AMD Ships 50 Million ATI 'Hollywood' Wii GPUs
While everyone can see that Nintendo is making money hand over fist thanks to amazing sales of the DS Lite and the Wii, some of the console maker’s partners are also riding the wave.
“Nintendo values its ongoing relationship with AMD. AMD’s graphics technology expertise as displayed in the ATI ‘Hollywood’ chip is a great part of the momentum of Wii. Our combined efforts help deliver entertaining experiences to create many smiling faces in living rooms around the world,” said Genyo Takeda, general manager of Integrated Research and Development, Nintendo Co., Ltd.
“We’re proud to provide the ATI ‘Hollywood’ chip as the cool and quiet graphics engine that factors so prominently in the overall enjoyment for Wii owners,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “AMD counts Nintendo as a valued customer and we continue to work together to make console entertainment a growing phenomenon worldwide.”
With 50 million units delivered, the ATI ‘Hollywood’ becomes the most successful AMD game console chip to date in terms of unit sales. ATI supplied the graphics chips for the Nintendo GameCube, and is still producing the ‘Xenos’ GPU for the Xbox 360.
Last month we reported on a rumor that had Intel producing the graphics technology for the next generation PlayStation. With AMD already having what we assume to be a positive relationship with Microsoft and Nintendo, Nvidia could be the one left out in the next round of consoles. Industry insiders, however, don’t foresee any new consoles hitting the market until 2011 or 2012.
sorta forgot the "shipped" part....
really and i thought it was ATI that partnered with Nintendo before AMD bought them out.
Ok you are aware the Wii runs a custom IBM PPC cpu? On top of that the most likely reason the Wii has a ATI/AMD video chip is due to the fact the Gamecube had one.
ATi has had their chip in the GC and the Wii, and the 360. nVidia seems to be killing themselves off in the console market with partnership pricing issues.
ATI also had their issues with the 360, but I can imagine it's much more pleasant to work with the AMD group over Nvidia. From what I've seen of Nvidia's higher up attitude, I cant imagine them keeping any distant partners for long before pissing them off and driving them to ATI/intel. But I dont have to imagine either. lol.
Don't know what the deal is with nVidia, Intel and/or M$ but I do recall some backstabbing in the past. Although that's not right to say since the biggest backstab would have to be Nintendo's when they stood up Sony's addon for the Super Nintendo mid-show. Thus the birth of the PSX.
That's true...ATI did the GPU for the Gamecube and it performed very well.
I wanna know how much $$$$ ATI & AMD are making from console sales. With the 360 and the Wii selling like hot cakes (or high grade coca, cause ppl are still buying 360s after RRODing like 3,4 of 'em ), it is surprising that one would say they are hurting and reeling.
"Updated" yes - through firmware downloads and software updates due to bug fixes. "Upgraded" no, the hardware is as is. It is a blessing in another way that they cannot be upgraded, you buy a game for that particular console, and you know it just works! No having to check your minimum specs to see if you can play a game or not. This is where your average casual gamer comes in at, it's much more convenient this way.
Nintendo has a budget and a blueprint in mind and contracts a company to build it for them. It was chosen for cost/profit to use a GPU based off of the GC for a reason. Sure enough that's what it is, just slightly refreshed.
I think you've all missed a bit of the point... why use a hot high end gpu when you aren't going to output 1080p. If Nintendo planned for better output (and an HD format drive in the system) they'd have planned for the graphics needed to do it. If a weaker chip can handle anything displayed at 720p or below then why use anything better?
ATI obviously could have put something more powerful in the Wii, but that's Nintendo's decision. Hopefully Nintendo's next system will be a powerhouse because I'm still looking for that grand Zelda game that they could truly make.