Why do people always expect too much from these DEVELOPERS' conferences
which are aimed at DEVELOPERS?

Tim (tm)

If you had been paying attention, you would already know that I hardly
consider Nintendo to be exempt from criticism.  I argued heavily against the
name "Wii", for instance, and still think it is a mistake, though one that
can be overcome.

I've also pointed out recently that if the system's rumored specs are
correct, then I'm not exactly sure what Nintendo has been having ATI and IBM
work on for all these years, and that you think they could have done a bit
better than just increasing clock speed by 50% and adding some extra memory.
While I wholeheartedly support Nintendo's direction with the Wii,
emphasizing control, gameplay, and affordability over graphical improvements
that result in huge hardware and software development costs, I still think
you should take what technology gives.  There must be a sweet spot here
between performance and affordability, and I doubt the rumored specs hit it.
(Of course, there is more to a processor than clock speed, but considering
that everything else seems identical to the GPU and CPU in Gamecube, then
the clock speed would seem to be the only major improvement if the specs are
to be believed.)

On the other hand, the rumored specs are just that - rumored - so it remains
to be seen what the final Wii hardware specs really are.  At this point all
we can say with confidence is that the development kits seem to be
essentially a Gamecube + 50% clock speed and the new controller.  Even if
those are indeed the final specs, I think the system will still do fine.  I
would just be a bit disappointed that Nintendo couldn't give developers more
to work with without sacrificing their overall strategy.