The benchmarking masterminds over at Beyond3D and Newsweek’s dreadlocked vg journo extraordinaire N’Gai Croal recently teamed up to bring everybody the straight dope on the Wii’s hardware, and it turns out that the calls of Gamecube 1.5 were right. According to the article:
"To summarize, while the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are both at least an order of magnitude faster than their predecessors, the Wii has the processing power of one-and-a-half GameCubes with no noteworthy increases in functionality. This was done for two reasons: backwards compatibility with the GameCube and, more importantly, the very low cost. Developers have even told us that the transition guide (for GameCube developers moving to the Wii) is ten pages long and contains only very minor changes."
Of course, we all knew it wasn’t going to be crushing the XBox 360 in any performance comparisons. Now this begs the question, does it even matter? The Wii is underpowered, but it’s also priced far lower than the other consoles.
At its far more accessible price, the Wii has been selling so ridiculously well that Nintendo has become the second most valuable stock in Japan behind Toyota, far exceeding Sony.
Perhaps this is something of a wake up call. It may be that the greatest cutting-edge technology doesn’t mean much when there is a competitor that’s priced lower and looks more fun to play. The Wii’s visceral appeal is undeniable, as I’m sure many Wii owners with parents or grandparents can attest.
It’s just too bad that the Wii library is still like a freaking desert.
