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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.
And was the controller just a mars bar wrapped in tin foil?
Do I not get it? Why would anyone care what case they were in?
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
...but not unexpected for a 5-to-6-months-before release demo.
:)
It showcased what they wanted it to do - they could have cased in hardened dog shit for all I personally would have cared
They weren't running ON Gamecube hardware. They were running IN Gamecube shells. The summary is more true to fact than the subject.
From TFA:
Nintendo confirmed that they did indeed use GameCube housing, but that the "guts" or internal architecture was certainly from the Wii. "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," the company explained.
That makes it sound like they were doing something wrong. Who cares what case it was in if the hardware was the real deal?
If the GBA SP and DS lite are any indication, I predict that 18 months after Wii hits the market, Nintendo will announce the WiiCube, a Wii console shaped like a GameCube with a larger disc well and more built-in memory for more Virtual Console products.
I mean, to think that they used plastic housing cases that weren't exactly the same as the final production models, even if all the important metal and fiber bits inside were!
I am just appalled.
Oh, wait. No, it's Friday.
Never mind: I forgot I actually have a life.
As you were.
They can put them in brown paper sacks for all I care.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Can a GC be overclocked and still work?
Well, maybe it can, but I want to know if we can make a Beowulf cluster out of Wii hardware.
Then we can have a Wii Beowulf cluster.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm not sure why this is a big deal, or even a surprise -- at last year's E3, the 360 was emulated on heavily modded PowerPCs. When I saw a stack of them at EA, I couldn't help but giggle at the huge Apple logos emblazoned on the side and the small, unassuming "Property of Microsoft" labels affixed to the top of each machine.
There seems to be accusations of "faking it" at every E3. I guess the industry has brought it on itself, showing stuff like the supposed Madden for Xbox 360 screen shots that were much better than the actual game when it shipped. This stuff has been going on for years and it's no wonder that audiences are wary of being duped by faked demos.
But 6 months before the console hits the shelves, the only hardware that exists is in prototype versions. It is not suprising that the floor models were put together with duct tape, GameCube cases and whatever else they had on-hand. I would be suprised if the actual Wii games don't look better than what Nintendo had on display at this years E3, as developers have more time to work on games and get them polished.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
While I agree with the parent's sentiment and those in other posts about this story being irrelevant, is there any evidence that Sony was behind this? If not, then the Sony bashing has officially gotten out of hand, and the parent has no business being modded 'Insightful'. You can count me in with the crowd that's not happy with Sony these days, but c'mon. There are plenty of solid things that we can shit all over Sony for, but the knee-jerk accusations aren't gonna cut it. Or at least, they shouldn't. I must be new here.
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.
I seem to remember making this kind of comment before, but....
The Gamecube is sixth-generation. The prior generations are:
1. Up to and including Atari 2600.
2. Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari 5200.
3. NES, Sega Master System, Atari 7800.
4. Genesis, SNES, Turbografx 16.
5. Saturn, Playstation, N64
6. Dreamcast, PS2, X-box, Gamecube.
-- and next --
7. X-Box 360, Playstation 3, Wii.
Accusation: Nintendo is still running games off of modified Gamecube hardware.
:-)
Fact: While this was true for most of last year, and some of this year, E3 2006 saw Wii technology housed in black Gamecube casing.
---space.is.the.place---
Sony BluRay laptop demo was using a DVD-ROM!
Karl Rove has been indicted!
Everything you read on the intrawebs is the absolute truth!
They were the devices in racks between the monitors.
They're not PCs in there. They're not "representative hardware". They're PS3s, devkits.
No, they weren't in final plastics yet either.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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.