to people who've actually worked on the hardware you can see that because of the 720p or above textures it uses alot of resources, remove that factor and you have alot of leftover horsepower that could go to poly count, number of textures on screen, floating points (poly construction), etc.

So if we can litteraly look at current gen and see that the GC is on par with Xbox at half the power, then it's perfectly logical to say that the revolution will be on par with 360 at half the power. of course it's important to take in to account that the 360 is a totally different breed and is built differently than usual consoles, it was built with handeling massive amounts of info at a time to generate HD games, but remove that factor and you get a machine that is basically twice as powerful as XBox, and maybe even less (poly count, textures at a time, etc).

Now these are all supported claims and have been disected by many sites and many techie nerds, but the proof will be in the screen shots and videos obviously. but as i said, GC competes with Xbox at half power, there's no reason rev cant compete with 360. PS3 i dunno, that's up in the air right now until sony shows something pretty at E3 that doesn't contain ducks and is actually playable.

Here's the flaw. You actually believe that there's some "it's a Nintendo system and that creates a boost in performance" thing going on, and that the extra specs will somehow directly translate to the exact same disparity. There's no reason to think that's the case. You are making connections where none exist. The XBox 360 has totally different architecture, and since the Gamecube games looking as good as they do are in spite of the lack of power, not BECAUSE of it, it's silly to think that it being even LESS powerful is going to mean it'll have even better looking games.

It's all about efficiency of design and experience with the architecture.

This is true, but doubling the power isn't going to result in this massive increase in visuals that lazy is suggesting. We'd have seen some incredible videos by now if that was the case, and Nintendo wouldn't hesitate to point out how their system isn't JUST amazingly innovative, it's ALSO capable of THIS!

I think that's exactly why they're holding out, to make them look as good as possible and use every second to drive that point.

but not only did you contradict yourself but you then summarized by negating your entire stance. The simple fact is that Nintendo knows what they're doing and they have said that the graphics will compete with 360 and PS3, this could be on the same level of comparing PS2 games to XBox, but still in the same bracket ie contains the same ports with slight visual differences. so... i'm gonna go out on a limb and say you have no idea what you're talking about. As i said, multiple sites have torn the 360 a part to see how it works and even found an odd wa to pirate games, but in those experiments it's plain to see that if you took ouut the components needed to run HD games, you would have a system that is about twice as powerful as XBox in pure horsepower.

hey somethingg's weird but i'm not techie enough to really understand, there's alot of interesting stuff being thrown around about difference in CPU's and saying that some processors are not created equal, comparing two different CPU's at the same clock speed but one is much better at handeling crunching than the germans are going mad, saying it's like comparing power PC to x86 CPUs or something, I have no idea. :D But the bottom line sems to be 'specs mean nothing, i have a 3.5 ghz microwave' and these clockspeeds are coming from specialized processors that are not based off of PC so are actually not comparible to PC architecture (XBox). anyone here techie enough to understand this?

my G4 is 700 something in the clockspeed, but it acts faster a 3 ghz PC, so I see what they're getting at. While the spec numbers look like XBox, it certainly doesn't have the same architecture, and could be pushing alot more power than we realize.

I really like the microwave comment :D

edit - Nintendo commented on the specs, saying that the specs are speculation and not official and do not represent the power of revolution, and that all will be revealed at E3.

exactly, I think IGN got wind of something and ran with it without actually talking to anyone, i mean all of the developers with Rev kits have signed NDA's and someone (i'm guessing a small studio) have broke their NDA probably off record while talking to someoone from IGN who over inflated the validity of the specs. That means if they're cauught they can get fined by Nintendo or even sued, so this is a perfect time to remind ourselves that E3 is a month away. :D

On a side note, multiplle publications are claiming that their april/may issues have revolution screenshots even Nintendo Power who said 'their next issue will have the scoop you've been waiting for" with a picture of revolution. since Nntendo owns that mag and they're hyper secret about Rev, i'm guessing the first screen shots we'll see in the coming days will be magazine scans. I say days because someone always get the mag in the mail weeks before it's on the stands, so it's litteraly any day now that something will leak out either here or in the european mags who also claim to have screen shots. though I dont expet screenshots of Nintendo first party titles, i'm expecting third party stuff in the mags and first party screens from E3. but we'll see.

May is going to be insane.