Nintendo reconfirms Wii 480p News

So they are not including the lead?

Shame.

BadBoyBonner: They are not pushing HD so they dont need to. The gamers will not hate them for it.

invention?

Well come now Ninty, for that price one would think at least 720p would be supported.

@disc: you are right, no gamer can hate Nintendo but perhaps many will stay away from their console, just like tthey did in case of GC. Plus 720p is hardly the entire HD spectrum these days - it is fast becoming a default standard.

Trust the terrible Official Nintendo Magazine to make a mistake like that!!! It never was the most reliable of magazines when I used to read years ago. LOL

They must have confused 720x576 (which is a standard definition resolution) with 1280x720.

720p was never going to happen, however, I would like the component cables. The sharpness will help, especially with the web browser and such.

Nintendo is the best.

Component video is the best video option for the Wii in terms of clarity and colour quality but I dread to think how jaggy the games will look at 480p as none of them appear to use anti-aliasing. I know from my softmodded Xbox how nasty some 480p games can look without AA although games that use it, like MotoGP 3, look great.

The Wii is the reason I've kept my 21" 4:3 Sony CRT TV really as GameCube games look great with the RGB SCART lead and the scanline technology helps mask most of the jaggies. My HDTV is reserved for the hi-def consoles like the 360 and the forthcoming PS3 as well as, eventually, HD movies.

It looks like NoE have got it wrong as well, surely the default output for PAL consoles will be 576i?

I am thinking more of the 180 price tag plus the lead take it ever closer to the 360; when Nintendo banged on about it was going to be Sooooo cheap it wasn’t even in the same arena. I think they are making a massive mistake with the price point. They could of released it for 99 easy, say minus the nun-chuck part & minus the packed in game (and as it turns out DVD playback) and they would have had a sure fire winner on their hands. Then made the pack in game the cheapest one out there say £19.99. Think it would have stormed the charts and done far better in the mainstream press, which does influence many more people than our rantings on here unfortunatley.

It is a crying shame that the gorgeous clean style of Ninty isn't going to benefit. If it is about twice as powerful as the original Xbox which had loads of 720p games even some 1080i ones, surely they must let people have the option. At 99 quid it’s an impulse purchase, which I’d put up with, at probably the 200 mark (with 480p lead) am not so sure, might have to persuade the GF to buy me one for Xmas then I won’t feel the pain of buying the thing, an just enjoy all it’s fun instead!

damn

The Wii is aimed at a general audience rather than hardcore gaming nuts, and only a small percentage of the population as a whole actually has a HDTV.

Most people only buy a new TV when their old one breaks down, so the odds are that most people still won't have a HDTV for another five years at least, by which time the successor to the Wii will be available (and Nintendo has already said that definitely WILL be in high definition).

If the PS3 or 360 become the huge hits their creators want them to be, most of their users will never even see the high definition technology as most of them will use the consoles on standard definition televisions. I think Nintendo has got this right, HDTV is too early in its development to be worth including in this generation, HDTV-compatibility is a waste of money for most gamers.

Twice as powerful as the original xbox? My understanding is that is is basically the Gamecube with a different controller? Am I wrong here?

ChupaChups - so having the option would be a bad thing?

Gizmo - if it is I would imagine Nintendo will be asking for their millions back that they gave ATi to develop the new graphics subsytem for the console.

ChupaChups: Nintendo also said Wii will have a DVD player. They also said they would not be last to market.

With the Wii at 480p, some PS3 games dropping to 720p because of framerate issues (and the X360 having 1080p as a marketing tool) and most people not having an HDTV anyway the HD era is once again next-gen-after-this-one

Wii's ATI-provided "Hollywood" GPU clocks in at 243MHz. By comparison, GameCube's GPU ran at 162MHz. The 'Hollywood' is a large-scale integrated chip that includes the GPU, DSP, I/O bridge and 3MBs of texture memory.

Wii will operate using 24MBs of "main" 1T-SRAM. It will additionally boast 64MBs of "external" 1T-SRAM. That brings the total number of system RAM up to 88MBs, not including the 3MB texture buffer on the GPU. By comparison, GameCube featured 40MBs of RAM not counting the GPU's on-board 3MBs. The original Xbox included 64MBs total RAM

IBM's "Broadway" CPU is clocked at 729MHz by comparison, GameCube's Gekko CPU ran at 485MHz.

My understanding is that is is basically the Gamecube with a different controller? Am I wrong here?

Yes, you are.

but I dread to think how jaggy the games will look at 480p

That depends on your display. If you have a standard TV they will look brilliant, as the source matrial is of higher resolution than TVs, DVDs (not upscaled) and the like.

If you already have a HDTV and it is not a good one, they will look bad because of the displays bad scaler (the thing that's used to transform 480p to 720p or 1080p or whatever resolution your display uses). If you have a good one, they will look good.

You can easily check by watching standard TV or DVDs (on a player without upscaling). If they look crap your TV is crap.

And if Gears of War cost Microsoft one billion dollars (by persuading them to go from 256mb to 512mb for those that missed the storyhttp://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?art... ) then, how much have nintendo saved doing this 88mb machine and passed, it would seem, little or none of the saving on.

I take it my Wii will look good on my SAMSUNG HDTV @ 480p if using component cables and not give the ghosting you get using ordinary scart cables on the PS2 and gamecube?

Nintendo just understood the point to what their business is.

Give people a machine to have a fun with. A toy for everyone.

I think the wiis success depends on 3 things, regardless of what p they output in!

Mario Galaxy

Zelda Twilight Princess

And the thing that is really putting me off the wiimote of nunchuks or whatever the hell it is!!

I get the impression the thing will be too damn fiddly and will make games harder and more frustating rather than more fun!!

I waiting for a resolution that will caress my nipples

Thought it was funny when the Nintendo stated that they think the kids in the front room pissing about with the Wii controller will make other's in the house think, “hey what's he doing” and join in. Most English families I know (mine included) if I had of been pissing about in front of the TV would have been asked to get out of the way, an if I wanted to do that goto my room an do it, because coronation street is about to start! lol

This is VERY disappointing. Sorry, Nintendo, no deal!

'Nintendo UK also recently said that it had every invention'

Nice malapropism :P (new word for the day!)

"Cutting edge of the gameplay experience"
"Bringing gaming into the mainstream'
"This industry without Nintendo as a platform holder is simply unthinkable."

That is the juiciest bit of pro-Nintendo ass-licking I have come accross for some time. True to form, you have collected every cliche Nintendo have been using for the past 20 years and have regurgitated them here. Hey, I am sure the 76,000th Mario game coming on the Wii DOES offer cutting edge gameplay. I also believe that about 250 million XBox/PS users are 'not mainstream', rather mutant geeks with hides for skins. No, the mainstream is only what Nintendo defines it to be.

And yes, the home console market would have collapsed without the GameCube sales to support it - you say true!

Mind, I am not against Nintendo here - but it is hard to stomach such crap, no matter who it comes from.

I don't any issue with the 480p resolution, just the fact that none of the game footage I've seen suggests the Wii is using anti-aliasing. Surely with the increased power but games that look graphically similar to GameCube games, developers could have added at least 2xQ AA for all games? Apparently not...

lets forget all the technical talk for a minute and watch the opening title screen for twilight princess, suddenly none of this talk of specs or resolution matters anymore.
http://us.wii.com/viewer_zelda.jsp?vid=8

I have an HDTV and my US Gamecube running in 480p looks sweet with no jaggies.

Do I win a prize?

Standard Definition shocker.

Nout wrong with that.

"at least Nintendo's accountants didn't buy their degrees from off the Internet"

You mean there are other places you can get them from? I hope they're cheaper! My accounting degree costed me a fortune and left my PayPal account shaking.

"lets forget all the technical talk for a minute and watch the opening title screen for twilight princess, suddenly none of this talk of specs or resolution matters anymore"

I just watched it and it looks rubbish

Like this one better: http://de.wii.com/software/game_01_02/

Oh, and *gasp* on the Wii site you see people SITTING DOWN WHILE PLAYING!! OMFG!!!11!ElevenOne!

@Northy: I don't have a nerve that you could hit, since I have equal disgust and distaste for Sony , MS and Nintendo and for that matter, ATI and NVidia! ;-)

And hey, I don't flame people, I flame their comments. Which yours deserved, IMHO - ask anyone. Could compete favorably with any of the recent load of bullshit that Sony have said.

//watches zelda intro

ok, that does it, someone defrost me on december 7th

lol whatever fishboy

Erm, didn't we all know that it wasn't 720p? I find it odd that anyone expected more...

I just want a DVI lead, not a bloody component one. And the same goes to you M$, why VGA and not DVI?!

*Shakes fist*

//watches zelda intro

Yeah I must admit, that when the screen is only 5 inch diagonally even the Wii lloks almost high res !lol

Wii will cause your browser to judder in an unacceptable manner. 1GB of RAM and that advert slows everything to a crawl while making my mouse pointer disappear. It doesn't even seem to do much. Well actually, I've just tried it and it does do stuff. Still annoying though and I refuse to click through on principle.

If I was the manchild on the horse of that video I certainly wouldn't be galloping so close to that edge of that big cliff. That's just irresponsible. I mean he can do what he wants with his own life but I don't think he's considering the horses feelings here, or the thoughts of the horses family. There looks to be more than enough free space for him to gallop on but no he has to go right to the edge. What's he going to do next - base jump off it and land on a fluffy squirrel?

Think there must be something wrong with the advert, or this page, as its nearly bring my system to a crawl over 70% CPU usage on Athlon 3200xp with nvidia 7800gs

I just hope the Wii looks better on my 26" Sony Bravia with a component cable than my PS2 looks, ie slightly on the soft side.

Rush, I have my PS2 via component connected to a 40" Bravia. It's very sharp and you can fully appreciate the outdated graphics at 288 lines. :)

Why 480p on a PAL console.. wouldn't 576p be more correct?

"ChupaChups - so having the option would be a bad thing?"

For most people, yes it would be a bad thing because it means most of the processing power of the console is wasted.

PC games have often had a "shrink window" option because the lower resolution pictures allowed slower processors to cope with the game at full speed. Higher resolution games either slow down, or require faster processors.

High Definition compatibility isn't produced by some £5 add-on widget, it requires having much better hardware that can cope with high quality graphics at a very high resolution without slowing down the frame rate. If you're only going to use your console to run games in standard definition, which is what most people will do this generation, you're not making full use of an HD-compatible console.

Until most people have HD televisions, HD-compatibility in consoles is a waste of money for most people. The same goes for blu-ray and HD-DVD, for most people there's absolutely no point buying them because they only have an advantage over DVD if you own a high definition television. In five years time, HD will be in everything and HDTVs will be really cheap, but right now it's just too early.

@Northy: Honestly how can you even think about needlessly criticizing others after your first post is beyond me, trying to define social/antisocial norms and intellectual stuff like that.

Even more baffling is why I keep replying to you. My bad!

Look, I know it's "all about the games maaan", but what's with their absolute reluctance on this issue?

Why not include the cable so you can at least have 480p out of the box?

Next you'll be telling me it only outputs black and white!