AMD is telling the world and its dog that it has scored a big win getting its GPU under the bonnet of Nintendo's new Wii U console.
The outfit said that it has provided a "custom AMD Radeon HD GPU" for the system although it has been jolly short on providing any hard stats.
AMD has been getting close to Nintendo lately and helped in supplying the graphics for the Gamecube and the Wii, so it is hardly a shock announcement.
AMD must be hoping that the Wii U will be the run-away best seller that the first console was, which is the opposite of what market analysts are predicting.
Earlier IBM had announced that it was providing the CPU for the Wii U. Apparently the 45nm custom chip will have "a lot" of embedded DRAM.
It will use a silicon on insulator design and the same processor technology found in Watson, which is IBM's flagship supercomputer which managed to win a round of Jeopardy.
Sadly both outfits are refusing to say much about the Wii U, but then again they will not want to steal Nintendo's thunder during the crucial lead up time to release.
The very same thing with upgraded graphics and blu-ray drive that won't load BD films.
That's Ok but long overdue. They brought the new controller, but I keep wondering how much will it cost. A single controller that costs US$200/300 isn't very wise. If it's too heavy, people won't play for long.
They should have spent time in expanding wiimotes features, not in a tablet controller.
Then again, nobody believed the Wii would be a sucess and it's really is. Maybe the world will be wrong again with Wii U.
I think their timing is excellent - right in between long product cycles from Microsoft (who is busy creating more peripherals to stave off the inevitable), and Sony (who are simply trying to keep their servers up and running).
I don't see anything inherently wrong with the Wii-U (other than the stupid name), in fact it is, once again, a unique approach and worth taking a look at once it is released.
I have questions though.
- Will older Wii titles upgrade to HD resolutions and use better antialiasing?
- Is Nintendo ready to give up their incredible profit margins on hardware to make these controllers happen at a reasonable price?
- What will be their online strategy? Will it be more MSesque (WE control the horizontal AND the vertical), or more like Sony (Every software house and hacker for themselves)?