Tech Wrap: October 3

Mints on the pillow and Wii in the room
So you’re finally finished with your day of meetings and negotiations, and all you want to do is relieve some stress.  Good news, Nintendo Wii is now available at select Marriot and Renaissance Hotels.  The giant hotel chain is now offering the Wii in select hotels for a small fee.  The Wii system is preloaded with all of your favorite games.  As of right now, only six hotels offer the Wii in select rooms.  Visit the Marriot site to find and book your next stay, complete with your own Wii.

The New Nintendo DSi
The new Nintendo DSi will be available in Japan November 1, 2008.  The DSi should be available here sometime next year.  The DSi is an upgraded Nintendo DS Lite.  Taking the same form and design from its predecessor, the DSI is a bit thinner with a larger screen (17% larger to be exact).  Other added features are the built-in camera, SD card slot, and better audio ability to allow you to make it a music player.  The price is still to be announced, but expect it to stay in the same neighborhood that the DS Lite is currently selling for. 

Nintendo Wii HD
I think it’s pretty safe to say that most of us techies own a hi-definition TV, but one problem is that the Nintendo Wii doesn’t offer the hi-definition picture we crave.  Only outputting a standard picture of 480i, I often look at games like Zelda and Mario Cart and get distracted about the graphics and pictures compared to the other consoles.  I wish the Nintendo Wii would have at least 720p picture output.  I have some good news and bad news.  I’ll start with the good: Nintendo has answered my prayers. They said they are working on a Nintendo Wii HD, that will obviously upgrade the system to allow hi-def gaming, which means better graphics.  The bad news is the tentative date of release is slated for sometime in 2011.  Expect the Nintendo Wii to keep it’s unique motion controls and familiar game play but with improved visuals. 

PS4?
Word on the street is that Sony is planning to work on their next console, the Playstation 4.  So what could the PS4 offer?  Well, to be honest I don’t know, but from what I’ve heard, the new PS4 is suppose to run on the same cell processor, just on a faster chip.  To give you an example, it’s taking a 65nm chip and switching it with a 45nm chip, which in turn makes it a lot quieter, cooler, and faster.  So what differences will we see?  Well, obviously it will be faster but graphically, not much.  If they plan to use the same cell processor expect the same or slightly better graphics.  From my understanding, they want to keep the cell processor the same because more developers are able to work with the PS3 now.  So why change something that’s more accessible and easier to work with? 

That’s my tech wrap for this week.  I hope you enjoyed the read and feel free to drop a line. Out.

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