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Wii Hardware Upgrade Won't Happen Soon
As high-definition graphics become more and more entrenched in this generation of game consoles, Nintendo has had to deal with constant speculation about a new version of the Wii that would increase its capabilities. Today, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime bluntly denied that a hardware revision was imminent, saying, "We are confident the Wii home entertainment console has a very long life in front of it." He added, "In terms of what the future holds, we've gone on record to say that the next step for Nintendo in home consoles will not be to simply make it HD, but to add more and more capability, and we'll do that when we've totally tapped out all of the experiences for the existing Wii. And we're nowhere near doing that yet."
Good for Nintendo. I don't really care about flashy sequels and having to re-buy consoles/accessories/games or hope that the backward compatibility works (if there is one). I just want people to carry on making games for a console that almost everyone has played. It's good business sense to keep your customers on a stable platform and sell optional extras / games that enhance their original purchase's value without *forcing* them to upgrade and alienating them, not to mention keeping the online Wii stores alive - how many people who have never touched emulation have been playing emulated titles on Wii without even knowing? It's good gaming sense (what matters is the game and the price, not the number of / type of peripherals, graphics, sound...) and at the end of the day, the Wii is forefront on the general public's mind... not including persistent gamers, people would struggle to give the correct name of the current version of the Xbox / Playstation, and would probably name Wii first.
"Wii 2" isn't required. Wii already proved that state-of-the-art isn't required, just a little bit of fun and know-how and something a bit different. Whether you hate it or not, you've played Wii at least once and tried it. I know that I can't say the same about the Xbox (any version) / Playstation (any version past the original PS1) consoles, yet my PC is full of every genre of game. Give it another 5 years or so, then people will be making games that actually test the limits of the Wii to the extreme all the time, then a successor that has full backwards compatibility will sell like hot cakes. And, to be honest, everyone I know that owns a Wii would actually be happier with some bundled accessory that enhances the whole console rather than a whole new console... a "HD addon" or even some processing upgrade that the Wii can interface with (like the N64 memory expansion modules, or the SuperFX/DSP chips that were in SNES games - Nintendo know what they are doing when it comes to getting the most out of a huge investment, which is why they're pretty much the only one making a decent return on hardware alone, not just the software).
If it works, and it sells, and it makes money, don't ditch it for a sequel... enhance it a bit at a time, one expenditure at a time, and keep your customers happy without shoving them between major purchases and platforms. If only MS could follow the same suit...
Are you two kidding? Full blown HD graphics with shadows, complex textures, high poly count and the like are what I want. I want to see blemishes on skin, blades of grass moving and reflections in water. I want to hear footsteps on metal, birds tweeting and monsters breathing. I want downloadable content, voice chat and massive multiplayer events.
Sounds like you need a PC rather than a console.
Consoles are great. I need one so that when people visit, they keep their mucky hands off my computer. Guess which console I went for?
Doom is the best selling game on xbox live, if I remember correctly. Unenhanced graphics. My son at college just recently beat Nightmare mode, and called me to brag. Pixelation and all.