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Nintendo Confirms Wii on GC Housing at E3
kukyfrope writes "Nintendo's PR Manager, Matt Atwood, has confirmed accusations that Wii demo stations at E3 were not running inside the Wii case and instead were running inside Gamecube housing using Wii-spec hardware. 'The Wii hardware we exhibited at E3 2006 was made specifically for the E3 show and is not the final mass-production version. Some of this hardware was cased in Nintendo GameCube housing.'" Update: 05/19 21:08 GMT by Z : Changed 'hardware' to 'housing' in title.
Honnetly, even if it DID run on GameCube hardware, I couldn't have cared less. Since Wii is supposed to be slightly more powerfull than the GameCube, who cares.
On the other, the rumor that Sony was demoing Assassin's Creed on 360s, that's something to be offended of. Suppose the final hardware of the PS3 doesn't match the power of the 360, or some tricks can be done on it. That means that what people saw at the PS3 wasn't even representative of what they will experience when the game launches. That's dishonnest!
The cube was designed for Asia. Japan is very space conscience, apartments are small and space is a premium. The cube could fit just abotu anywhere and be moved easily, two big pluses in the Asian market.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
A generation is (among other things): "A group of individuals born and living about the same time."
So by default, the Wii is a next-gen console. Obviously the Wii's cool controller could be achieved on the Gamecube. Hell, it could probably work on the N64. That isn't the point.
The point is that they are making this controller the standard. If they were to release it for the gamecube, maybe one or two cool games would take advantage of it. It would just be more hardware that users had to buy. And most developers would simply ignore the controller since so few people had it. (How many developers make games for linux? Or Mac?)
Since *everyone* owning a Wii will have this controller, every game *can* take advantage of it. While developing the game, the designers will look at possible cool ways of using it to their advantage, even if they weren't planning to originally.
Besides that, they are upping the graphics, storage, and medium a bit. Plus the free internet service doesn't hurt.
Parent is correct. I think the real issue is Nintendo made it look like they had production Wii hardware on the floor while Sony actually went out of their way to have big glass cases showing that they were not using retail hardware (which didn't make much sense to me, but bravo Sony for showing just how far of your Spring 2006 release date was).
Personally I don't think it's a big deal. Almost everything you see at E3 is 90% hype, or just plain lies (I'm looking at you Phantom). You should trust anything you see at E3 about as much as you would trust anything said by a used car salesman.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
How does the PS3 being bigger debunk anything about the Cube?
As for Asians being size conscience- I don't need a myth, I worked on products sold in the ASian market. I've seen the focus group reports and the translated reviews. All mentioned size.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Subtext, perhaps we shouldn't be complaining about those ps2 demo's rendered on the slightly diffrent hardware of SGI workstations :P
Small is hard... That's why PDA's aren't crazy fast...
Crazy heat issues etc... one of the hottest components is wireless (radio waves)...
If the Wii has several seperate wireless connections (8 it sounds like) that thing is going to be REALLY REALLY REALLY hot, depite the mediocre graphics and cpu the wireless alone provides a massive technical challenge.
Reading through 20 Nintendo apology posts made me sad... they're scamming, it sucks, they admitted it... gamers are NOT picking on Nintendo about this, it blows that anyone would do this and it's especially problematic because some 3rd parties DO get their info from E3 while Nintendo seems to be using it to mislead(however minorly) the consumer.
Whoever said that games will probably look better later could be right but what kind of attitude is that to take when someone lies to you.
Back in 2004, there were many rumours that Nintendo was going to announce a new peripheral add-on for the Gamecube that would add new functionality and possibly extend the life of the Gamecube. Let's assume that this peripheral was the "Wii-mote".
So let's put all this logic together about 6 months after this announcement:
1) The Gamecube never really got it's established fanbase.
2) Around the same time, Nintendo launches the DS. The "Wii-mote" would have distracted Nintendo from the DS launch.
3) Let's say that had trouble making the "Wii-mote" work... say... the Gamecube lacked the CPU horsepower, or they needed to "refine" the controller more.
4) Sony and MSFT both announces their next-gen consoles at this same time.
So, you have this potentially revolutionary controller. Why try and compete against Sony and MSFT with the dying Gamecube? Add some horsepower to the Gamecube. Add a new GPU, and voila... you have a new console.
Therefore, it doesn't surpise me that they COULD have a "pushed" Gamecube at E3 to demonstrate Wii's capabilities.
1) It explains the un-exceptional graphics... or at least graphics the Gamecube could do.
2) It explains the huge amount of games demoed at E3.
3) It explains the "Gamecube" housings.
4) It explains how "polished" the demos were, and how refined the Wii-mote works.
5) It explains why the Wii development kits are so cheap... they are probably very much similar to the Gamecube.
So it doesn't surprise me that the Wii was disguised in the Gamecube housing. In the end, does it really matter? I'm still buying one at launch.