Wii To Include Camera, PPU and Headset
June 4th, 2006 by Darren Stevens in Business, Hardware, Online, WiiAn article from the upcoming issue of Game Informer has been leaked and reveals several secrets yet to be announced by Nintendo.
It seems that the Wii will feature a build in camera for snapshots so you can put your face on character models in the game. The ATi graphics chip is said to be quite powerful supporting HDR and bump mapping.
The Wii will also feature a hardware physics processor, with built in 32 Mb of dedicated RAM, enough to take the load of the IBM CPU. A headset will be available either included in the package or sold separately.
The article also mentions that Nintendo will sell SD memory cards ranging from 2 GB to 7 GB. No price has been mentioned.
Tags: Business, Hardware, Online, Wii
June 4th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
this would be great if true.
June 5th, 2006 at 4:25 am
This could be true because this comes from the magazine that brung us the first Red Steel pictures.
I really wish it is true, but I won’t get my hopes up that much.
June 5th, 2006 at 9:20 am
source?
June 6th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
oooh, post deleted!
June 6th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
I guess Game Informer told them to take it down. They did the same with the Red Steel artice that leaked out online a few months ago.
June 6th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Above link does not work for me.
I think the Wii wiill blow the PS3 out of the water - and all these
added goodies can’t hurt!
June 6th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Its funny how something thinks thats a weaker (albeit fun most likely) system can compete for the same audience as a system like the ps3 or 360 for that matter.
ps3/360 compete with each other with high priced consoles but amazing graphics.
Nintendo practically has its very own market with a much much lower priced system and unique games.
In other words david you are a dumbass.
June 6th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
“Nintendo practically has its very own market with a much much lower priced system and unique games”
So how is david a dumbass? the ps3 sounds like its going to be a pile of steaming crap to me. Whats it going to offer that 360 dosent?
Wii (or Revolution as i will always call it) has so much to offer, i never get exicted about consols much but this is certainly exciting me. Even without the camera and others, the controller sounds like so much fun anyway. But being able to put ur face in the game. woo hoo. It wouldnt suprise me if sony try and copy the idea.
The 360 AND the Revolution will blow the PS3 out of the water.
June 6th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
“But being able to put ur face in the game. woo hoo. It wouldnt suprise me if sony try and copy the idea”
Sony used this a long time ago in “Tony Hawks: Underground”.
June 6th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
The pricepoint of the Wii makes it very attractive for new gamers, I doubt people trying to play videogames for the first time will give $500 for a PS3.
The low price is Nintendo’s best strategy when it comes to attracting new gamers to buy the console. Of course the controller plays a big part as well.
June 6th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
nintendo did it before sony back in the n64 days with perfect dark and a gameboy advanced.
June 6th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
The attempt was made on N64 to incorperate photos from Game Boy Camera (at the time the smallest digital camera in existance according to the Book of Records) into Golden Eye, and later Perfect Dark. As I recall, it was also planed to utilize the camerea in No Mercy.
However, due to the rather bad image quality of the Game Boy Camera, and the then archaic facial templates in games, the plans were scrapped, along with the Game Boy Camera.
June 7th, 2006 at 12:37 am
No, the PD Gameboy Camera thing was scrapped for legal reasons. It was really shortly after the Columbine shooting, and they didn’t want their game being panned because of a feature allowing you to put images of anyone in the game. They had a demo of it with Ken Lobb demo-ing it.
http://perfectdark.detstar.com/beta/perfecthead.asp
Anyway, if the Wii actually has these features, it’ll be cool, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m getting Wii either way. I’m more hopeful that it will be able to play Dreamcast games.
June 7th, 2006 at 2:59 am
the wii will support certain games from its predacessors from NES up to 64 with Saga Mega Drive/Genesis and TurboGrafx 16 on a virtual consol but im not sure if it will support dreamcast. however it will be backward compatable with GC games, controles, and mem. cards which is a definate plus, despite the failures Nintendo saw with the GC.
Check out the link for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii
I already own a 360, next up is the Wii, and due to the cost, poor performance, and new gaming rights which im sure you all know of (you cant buy or sell used games) I WILL NEVER OWN A PS3
Now all i can do is wait and see if the Wii is going to be as good as we all hope.
June 7th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Don’t you just read the websites where you pick your info ? Nothing was ever said concerning a built-in webcam. It just says that you will be able to include your face, like in Wii sports. Besides, it’s impossible to create a little cartoony face from a webcam snapshot ! Just think about it : it’s technology, not magic ! The most credible possibility is that you will use your DS to create the funny face, and import them into the Wii through wifi connexion.
June 7th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Sounds fun.
Sendoshi> yeah, but maybe not. Face recognition technology permits funny stuff nowadays, check http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Emorph/Transformer/ to see what I mean.
So maybe there will be something like that with specific outputs.
Like you say, it’s technology, not magic
June 7th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Wii will be bought first. Along w/ a 360 when it lowers in price.
Then, in maybe 2-3 yrs, when PS3 wont make me homeless, will I buy it.
I’m sure only by then will games be amazing and perfected for PS3… so why $600 for a blu-ray player? My dvd’s look GREAT as they are. I don’t need to see high-res images of someones nose-hairs on Blu-Ray.
June 8th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Hmm, seems highly unlikely. That doesn’t seem like the path Nintendo would take with their hardware.They’ve said “small quiet and affordable”. Plus adding a PPU and the like would only increase the cost of the system.
June 8th, 2006 at 8:46 am
A PPU would be an awesome idea. I’ve actually seen an Interview with some of the Elebits devs where they kind of almost implied that the Wii had dome kind of physics hardware. It may be part of the graphics card from ATI, which was hinted at in an interview with some ATI representative. If you watch some of the the Elebits movies from E3, you’ll see tons of objects being thrown around. This kind of really does look as if there were physics hardware involved.
In my own opinion, having a physics card is way more important than having a great graphics card. A great graphics card gives you better graphics (more polygons, larger textures and so on), but a physics card means you can have a lot more objects on screen interacting with each other, which actually results in more freedom for developers and hopefully in better games.
June 8th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
“A great graphics card gives you better graphics (more polygons, larger textures and so on), but a physics card means you can have a lot more objects on screen interacting with each other, which actually results in more freedom for developers and hopefully in better games.”
The thing is, so far, PPU’s, while making more physics interactions, hinder performance by taking bandwidth away from the GPU
June 8th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
i’d rather have the ps3 to the wii
June 9th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
WHY!
June 9th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
its much better
June 9th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
theres 40gb of harddisk on it?
beat that
bitch
June 10th, 2006 at 11:44 am
I’m constantly amazed at the stupidity which some people seem to be compelled display. Right, skil688? “Its much better!”
Anyway, about the bandwith thing: The bandwidth needed by a physics card is minuscule compared to the bandwidth needed by a graphics card (no textures!). And if you have both functions in one card, the physics part can use the data from the graphics part since large parts of what it needs is a subset of the data needed by the graphics card.
June 22nd, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Skil688, why would 40gb of space make it a better system? In that case, a crappy Compaq I bought about five years ago (great at the time) would be a better system than all of these!
August 18th, 2006 at 4:06 am
skil688, you have much to learn the Wii is more innovative it has been thought of more wow Sony have added Cell And a 60 gb HD its all small, the fact 360 are getting a 40-60gb HD there getting the external hd dvd drive thats real cheap which will give microsoft an advantage over sony with the HD DVD being external it gives the 360 more room to breathe the 360’s flexibility allows it to have much more of a range while sony are having difficultly even fitting the hardware into the case, while 360 can add more features external drive extra HD that is people going to be the same price as the 20gb available today (people wodering why, simple made cheaper with more cheaper parts) so thats a dead sert and 360 with its new XNA which might be a hit with 360 allowing you to make games for 360 and possibly in the future selling them for 5$ or so i think this year round 360 and Wii will prevail Ps3 being a lil bit pricy and even Ken saying its to cheap aww c’mon think people are going to buy it at near off 600 hundred pound with a 60 gb HD that you will get with 360 for half the price pfft dream on sony and a whole bunch of amaazing titles coming for 360 Alan Wake, Gears of War, Gta4, Halo 3. we are stuck for choice sorry this being about Wii (im no fanboy just a little bit annoyed that some people are calling other ‘bitches’ because its got a 60 gb hd) wow.
so if you ask who im supporting this time round its same as always Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360!! hehe thanks people for spending there time to read my post…
if you wanna chat more about this:
i_love_stuff123@hotmail.com :D:P:P:D
August 20th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
What was the post about, and why did it get deleted?
January 6th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
So this turned out true…