Originally posted by: Chocolate Pi
It will be mind-boggling ironic and hilarious when humble Nintendo ends up with the most powerful (a more accurate term might be useable) CPU after the hype we've seen from Sony and Microsoft. The same thing happened last round in some sense. Sony declared 120 million polygons per second for the PS2, Microsoft announced 90 million and scoffed at Sony's figures. Nintendo said their own console would never exceed 12 million. The Gamecube launched with a game (Rouge Leader) that achieved 15 million polygons per second. The same cannot be said for the other two machines.
Most companies seem to overstate their product, while the ever inept-at-marketing Nintendo does the opposite. They claim their wireless controllers go up to 30 feet, while they in reality go over 100 unless there is a lead wall in your way. (Not that I know what this might be useful for...)
Nintendo's strategy for the next generation sounds very, well, sound. The decision to not support 720p (just 480p) will allow them to use a much cheaper and cooler GPU from ATI for the same image quality. (Except obviously at a lower resolution.) This will be efficent because ATI should be able to hook them up with some cheap-to-process AA, and will allow Nintendo to build a cheaper system without or with less active cooling, which in turn makes the system smaller and lets it last longer. Nintendo gains all this and only loses the ability to have a very small percent of the userbase play games in higher resolutions. They seem quite content to let Microsoft and Sony fight one another in that realm.