It's easy to look at the Nintendo Wii and see the graphical inferiority it has to other current gen consoles like the Xbox 360 or PS3. Gameplay experience aside, the Wii wasn't able to keep up with either consoles' graphical capabilities causing the Wii to be excluded from many multiplatform software that released for the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Xbox boss Asha Sharma has discussed how component shortages will impact the company's plans for Project Helix.
When does this end? Its killing everyone. Consoles and PC. And for what? AI? The benefits of AI are completely outweighed by the negatives. And the government should have never allowed one company to buy up all the RAM.
This kind of proves this is an after thought product, most products like this are in r&d 5 years before they start mass producing. So they typically have the cost of components and things worked out long before assembly starts.
This is an assumption still, but I wouldn’t be surprised if project helix is similar to Scalebound,perfect dark and sod3. They had an idea but no actual execution other than concept stage. Being impacted by the ram shortage likely would also put this device 3-4 years out.
I’m not even sure MS has that endurance with Xbox yet
I mean.... what?
We're at a point that Samsung wont even provide their own phone department ram because they can sell it at higher prices to 3rd parties (AI). Its more profitable to sell the ram than make their own devices with it.
You think because R&D starts 5 years ago the 3rd party component manufacturers will honour that price? They'll sell it to whomever is paying the most today, not some gentlemens agreement they made years ago. AI farms will buy more volume at higher prices than any console manufacturer will. It'll be the same for Playstation.
Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.
They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.
If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.
It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie
Helix is going to be stupidly expensive
Instead of leaning into smarter upscaling techniques they're brute forcing hardware that will cost them dearly and it remains to be seen if it's genuinely going to provide a meaningful differential
I know in the oc.doace people like to brag about not using frame gen or dlss to get to high on a game but for the majority of players they happily use those technologies without a second thought
That's going to be ps6 vs Helix
While this does seem to be the case, I am encouraged by the statement from Microsoft about wanting to provide affordable options. If this means a Series S style Helix, at least there will be something affordable being offered.
It's called systematic inflationary. Yes we get it Microsoft, keep raising in the name ofall kinds of stuffs
Honestly if there was thing I learned from this generation is that new consoles arnt day one anymore.
I can wait 1-3 years.
Another important lesson from this generation: while Nintendo showed us that prices don't necessarily need to ever drop, we've now learned that waiting 1-3 years does carry some risk that prices increase. This generation is just bizarre in all the wrong ways.
The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.
Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.
Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.
LucasRuinedChildhood,
For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:
1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.
2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".
The name "Hewson" carries a special weight for anyone who grew up during the golden age of British computing. As the son of Andrew Hewson—the man behind legendary publisher Hewson Consultants—Rob Hewson didn't just grow up playing video games; he learned to spell his name from their title screens. However, Rob didn't just rest on his family's 8-bit laurels. From leading major LEGO franchises at TT Games to tackling the high-stakes world of technical porting at Huey Games, Rob has carved out a unique path in an ever-evolving industry. In this candid interview Rob to discussed the burden and beauty of a family legacy, the technical "scar tissue" left by the ambitious Hydrophobia, and why porting a masterpiece like Inscryption to consoles is far more than a simple copy-paste job.
NE: "We rank the 10 best main series Super Mario games in celebration of the recent MAR10 Day with 2D and 3D included."
Best 2D, Mario World, best 3D, Mario 64. Can't say there's been a bad one, although Mario World 2 wasn't a true sequel. The Mario Land games were good (not the first one) and also Wario Land. I thought after Mario 64, Mario 3D World was excellent.
I always think these articals are written by crazy Nintendo fanboys. Technology has grown a lot, the difference will be substantial and that all good... Nintendo did fine this gen being far behind technologically.
Why does everyone keep taking what he said to heart? Of course Iwata would say this. If the next PlayStation and Xbox are much more powerful then the Wii U then many people will ignore or drop it to buy them.What do you expect him to say? 'My competitors will have a more powerful then my current console but buy mine anyway until you might want to sell it'?
Technological advancement gets faster every year. What makes him think that the next jump isn't around the corner or that Sony and Microsoft don't have something cooking? I have seen a video with Sony working on technology that can create AR images that fill a whole room with a tropical jungle and make images of people sitting right next to you. How is Nintendo planning to top that if they have it ready for the next console? He is the competition. He will say anything if it gets him more sales. He doesn't know the specs of either system but is already certain they won't have much of a difference
i dont see whats so hard to understand about his comments...
1st he said this in comparison to the diference between Wii and 360/PC, which was so big, 3rd party developers couldnt just downgrade the game graphically, they had to use completely diferent engines. Nintendo might not be using a GTX690 for the WiiU, but its still using a powerful card and a powerful CPU, the fact that current WiiU games in development, launch games in fact, look as good as games so late in the 360/PS3 cycle, while also displaying something else in the 480p display, should be proof enough of that. And if not, why not just take comments from developers who have already said its powerful.
Basically the point is simple, Sony and MS might come out with more powerful machines, but the diference wont be as big as before, most 3rd party devs will be able to launch "downgraded" versions (graphically) in the WiiU, just as you can have diferent graphics in a PC game.
He is not saying this to compare specs with machines that are not even out, he is just saying the WiiU is powerful enough, to not lose 3rd party support like what happened with the Wii
i honestly believe wii u will fail, you know why? the name. People will think its just an add on
Of cause the bloody top man will make those kind of claims.