Nintendo’s Revolution Officially Called “Wii”

by Anton Shilov
05/03/2006 | 04:03 AM

Nintendo, a maker of video game consoles, has announced the trademark under which it will market its console earlier code-named Revolution. The new name – Wii – should represent the nature of the new machine, which is aimed at broad audiences.

“While the code-name ‘Revolution’ expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer. Wii will break down that wall that separates game players from everybody else. Wii will put people more in touch with their games… and each other,” a statement by Nintendo reads.

Nintendo Revolution console will feature IBM’s custom PowerPC architecture based microprocessor named Broadway clocked at 729MHz and code-named Hollywood chip with built-in graphics core, DSP and I/O features from ATI that will operate at 243MHz, earlier reports suggested. While the architectures of the chips are totally different from those used in the original Microsoft Xbox console, the clock-speeds are nearly the same, which indicates that the console should be relatively inexpensive to build.

Nintendo revolution will use 91MB of memory in total: 23MB of “main” 1T-SRAM, 64MB of “external” 1T-SRAM and 3MB texture buffer on the GPU. By comparison, modern consoles from Microsoft and Sony feature 512MB of memory, something which indicates that the amount of data to be processed on the Revolution will be much lower, which is an indirect pointer about significantly lower performance of Nintendo’s console.

But Nintendo says the goal of the Revolution is not extreme horsepower necessary to create never-before-seen graphics and audio effects, but some kind of functionality that differentiates the console from the rivals. Nintendo said that one of the primary selling points for the code-named Revolution machine will be game controller that supports 3D positioning.

“Wii sounds like ‘we’, which emphasizes that the console is for everyone,” the statement also adds.

Nintendo officially states that the code-named Revolution console will play all of Nintendo GameCube games, and deliver downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo 64, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and even the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The Nintendo Wii console will be available in Q4 2006.