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The Wii Mini Is Real, Arrives December 7 — In Canada
An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday there was a rumor doing the rounds that Nintendo was set to release a brand new version of the Wii console called the Wii Mini. The new machine would be significantly smaller than the current Wii, is expected to ship with a Wii Remote Plus, Nunchuk, and Sensor Bar, and hopefully carries a much lower (sub-$100) price. Well, it looks as though this wasn't just a rumor. Best Buy Canada has it listed with an image on its front page and a December 7 release date." Also at PC Mag.
My son's Wii requires a fan be set up behind it for cooling or it shuts down.
Presumably they fixed that for this version (may have fixed it previously...I don't know, I just use it for Netflix).
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The Wii2 or Wiiii
But it has no internet? Really? Seriously? No thanks.
It's not like the original Wii was enormous...it may have been the smallest major gaming console ever sold. And since the price is not significantly less and the functionality is significantly less (no internet) I'm left wondering one thing:
Why would Nintendo waste their money developing and selling this?
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
Slim consoles are nothing unusual, but they're usually released before the next generation console as a ploy to extend the life of the hardware. The last time that I'm aware of a console manufacturer releasing a slim console after their next-gen console shipped was the Atari 2600 Jr, released in 1985, 3 years after the 5200 was released. In that case the 5200 was such a bomb that Atari needed to buy time for the 7800 to get released. I'm not sure what Nintendo's strategy is here, they already dominate the low end console market.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I don't see any specs or pictures of the rear. I wonder if the Wii will finally get a digital output? Or have DVD playback built in?
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pretty sure the Wii-U is out, I saw a sign somewhere saying they had it in stock.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
You mean the Wii U that came out 10 days ago?
And if not, is there a price break on the original Wii?
Now the kids will be playing with their small Wii?
Streaming from their little Wii?
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Wanna play with it?
Have you heard of the Wii U?
They sent me this link earlier today: http://www.nintendo.com/wiimini?country=CA&lang=en/
Could one add a (wired?) internet connection using a USB dongle?
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I wouldn't want to be accused of having the smallest Wii on the block.
For downloading games from the Wii store and Netflix. Half the games my kids play are SNES/N64 classics. When not playing I'm catching up on movies and old TV shows on Netflix.
The last time that I'm aware of a console manufacturer releasing a slim console after their next-gen console shipped was the Atari 2600 Jr
I seem to remember the NES-101 coming out after the Super NES.
I'm not sure what Nintendo's strategy is here, they already dominate the low end console market.
It probably comes with a redesign to defeat Homebrew Channel. For one thing, no Internet means no Homebrew Browser.
If you want homebrew on a device the size of a Wii, get a Veriton from Acer.
I don't know anyone who ever complained about the original Wii being "too big" (it's already the smallest home console on the market). Or, for that matter, anyone who has purchased one in the past 1-2 years and complained of it being "too expensive" (it's already the least expensive home console on the market). You can buy the regular (white) Wii for $120 right now at Best Buy, the $20 savings is not huge.
I suspect that these ones also have broken backwards-compatibility with the gamecube, so you are definitely getting less usefulness for less money.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This is going to confuse the hell out of people this holiday season who are already confused enough about Nintendo's consoles as it is. Nintendo has seemingly done a poor job educating consumers, so they're left often still thinking that Wii U is just a thing you buy to add on to the Wii. They don't realize it's a separate console. This is going to compound that confusion.
That said, I'll buy one. Primarily because I'd like to have one to put in my shelf full of collected consoles and I have no idea where my actual Wii is. I haven't touched it since Boom Blox came out in 2008 and when I moved, I packed up everything in boxes and forgot which box I put the Wii in. Three years later, I haven't found it. I haven't even looked. I don't even care. Aside from a very few number of first-party titles, they just didn't offer much appeal to anyone other than maybe my mom.
My PC game collection is around 2,400 titles.
My XBOX 360 collection is around 300+ titles.
My PS3 collection is around 40 titles.
My Wii collection is 18 titles.
Yes, indeed, $99 is sub-$100...
Statistically, the expected value of sub-$100 is $50 though!
So no, you're talking out your rear end. How about some authoritative information? rjejr is correct. You can go into your Wii Settings and turn off the background data options--you know, the one that updates your weather and news and all that while your Wii is in standby mode. If you don't use your Wii for weather/news, you can save yourself some electricity/money by disabling the standby mode. http://goo.gl/uavVx
According to the Verge (see http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/27/3698060/nintendo-wii-mini-no-internet-no-future ), ", the Wii Mini comes with some unfortunate compromises, most notably the lack of any sort of online connectivity. Instead of being a media streamer-killing Netflix box that can also play a huge library of games, the Wii Mini feels more like a missed opportunity."
This is similar to Sony's product line up. They continued to sell PS2's pretty solidly until just the last year or so (at least in the US.) If you look at the sales numbers (I haven't recently) they were moving something like 40k units a week. Not too many manufactures would discontinue a product selling that well. Add in the savings with the cost reduce and I'm sure this will continue as a cash cow for Nintendo for quite some time.
With the exception of losing the HDD expansion bay, the PS2 slim wasn't nearly as gimped compared to the original PS2 as the Wii Mini is to the original Wii.
The next Game Boy Advance Micro.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Nintendo waits until after the biggest shopping week and day of the year to release a minature version of a console that is already outdated?
...
Actually, it's not that stupid. The Wii-U is in short supply, and while the Wii did sell good already this year, it gives people a cheaper one to buy instead of buying a kid another 360 or PS3. Will some people boy the Mini Wii thinking it's a Wii-U? Probably, but you can't fix stupid.
Be seeing you...
I think they are smoking crack at Nintendo.
1) You can buy a fully functional Wii with 2 games for $150, why buy a crippled variant for $99 that won't allow you to transfer content from an old Wii to this one?
2) The market is already saturated with Wii's collecting dust. I doubt the number of people that have been waiting patiently for a cheap crippled Wii are significant.
3) Why make it butt ugly? If they came out with a nice slick mini version of the Wii that was fully functional I could see it people grabbing a second one in the house or cottage. Just because its red doesn't mean Canadians are going to want it.
4) Why now? Even the Wii U is not significantly more expensive then a $100 crippled Wii. Any kid opening up this POS will be very disappointing when all their friends are opening up a Wii U for only $200 more.
5) Canadians are rich (comparatively to the US), we do not need a cheap-ass version of the Wii this Christmas. I think Nintendo got Canada confused with the US which is headed for a financial ruin.
I think Nintendo has jumped the shark (or rather Mushroom). Was just at a Walmart and they had the Wii U in stock. Was at least 3 months before I started seeing Wii's on the store shelves. Nintendo is *****ked.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
They should have called it the Wee Wii.
Or the Wii Oui.
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Nintendo waits until after the biggest shopping week and day of the year to release a minature version of a console that is already outdated?
Please people -- reading comprehension! And maybe understanding a bit of geography...
According to the summary, the Wii Mini is only being released in Canada. Not the US. And here in Canada, the biggest shopping week and day of the year is Boxing Day (December 26th).
Setting aside for a moment a number of US stores in this country holding sales on the same day as their US counterparts do on Black Friday, and some Canadian shops following suit to remain competitive with both US-based stores in Canada holding such sales and to help combat cross-border shopping, Black Friday isn't really much of a thing here in Canada. It's not a holiday here, people who work are at work that day. It's just another day.
Congratulations to you and everyone else who either a) through lack of reading comprehension, didn't notice that the Wii Mini is only being released in Canada, or b) don't know that Canada is still a sovereign country with different traditions and customs (and often prices) than the US.
Yaz
Why didn't they go the other way: give the thing lots of storage (cheaper now than when Wii came out) and dump the disk drive? I'm wondering if this could have been a nice little box for those who hate discs lying around...
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
I tried to RTFA but it crashes Opera on my ipod just after the page finishes rendering. Repeated three times and three crashes with lost tabs each time.
Ever notice that Cobra Commander sounds an awful lot like Star scream?