Official Nintendo Fanboy Smugness & Gloating Thread

[Snakey]

Yeah, I've seen that vid, and yeah, it does look fucking ace

Still, I'd prefer it if the whole game wasn't like that. I want some more 'normal' levels too

[namor7]

I want some more 'normal' levels too

Same here. They say it's not coming out until possibly six months after launch, so hopefully they'll throw in a nice variety

And I didn't realize how good it looked until seeing the HD vid. Just wish the others looked that good. Seriously, ExciteTruck looks like a lot of fun but the visuals are worse than Smugglers Run from the PS2 launch
Good old Nintendo

[Snakey]

I've been looking for something I meant to reply to when I first read it, but I can't find it - ah well, this is as good a place as any.

People were talking about it being 'only 2x gamecube'. Yeah, I was expecting 3x or more. For what the GC cost them back then, I figured similar money would get them 3x-4x. But that was before the official specs came out, and before they got leaked

So it's under 2x gamecube. Yeah I was expecting more but it's not a big deal. It's good enough for what it needs to do.

So I just came up with this (admittedly unlikely) theory, which if true, will make Nintendo KING OF EVERYTHING, EVER.

The thing is costing them far less than the GC did. They haven't announced the price yet, because they want to maximise the WOW factor. Imagine it - they don't tell ANYONE how much it's going to cost. And then on launch day, you walk into your local retailer, and walk out with your Wii for $79.95.

Now THAT would get everyones attention.

And thus, the Wii wipes the floor (snigger) with the competition, and sells 200 million.

.... and then Nintendo issue a press release.

"We spent over a year trying to think up THE most fucking stupid name we possibly could... and we STILL kicked ass."

Only one thing wrong with that theory, and that's that they spent all their R&D budget on the controller...

But wouldn't that kick ass?

[nyarla]

[Stevo]

It would kill Sony

[namor7]

A WINNER IS YOU

The thing is costing them far less than the GC did.

Seriously?? Cause if that's true woah.

[Snakey]

A WINNER IS YOU

The thing is costing them far less than the GC did.

Seriously?? Cause if that's true woah.

I don't know, but it does makes sense.

Not much R&D budget needed to be spent because its basically a cube but faster. All they needed to do was go to IBM and ATI and say 'same again please, but twice as fast.' Theres some extra gubbins in there, sure, but it probably cost very little compared to what the Cube cost them.

And, of course, the parts should be cheaper now, too.

The APIs for it are reportedly the same as the Cube, perhaps with a few extras. So not much time (and therefore money) needed to be spent on the dev libraries.

All depends how much they spent on that controller. But it does seem to me like they are aiming for this to be fairly cheap. Just how cheap we'll have to wait and see.

Go on, Ninty. I could do with a good laugh

[namor7]

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I think the only reason it shocked me at first is cause I'm sleep-deprived from all this intoxicating Wii

Other news, USA Today passed verdict...

It's takes some time getting adjusted to, but Wii has easily offered the most fun of anything at the expo. Nintendo opened up 27 titles for gameplay on the show floor to tout its new system and Wii-mote.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/tech/2006/05/ ... .html#more

[grue]

I just watched the high-res boss video and I think that the reason it looks ace is because it doesn't try to go for realism. It tries (and achieves) to have a certain style and relies on smooth animation and moody (but simple) lighting.

That, for me, is 1000 times better than to try to render each individual hair in Mario's moustache. Everyone who has ever played a Nintendo game will know that the gameplay will be fine. Those that haven't might be intrigued by the controller or they might be convinced by the press or the price.

Even if it doesn't sell gazillions I still think Nintendo will still earn enough money (understatement) to continue what they do best for us

[Kemper_Boyd]

Snakey do you have a link to the 'real' specs? Because everything
I've read still sounds like speculation. 750 series and R520 derived
sounds like a very odd pairing to me.

But if the less than 2x is correct I agree that the price may be low,
but perhaps more towards the $149 level. You've got to account for
things like the accelerometers, two part controller, sensor bar, Wifi,
and so on.

[marf]

Imagine if, for once, Nintendo took a loss on it's hardware like the competitors do?
It sounds like they could give them away and still be closer to making a profit than sony or ms.

[disciple]

Other news, USA Today passed verdict...

It's takes some time getting adjusted to, but Wii has easily offered the most fun of anything at the expo. Nintendo opened up 27 titles for gameplay on the show floor to tout its new system and Wii-mote.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/tech/2006/05/ ... .html#more

Awwwww.. Well done Nintendo.

[xav]

I've read one theory that it is a 'camera' type system with a high frequency low res sensor (a bit like the ones you get on mice) and presumably a filter. The nice thing about a camera approach is that multiple controllers can share the same 'sensors', IR lights or whatever they are, and radio back what they can see.

Of course what I've described there isn't a sensor bar, the controller is doing the sensing, but you never know it could just be a marketing description.

Isn't that what I've been suggesting?

If the Wii camera has a filter tuned to the IR beacons in the sensor bar, then it would need to have the beacons in each frame, which isn't going to happen unless you have a wide angle of view, at which point presumably you'll need a reasonably high res camera, no?

Or a slightly fisheye lens and some software compensation.

Really all you want is to be able to pick out two points, with a resonable angular resolution and do a bit of trig. If we can have little cameras in our mice I can't see why the main controller couldn't have a similarly customised part.

You barely even need the bit of trig really. If the camera can see the two points on the ends of the sensor bar then it only needs to determine whether they're moving up, down, left or right to work out how the controller is moving. This makes the assumption that the controller is being moved with small wrist movements, rather than by it being moved in large amounts - but the accelerometers can be used to determine which of those two cases applies.

For the depth perception you only have to measure the distance between the two points. If they get closer together then the controller has moved further away, and vice versa. The only trig involved would be to work out that distance when the points aren't horizontally aligned - such as when the controller is rotated.

If the ends of the sensor bar can't be removed then "a bit of trig" could give a reasonably accurate depth measurement. If they can be placed almost anywhere, as has been suggested, then you can only tell whether the remote is moving forwards or backwards - unless you calibrate the setup first.


All this theory of beacons and cameras is scuppered by the fact that the ends of the sensor bar aren't seen to be glowing in any of the video footage we've seen so far. The implications of this are twofold:

1) The IR beacons are working at a frequency that does not get picked up by a normal CCD
2) If (1) is true, then that implies that the CCD in the remote isn't just your common-or-garden $5 part, but is something that has been designed to pick up the different frequency.

Using a less common frequency for their IR beacons would make sense, as it's less likely that the remote would get confused by other IR sources in a typical house. That said, I don't know what the frequency response of a normal CCD is, so I've no idea if there are IR transmitters available that wouldn't show up on video footage.

[Kemper_Boyd]

Mind you I've just though of one problem, if the lights are in essence
resolved on the sensor as points, how do you distinguish between
the points appearing closer together due to distance as opposed to
the viewing angle.

--*--------*-- <- normal distance, straight on
---*------*--- <- further away, straight on
---*------*--- <- viewing from the side, first * is distant, second * is closer

I don't think a camera tracking two points can be the answer.

[Roobarb]

I don't think it would need very high res, and you can get single chip
VGA res cameras for ~$5. Nintendo could use something even cheaper.

Really all you want is to be able to pick out two points, with a resonable
angular resolution and do a bit of trig. If we can have little cameras in
our mice I can't see why the main controller couldn't have a similarly
customised part. I'm not saying it does, just that I wouldn't dismiss
this theory on the grounds of cost.

VGA is relatively high res, compared with an optical mouse . They're on the order of 20x20 pixels and several thousand samples / sec. QVGA may even be sufficient when combined with the mems sensor. If the Wii controller has a camera i'd be thinking it would be something like QVGA and 60+ frames per second. That would put the image processing power needed at around the same level as today's optical mice (~5Mbps). Those mouse sensor parts are around a couple of dollars IIRC, although they obviously only need much small frame buffers so a high res / low frequency part will like cost a bit more. ~$5 doesn't sound unreasonable for camera+image processor.

The main concern with a camera based sensor in each controller is the cost of buying extra controllers. Aren't they priced at standard markups? If so, an extra $5 cost of materials translates to an extra $15 on the street price of each controller