That's pretty much the only differences (HDD, HDMI, and black color). Might be some differences in the disc drive to reduce noise, but that could be said for regular 360s as well (if you find the right ones anyway). So no, they're not lying to you, at least IMO. If I was getting a 360, I'd rather just get a 360 Premium and replace the HDD if I felt like I needed it (especially since I could probably find a great deal for a 360 Premium). Not much difference at all.
Fear. lol. I was hoping they'd knocked most of the heat issues and bugs out of the earlier models. I've also heard they run quieter than the older versions (although I've heard varying opinions on that) and since I may use this as a media extender for watching movies, I want the "turbine roar" from yet another piece of equipment kept down during quiet passages in movies. That combined with the fact it does have the 120 gig drive and the HDMI (trying to cut down on the bird's nest I already have back there) just made me pay the extra $80 for it. If I had an XBox 360 already, there's no way I'd "upgrade" to the Elite - there's not enough difference. But as a new buyer, why the heck not?
about twice as fast as the cube is what i've heard. cant tell with the games thus far though..hopefully metroid will showcase its ability to have a really good looking game.
The heat issues probably won't be fixed (for the most part anyway) until they start using 65nm chips. That probably won't happen until the Fall at the earliest, although a price cut might accompany this move (so better reliability and cheaper hardware...hopefully). The disc drive (and overall noise) should definitely be quieter on the Elite, although as I mentioned, some regular 360 models have quieter disc drives as well. They're probably harder to hunt down though...not even sure how to check for it unless you take the system out of the box. RE4 and LoZ probably give a good indication of what to expect from the best Wii games. Don't expect anything vastly better than what has been shown. I'm not even sure if they'll even be able to match some Xbox1 games to be honest. I'll just stop there before I start going into another rant about the Wii's hardware.
Yeah, and I wasn't willing to wait until the fall/winter timeframe for them to switch. I've been waiting about a year to buy a console in the hopes that the PS3 would be the system I'd get, but that didn't quite materialize as I had hoped. If/when the PS3 gets its price and act together, I'll probably get that one as well. I thought I had read the issue with the ring of death was the board warping or something and they "attempted to fix" this by using some type of epoxy on the CPU/GPU connections. I could be wrong about that.
I think they did do that with the Elite, but I think it is just a small fix and not something that will really fix the problem (if that is indeed the reason why 360s fail). I wouldn't really feel "safe" until they switched to the new chips.
I really hope 2 games originally designed for the Gamecube and then ported over to the Wii will not be "good indication of what to expect from the best." If that's the case, I'll just have to keep using my Wii as a PCEngine, which is totally sweet. Now if only someone would do a hack that lets the Wii play PS1 games....
I'd be surprised if this turns out to be true. Looking at say, Mario Galaxy videos and that already seems to be an improvement. I don't really think straight GC games are going to be the 'indication' by the time the next five years or so are done.
Ok, we get it, you don't like Nintendo, you don't have to show us cleaned up official stills of Ninja Gaiden to prove that. But at least aim your complaints in the right direction, first your complaint is with the Wii's graphics, then you complain about nintendo's "effort" over a port. Um, they didn't make the game, that's on Capcom for only investing enough money to play with the control scheme.
The Wii is a little more overpowered, but not that much. I would not use ports like RE4 and Zelda as a reference. http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/leve...ls-eye-or-just-shoot-himself-in-the-foot.aspx [Gamecube 1.5] are the kind of statements that reliably set fanboys' tongues a-wagging. But how accurate are they? Back in February, we observed posters on various message boards speculating about how much power the Wii had under the hood. Nintendo, for its part, has steadfastly refused to release the Wii's technical specifications. So we approached two of our most reliable technical experts at third party publishers--both of whom spoke under the condition that they not be identified for fear of angering Nintendo--for an independent evaluation of the Wii's abilities. One point of speculation was this: does the Wii have programmable shaders, either vertex shaders, pixel shaders, or both, as did the original Xbox? The answer, according to our first source, was no. "The Wii's GPU has fixed functions for vertex, lighting, and pixel operations," said the source "All 'programmable shaders' means is that the code you write for the shader gets run on the vertex and pixel hardware of the GPU. This is how it works on the high-end ATI and Nvidia GPU parts. The Wii is an older fixed function design where you have lots of operations but the pipelines are not programmable in the sense of downloading shader code to run [on them]." Our second source echoed that assessment of the Wii's graphics chip, comparing its fixed-function design to that the Gamecube, saying that it was "basically pretty similar" to Nvidia's seven-year-old GeForce2. "A dev support guy from Nintendo said that the Wii chipset is 'Gamecube 1.5 with some added memory,'" our second source told us. "I figure if they say that, it must be true." Our second source went on to explain that the "Gamecube 1.5" moniker, while accurate, doesn't mean that gamers won't see graphical improvements on the Wii. "There are three main differences which will result in graphics improvements. One, the increased memory clock speed, from 162 megahertz to 243 megahertz, means that it is easier to do enough pixels for 480p mode versus 480i. Two, the enhanced memory size of the Wii gives much more room for image-related operations such as anti-aliasing, motion blur, etc. The performance to these memory systems from the graphics chip is also improved. So full-screen effects and increased texture usage seem likely as a result." The same source cited a third factor: an apparent increase in fixed-function "texture environment stages"--also known as TEV stages--from 8 in the Gamecube to 16 on the Wii. (The source stressed "apparent" because this feature wasn't described in the Wii's graphics overview documentation--which was simply repurposed from the Gamecube--but it was listed among the Wii's programming calls. "Assuming this isn't a bug, it means that much more complex per-pixel graphics operations are possible," our source told us. "However, each additional TEV stage use slows down the graphics chip more and more, so it is a trade-off. You can do more powerful pixel operations and you'll bottleneck the chip and not be able to do as many of them, nor as many vertex operations (since the pixel and vertex systems are tightly coupled on fixed-function graphics chips.) Eight additional stages mean more complex operations are possible. It would be easier to do bump mapping perhaps, or environment mapping, but you would have to get creative with how you do it. It wouldn't be easy. That assessment dovetailed with what we heard from our first source. "Almost all the shader effects on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 can be reproduced on the Wii by re-implementing them with the fixed function hardware of the Wii's GPU. Most games just port the effect over. A few teams have gone as far as making a shader-to-Wii conversion tool. It reads the shader code and generates the fixed function code necessary to achieve the same result. Keep in mind that the Wii's GPU is not as fast or feature rich as the Xbox 360 or PS3, but that doesn't mean you can't get very close results." Why, by the way, did Nintendo opt for a fixed-function graphics chip instead of a programmable GPU, like the PS3 or Xbox 360? "It's all about cost," our first source told us. "Fixed function circuitry is a lot cheaper to make." Those cost savings have not only resulted in a console that is cheaper than its competitors, but also much more profitable for Nintendo. And we know full well how much Nintendo loves its profits. Our final verdict on the charges leveled at the Wii? While Bach's statement that the Wii is graphically underpowered compared to the first Xbox wasn't quite a bulls-eye, it's so darned close to the mark--technically speaking--that we've got to compliment him on his aim. The question, then, is how much will developers be able to squeeze out of the less-flexible Wii hardware? But if the Wii keeps selling like ice on a hot summer day, it's unlikely that Nintendo will lose too much sleep over the power disparity.
Still the diehard pissing and moaning over the Wii? Look, it's not supposed to be a "rival" to PS3 and X-Box 360. They decided to go a different direction. Is it still that hard to figure out? Wii: let's keep it as low-cost as possible by not bothering with a jump in the computer components and instead go with a novel controller. I bought mine with the understanding that it's just not going to be good for certain "standard/traditional" games. It will, however, be ridiculously fun as a niche system (particularly for Sports games like TW Golf). The market's making it fairly obvious how crucial the "hardcore gamer" demographic is in the video game business. PS3 and X-Box 360 may very well be losing their business to Alienware buyers that don't see an awful lot of sense dropping heavy coin for a game system that's just a limited version of their PC/laptop. Evan
I'm being a little pessimistic with those comments (mostly so I can be pleasantly surprised later), but I'm not really expecting all that much. A more appropriate comparison would be Xbox1 graphics for sure (although RE4 and LoZ could probably pass as nice Xbox1 games). Technically speaking, there is much more power in the Wii than the GC (although not nearly comparable to the jumps provided by usual console successors of course), and the better Wii games will demonstrate those improvements (better textures, more polys, 480p widescreen support, etc). But I don't think it will be anything vastly better than the best the GC had to offer, especially if developers don't really feel it would be worth it. Probably doesn't help that most of the studios that are great at graphics are working on PC/360/PS3 games since they're graphic whores; Kojima could probably make a Wii game look like a bad 360/PS3 game...wait, he actually is working on a Wii game, so maybe I should definitely take back my statements. I'm just a little disappointed since they could have kept things as low-cost as possible, and still provided a rather large jump in processing power (probably enough to still get PS3/360 ports like GTAIV, UT3, AC, DMC4, etc., although I guess that might have kept developers from making titles that would be better suited for the Wii). I don't really care much about this anymore for reasons that you stated, but it is something I probably would have done with the Wii's design. Actually, I would have liked to re-design all 3 systems...since I'm a better engineer than any of the guys working on these systems of course.
This is how I feel -- I think they should have put a bit more juice under the hood so the games won't look so clunky in a couple years.
I love Nintendo! SNES was my all-time fav console. I have a Wii for god sakes. I was just making a point. Just because I own something doesn't mean I am blind to its shortcomings. Unlike most console fanboys...
Gaming Answer : Yes. Unless something squirrely happens along the way. Right now Bethesda is working on Fallout 3, so I wouldn't expect anything for at least a couple of years.
