Speculation has been mounting about what features Wii 2 will have and when we’ll see the successor to Nintendo’s flagship gaming device. Details are all over the board, but a concensus that the next-gen Wii will be HD is a pretty safe bet. Even upon the original Wii’s release, there were rumors that a HD upgrade would be possible with a firmware update.
The rumor mill has been spilling speculative info about Wii 2 or Wii HD for sometime. In October of last year, French website Logic-Sunrise claimed a reliable source at Nintendo had revealed that the Wii 2 would sport a Blu-ray drive.
Hungry consumers assume that Wii 2 will be heavily focused on digital distribution and backward compatibility, so we expect an increase in local storage space. Thanks to an update in 2009 the Wii now allows the loading of Virtual Console and WiiWare games directly from SDHC cards up to 32GB in size. This is up from the unit’s 512MB of internal flash memory.
[adsense]Earlier this year during a Q&A session at an investors meeting, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, who was asked about the rumored Wii HD, said, “If asked if making the Wii compatible with high definition – just making it compatible with high resolution – will get players throughout the world to buy it, I would of course say, ‘Do you think it would sell with just that? It needs something new.'”
It’s unlikely that gamers will be pleased with the next-generation Wii if its only selling point is HD. With both Microsoft and Sony bringing out motion controllers for their respective hardware this year in the form of Natal and the Playstation Move, Nintendo must come up with something special.
Nintendo of America President and COO, Reggie Fils-Aimé, is quoted as saying, “we pride ourselves on the big innovative jump, typically in the area of the consumer experience. The way we approach that innovation, because we have hardware developers working side by side with software developers, is that when the software developer comes forward with an idea that can’t be executed on the current platform, that’s when we start thinking seriously about the next system. We’re not there yet, from a Wii perspective.”
Nintendo is looking to focus on the introduction of new content for the current Wii. This includes big franchise titles such as Metroid Other M and Super Mario Galaxy 2, and titles geared towards more hardcore gamers along with the introduction of Netflix video streaming in the US.
With respect to Wii 2, Nintendo is tight-lipped, and we may not hear any confirmed details about the device until as short of a notice as a month before the new console is actually released. Whatever the case, Nintendo prides itself on innovation, so when Wii 2 does appear, gamers will more than likely be foaming at the mouth.
“Wii 2 Prototype”
Published on : May 15 2010
