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Nintendo Announces Wii Successor for 2012

motang writes "Nintendo has officially announced the successor to the Wii. At its investors meeting, Nintendo said they have decided to launch the successor to the Wii in 2012 after the fiscal year, and will show it off and have a playable version at this year's E3."

23 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Makes sense. by LWATCDR · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When the Wii was there where still a lot of none HD TVs in peoples homes so Nintendo targeted standard def and kept the prices low. Now HDTV is very common and thanks to Moores law Nintendo can come out with a console that will probably outperform the 360 and PS/3 and be cheaper. Now Nintendo can produce a new machine that will out perform the completion and cost less just as the Wii sales start to drop. Brilliant marketing plan and it will sell like hotcakes.

    --
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    1. Re:Makes sense. by dadelbunts · · Score: 2

      You can run N64 games on a gamecube?

    2. Re:Makes sense. by Frigga's+Ring · · Score: 2

      I have to say that I'm not thrilled about this. The next Nintendo console will come out in 2012 as the 360 and PS3 are reaching the end of their lifecycles. But even if this system is set up to compete with the other two consoles, I don't foresee developers flocking to develop on the console and then down rez for the PS3 and 360. If anything, this new console will get imports designed for one of the other two systems.

      This also means that when the next Microsoft and Sony systems come out (rumors point to 2014), the Nintendo console will be behind in hardware again.

      And if their market are the casual gamers and families? I get the feeling that they're going to lose out more and more to the mobile and web markets much in the way that the DS and PSP are. Games that require the motion controls of the Wii such as Just Dance do well, but as with the Rock Band/Guitar Heroes of the past, there will be a point where no one will want to buy a new game just for new songs.

      I wish Nintendo the best of luck, but I see a long uphill battle in their future that they just can't win unless they evolve agressively.

      I'd recommend checking out the April 15th episode of Weekend Confirmed or the Extra Credits episode "Consoles are the new Coin-op" for insight on where I'm coming from.

    3. Re:Makes sense. by LWATCDR · · Score: 2

      If they are showing it at E3 I am guessing it will be shipping this Christmas. Only makes sense that if it is playable they will want it out for the Holiday season. Nintendo relies less on 3 party developers for launch titles than any other console maker does.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    4. Re:Makes sense. by tuffy · · Score: 2

      It's probably more a matter of neither of them being willing (or able) to lose a lot of money on each unit of new hardware while they're still paying off the losses of the current generation's launch. That's why they've been trying to encourage this generation to last longer than usual.

      Nintendo, on the other hand, generally sells hardware at a profit. This puts them in a good position to bring in a lot of 3rd party development and expand their dominance from the current generation.

      --

      Ita erat quando hic adveni.

    5. Re:Makes sense. by Belial6 · · Score: 2

      I'm not buying the phone and tablets market is going to kill consoles. I know a lot of people that play games on their phones and tablets. I don't know anyone that has given up a DS in exchange for one. Some people like me have added them to the mix. Some people don't care about games enough to carry around a dedicated system, so are new customers, not customers taken from the dedicated hand held. Solitaire was by far the PC game that was played by the most people. Virtually every single person with a PC played it. That does not mean it took over PC gaming. People played it because it was their, but when they went looking for a game, Solitaire wasn't what they were looking for. The same applies to phones.

      Just look at the big hit of the phone gaming market. Angry Birds. Sure, it is entertaining. Yes, I have played it. It would be lost in a sea of just as good or better games on the DS. The reason it gets so much press is that it is an actually playable fun game on the phone, and that it is just that rare to find a decent game there. The phones have crappy interfaces for most video games. There are certain types of games that work with a touch screen, but there are lots that don't. Covering your screen with your fingers just doesn't make a good interface for things that are real time.

      Of course, if more phone manufacturers were to start offering better controllers for the phones, we could see the same convergence that we saw with the PDA and phone market. With the current crop of phones, that isn't happening though.

      As for the Next Wii. Whether it is a good idea or not will depend on several factors. Presumably, the Wii2 would have better graphics than the PS3 and 360. Certainly 1920x1080 is as good as it will be, and any future PS or Xbox will not do higher resolution, as the TV will be the limiting factor, so there is no reason that anyone should need to down rez for any future Nintendo console. Looking at sales, Nintendo clearly made the right choice in reducing cost by not going HD before the TVs were mainstream. If Nintendo gets 2 years on a Wii2 before a future PS or Xbox gets release, they may have enough of a market lead that Sony and MS just can't compete. If the Wii2 is more powerful than the PS3 and Xbox360, and is only ~$100 more expensive, it will either sweep the next gen market for lack of competition, or it will force Sony and MS to excellent their release plans. Rushing their systems to market could lead to half baked systems that further help Nintendo.

      So, my conclusion would be the exact opposite as yours. My impression is that if Nintendo is basically ready to release their next system, they are in a very strong position compared to MS and Sony. It means that they will likely be defining the market with Sony and MS playing catch up.

  2. Re:Upgrade by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Build yourself a FAST gaming machine and run Dolphin on it. It's one of the selling points is that will output at 1080p. Only downside is the beefy hardware requirements.

  3. It's on! by StikyPad · · Score: 2

    It's on like [name withheld].

    (Credit to Bluebreaker in TFA's comments).

  4. Re:Well, there goes Nintendo... by PKFC · · Score: 2

    I thought you trusted that Nintendo didn't release hardware just for the sake of releasing hardware. The 3DS is a speed bump, but does add 3D, a gyro from the wiimote tech and a pedometer from the pokewalker. The play coins are a cool feature and improves upon the chances of finding someone to streetpass which is also a cool feature. No one knows the feature list of the next home console (being more important than the spec sheet) and so no one can really say. That said, it is disappointing to know that there are games that are still in development for Wii (like Dragon Quest X) and will look outdated after a new console comes out..

  5. You're ignoring the most important part! by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Funny

    The announcement was light on details, but this caught my eye...

    the system's rumored codename, "Project Cafe," hints at its ability to shoot a cappuccino directly into your gaping mouth.

    It's about time someone in the console industry started paying attention to their adult customers!

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  6. Re:Upgrade by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Emulating is not piracy in any shape or form.
    Emulating a machine is just emulating a machine.
    You do not use a rare DVD drive to get the wii games, you use a wii to rip them to your emulation machine.

    No piracy required. Furthermore piracy is theft on the high sea, this would at worst encourage a little copyright violation. Which it does not either, since you buy the games and a wii, and use the wii to make the copy needed to play on the emulator.

  7. Re:Well, there goes Nintendo... by PitaBred · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Top of it's game? The Wii's sales have plateaued, and game sales have gone down. As long as they are backwards compatible, I can't see this as anything but a good move. It'll cannibalize a few sales this Christmas, but they can't be counting on too many there anyway.

  8. Re:Upgrade by MightyYar · · Score: 2

    Emulating retail systems is piracy.

    Nonsense. Buy the software and Nintendo is making out better than if you went out and bought a subsidized Wii.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  9. Re:Upgrade by CastrTroy · · Score: 2

    I did it. Seriously. It's a big nuisance to have to switch discs everytime you want to switch games, especially on the Wii when many times you are just playing party games. Emulating a retail system is fine as long as you own the actual games. Although emulation of current systems is so slow that I would have to wonder why you would even want to attempt this.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  10. Re:Well, there goes Nintendo... by Daetrin · · Score: 2

    Just to elaborate on your already Insightful comment, the "top of its game" is pretty much the right point to announce a successor for any kind of electronics. By definition, once you've reached the "top of your game," it's all downhill from there. You've got to be careful to measure "your game" correctly so you can catch the "good" part of the downhill slope before the actual release, but you never want to wait so long that the old version clearly sucks now. You want people saying "the old one was great, i think i want the new one" not "Well finally! The old one used to be great, but it's been kinda crap for awhile now."

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    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
  11. Re:Upgrade by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Wii?

  12. Sony and Microsoft have no answer by Daniel+Phillips · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Neither Sony nor Microsoft has breathed a word about a substantive upgrade to their console offerings. By substantive, I mean memory, processor and graphics competitive with a modern PC. Why the silence? In my opinion, because it cannot be done economically. Both Sony and Microsoft currently sit deep in a multibillion dollar hole of losses from the current generation fiasco. How can either justify a new cycle of hardware engineering, manufacturing engineering, SDK development and product promotion? Another round of impossible engineering choices trying to stuff PC class hardware into a consumer electronics form factor? It is anybody's guess whether either will attempt it, but this is sure: neither is anywhere close to taking the plunge. Game publishers and developers have heard nothing but silence in regards to possible specs of a follow on high end console generation. This strengthens my belief that the high end console has died and will not rise again. Cutesy and cheap like Nintendo is the only economically viable choice for a console vendor today.

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    1. Re:Sony and Microsoft have no answer by Daniel+Phillips · · Score: 2

      They (Sony & Microsoft) may not have announced anything, but it's asinine to think that they haven't already gone through engineering and R&D processes. They are likely experimenting now, and waiting for the price of hardware to come down.

      So you think they both have highly secret engineering projects at an advanced state? Let me break it to you: we would have heard about it, this is the age of the leak. I say, this silence is the sound of moratorium imposed by corporate beancounters.

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  13. Re:Upgrade by afex · · Score: 2

    just wanted to throw in my two cents - i used to install chips around the D2Ckey era (when they were all 25-30 wire and a PITA) and i was SHOCKED at the amount of clients I had that were doing it only to play backups of their own games due to having kids. Seriously, it had to be like 1/6 people (i would say i was averaging 20 systems a week) that were in this bucket. Some of them had no idea you could even download them, and never even considered it!

    almost gave me a tiny shred of hope for the 'fair use' arguments that people always throw around!

  14. Re:Upgrade by VGPowerlord · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ah, well if you decide to get back into it, keep those cables in mind. The problem isn't that the Wii's output sucks, the problem is that modern HDTV's interpret the signal lousily. It's something I will never understand.

    ...and don't forget to change the output to 480p (NTSC) or 576p (PAL) in the Wii's settings.

    Progressive scan really is better than interlaced.

    If you're playing GameCube games on the Wii, you may have to hold a button down to get the option to play in progressive mode (B on the GameCube controller by default, I think).

    --
    GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
  15. Re:Upgrade by Marc_Hawke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've had a USB Loader on my Wii for 2 years now. There has never been a single game I didn't own ripped to the harddrive. (In fact, several of the games I DO own are not on the drive because the disks became unreadable before I got the drive set up.)

    Projecting your own dishonest tendencies or lack of self-control on to others isn't very nice. Not everyone steals everything they see just because they can.

    I think it's interesting that this thread started because someone said they could get a higher resolution display by using an emulator. Someone else chipped in that running off the hard drive has the tangible benefit of being more robust than juggling disks. However, each of these completely valid uses keep being thrown out because OF COURSE people just want free games.

    Having copies of games that you were supposed to pay for is a problem, but it it's a complete separate issue from the concept of emulation and 'media-shifting.' If you won't even respect the difference, how do you expect a corporation will, when it becomes an easy target that affects the bottom line.

    --
    --Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
  16. Re:Well, there goes Nintendo... by Millennium · · Score: 2

    I thought you trusted that Nintendo didn't release hardware just for the sake of releasing hardware.

    I did. Unfortunately, Nintendo has done much to disillusion me in the last year or so.

    The 3DS is a speed bump, but does add 3D, a gyro from the wiimote tech and a pedometer from the pokewalker.

    3D and the pedometer fall squarely into the gimmick category: nifty gee-whiz novelties, but not capable of improving games. Likewise for the speed bump. The gyro might have been another story if it weren't clearly an afterthought, and the same goes for the AR system.

  17. Re:Upgrade by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 2

    It's not just about honesty but technical ability and I think your average user would find it easier to just download the game rather than go through the process of setting up their Wii to rip games and I don't see them stopping with just the ones they own. After all if most people were honest then Mame wouldn't have gone anywhere because let's be honest how many people own one arcade cabinet let alone hundreds of them?