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No More GameCube, Wii 2.0 On the Far Horizon
The little purple machine that could is no longer being manufactured. Hardware revisions are in store for the Nintendo Wii eventually. These announcements aren't terribly shocking, but they're still interesting admissions from Perin Kaplan, Vice President of Marketing & Corporate Affairs for Nintendo of America. GameDaily has the interview, which also discusses Wii sales, the lull in games, new IPs, and some details on plans online. Don't worry, you won't have to buy a new Wii anytime soon. Kaplan is immediately talking about the planned Japanese version with DVD Playback capability, but does say 'Sure, absolutely' to the question of whether we'll eventually see hardware changes on the order of the DS/DS Lite.
The drive is basically a DVD drive with custom firmware that reads disks encoded at Constant Angular Velocity rather than Constant Linear Velocity. (Basically, the disc always spins at the same speed in the Wii/Gamecube while regular DVDs slow down as the laser approaches the edge of the disc.) A simple firmware update would probably "fix" the drive to be able to read both types of discs. Unfortunately, drives that aren't rated for movie use are more likely to burn out early. (Something that happened to a lot of PS2s.) So Nintendo will probably release a different console with a sturdier drive. Something for which they'll pass the cost along to the consumer.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I don't think they need a new hardware revision for that. The Wii (like the early Gamecubes) uses a custom cable connector. That connector sends the data in its own format that can then be translated into Composite or Component. (Depending on which "cables" you use.) I imagine that an HDMI "cable" for the existing hardware is not out of the question. Just not very useful at the moment.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
If they do that, then less people buy the system up front, the developers defect to other platforms, and the platform fails.
They are treating consumers the way they want to be treated. Consumers demonstrate the way they want to be treated by spending money (or failing to) in response to stimulus.
In particular the Dreamcast debacle really proves that words can kill. Of course, those words didn't harm Sony, even though they were provably fraudulent and uttered by a Sony Exec.
The simple fact is that revisions are the norm, not the exception. There's three versions of Atari 2600 (VCS, 2600, 2600 revision 2, the slim one) that I recall. There's two NESes. There's two SNESes. There's two Genesis systems, and even two Sega CD addons. Two Playstations. Two PS2s. Two fucking colecovision systems. Two TurboGrafx16 systems, not counting TurboXpress, and two different TurboCD addons. Really, anyone who doesn't expect a system to be redesigned should have their head examined.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I DRTFA, but I just wanted to note that just because the Gamecube is no longer being produced does not mean that there will be no more Gamecube games, thanks to the backwards compatibility on the Wii.
Only last year was the last Dreamcast game released (in Japan), and the system has been out of production for at least four years. Every once in a while a PS1 game is still released, because it can work on the PS2. Since the Gamecube will be cheaper to produce for than the Wii, and there's a fairly good chance that many of the consumers will have the 'Cube controllers or easily get them.
The PS3 will also see a lot of this with PS2 games, especially with the massive increase of PS3 production costs.
Gamecube controllers will probably also see continued production by third parties, seeing as how they can be used with VC games and are generally cheaper than the Classic controller.
It does look like Nintendo is ditching the Gamecube internally, though.