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 this changes....

And was the controller just a mars bar wrapped in tin foil?

Oh well, I guess that changes everything

I guess I'm not going to buy a Wii now, because they housed the hardware for the demo inside a GameCube.

Come on Sony, you can poison the well better than that.

Re:Oh well, I guess that changes everything

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.

Re:Oh well, I guess that changes everything

No doubt... not only that, but wasn't there a fair amount of PS3 bashing because the PS3 final design wasn't completed? Regardless what the Wii looks like i'll be buying it.

Sony was using actual PS3 hardware...

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.

Re:Sony was using actual PS3 hardware...

Why do I never have mod points when they are needed?

Parent is correct. I think the real issue is Nintendo made it look like they had production Wii hardware on the floor while Sony actually went out of their way to have big glass cases showing that they were not using retail hardware (which didn't make much sense to me, but bravo Sony for showing just how far of your Spring 2006 release date was).

Personally I don't think it's a big deal. Almost everything you see at E3 is 90% hype, or just plain lies (I'm looking at you Phantom). You should trust anything you see at E3 about as much as you would trust anything said by a used car salesman.

uh, so?

Do I not get it? Why would anyone care what case they were in?

Re:uh, so?

It's just something to try to stir up the water...

Re:uh, so?

Why is this being talked about? Because someone at MS or Sony had their panties in a wad because a) virtually all the mainstream media is talking about from E3 is the Wii, b) the enormously positive reaction to the Wii by the gaming "press", and c) both MS and Sony spokespeople have been heavily quoted as saying that in addition to their respective console, consumers will likely want a Wii as well, so they thought this would cause some minor scandal.

In this case, it's too little, and too late, for character assasination.

This is why this will blow away into the nothingness; it's not a big deal to begin with, and it's even less of a deal because of the qualified success the Wii showing at E3 was. Just shows how scared they are because their "hardcore I want 32 buttons to mash in a game that takes 10 hours to learn" crowd is getting smaller by the generation, yet Wii is set to appeal to non-gamers, former-gamers, and existing-gamers is a virtually unlimited potential audience.

AE

Re:uh, so?

I don't get it either. How is this even a news story? (Note I'm not blaimg Zonk for posting it, rather whoever wrote it and thought this mattered even slightly.) Hell, I don't care if they use a GameCube housing for the final product, let alone the demo. I wouldn't even care if the Wii housing was as butt-ugly as my 9th grade English teacher, what I care about is how well the system works and what games will run on it.

It makes me wonder if the author didn't write this up in the hope that it would be misinterpreted and make Nintendo look bad, while retaining some journalistic integrity. Hmmm, maybe I do get it after all.

Interesting...

...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 :)

Re:Interesting...

Alas, no hardened dog poop was available: Microsoft bought it all up for Vista. . . .

(running for cover, grinning like hell)

Misleading subject: Disagrees with summary, even.

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.

Accusations?

That makes it sound like they were doing something wrong. Who cares what case it was in if the hardware was the real deal?

GBA SP, DS lite, WiiCube?

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.

Re:GBA SP, DS lite, WiiCube?

The cube was designed for Asia. Japan is very space conscience, apartments are small and space is a premium. The cube could fit just abotu anywhere and be moved easily, two big pluses in the Asian market.

Re:GBA SP, DS lite, WiiCube?

Actually there was an SNES redesign. There's a pic on the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNES_2 [wikipedia.org]

Confused

Why do we need to ask a Nintendo executive what a GameCube looks like?

So what...

Had this not been the case, then either the GCN is forward compatible or that there'd be Wii controller kits for the GCN.

I mean, it's not like someone was playing it for a while, then looked down and saw a GCN and said "Eeewww, I've been playing on a previous-gen console."

Re:So what...

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.

Cheated, Cheated, Cheated I say!

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.

Microsoft did a similar thing last year

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.

We have a right to be dubious

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 [joystiq.com] 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.

So what?

I don't care if the hardware was housed inside a shoebox. It came, it saw, it kicked some ass. Whatever case it came in doesn't mean shit.

On a related note, a shoebox Wii would be pretty cool.

odd....

That's a really odd choice for nintendo, given the fact that the gamecube is a fairly 'customized' piece of hardware (3 boards, funky controller ports, etc) crammed into a REALLY tight space.

I would have found it much more likely for them to have been put in some generic grey box or something like that for E3........

Missing the point

It looks like everybody is missing the point.

Accusation: Nintendo doesn't have their Wii hardware ready and is just running the demos on GameCube hardware with a new controller plugged in.

Fact: Nintendo doesn't have their Wii hardware ready and is just running the demos on GameCube hardware that has been upgraded to Wii specs with a new controller plugged in.

Difference: Accusation is correct: Nintendo doesn't have final hardware ready yet (no biggie). Accusation is incorrect: Nintendo is just using GameCube hardware for demos and dev kits and hasn't gotten the updated hardware story figured out yet (this would be scary).

Correction:

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.

:-)

I wish the Wii would come in a cube.

The cube has got to be the coolest shape ever. The G4 cube is one of the best looking production PCs out there. The GameCube is the best looking 4th generation console out there. (I hope I'm getting the generation right.. NES -> Super NES -> N64 -> GameCube (4th gen right?) )..

Anyways.. onlything more cool than a cube is a better looking cube or a sphere. But unless they can make it hover and stuff, I doubt a sphere could be as cool as a cube. It'll just roll around and stuff. Not very practical.

Re:I wish the Wii would come in a cube.

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.

Whatever.

I think this could actually be a good thing, think about the attention they drew with this thing... All the same, Sony and MS have been pulling this shit for years and they move units(although how profitable...) Let's see how well it works for Nintendo, they've been the only one that's been straightforward(read: honest)with their work and what to expect from it since day one. In my mind it can only run BETTER than what they showed at E3 and present their customers with a pleasant surprise in terms of raw power and functionality. As the saying goes, it's what you DON'T see that can hurt you.

In other online news...

Sony BluRay laptop demo was using a DVD-ROM!

Karl Rove has been indicted!

Everything you read on the intrawebs is the absolute truth!

pfft!!

hah! i couldnt care less! so it was in gamecube cases...who cares??
if it gets me my Wii sooner, ship it in gamecube cases!!
sony and microsoft don't have bupkis to play on here...

Odd

Don't you think its odd that if sony was to do somthing like this, you would all be up in flames, but since its nintendo, you just go 'oh well' after whatching the sony bashing that has taken place these past few weeks, you get the idea someone is running a astro-turf campain.

My computer is sucks

My dual opteron system sucks becuase it's in a cheap Antec case without a fancy smansy platic window with colored florescent neon green lighting! Damn... without the case my system is nothing!

GC and Wii processor

Isn't the Wii's processor just a faster version of the GC processor? That's why the wii is able to play GC games. The Wii slows down it's clock speed for a GC game and voilla!

Honestly...

...if this is the best dirt to be dug up on Nintendo's new console, if the worst we can say of Nintendo is "Their console is named funny and was in strange boxes!", then we should retire from the business. You might as well complain that Mother Theresa hurt the image of Theresas everywhere by looking old.

Can't understand all this bashing of articles..

The Wii running through Gamecubes was this rumor that's been circling and some people thought it was a big deal. So this 'housing' was confirmed, and an article about it was posted here. Nothing bad in that. Good to know the facts from Slashdot! No need to start a war against every piece of text posted.

What's the big fucking deal?

All the games companies show games on unfinished hardware, why is this even news? Remember last year the X360 demos were on dual CPU Macs with Radeon X800s until the hardware was finished. And at this year's E3 Sony demoed Gran Turismo HD on a PC! That's not even vaguely similar architecturally to the PS3!

I saw an auction on eBay a while back for an early GameCube dev kit. The CPU clockspeed was listed as only half that of the final GameCube and the graphics hardware was missing a few pipelines. It was also bigger than the final hardware so it couldn't fit in the GC's case. Was demoing GameCube games on that at E3 also misleading?

And what have we got this year? Wii hardware that's too big to fit in Wii cases, so they stuck it in a GC case. Even if Nintendo were just using GCs and there wasn't any Wii hardware in them, I don't think it's particularly important because a) the Wii isn't about graphical power and b) the GC is essentially a subset of the Wii's final spec. So it's the equivalent of working on a cut down Wii anyway, like the early GC dev kit I mentioned above was a cut down version of the final GC hardware.

Preface... Getting the wii

Subtext, perhaps we shouldn't be complaining about those ps2 demo's rendered on the slightly diffrent hardware of SGI workstations :P

Small is hard... That's why PDA's aren't crazy fast...

Crazy heat issues etc... one of the hottest components is wireless (radio waves)...

If the Wii has several seperate wireless connections (8 it sounds like) that thing is going to be REALLY REALLY REALLY hot, depite the mediocre graphics and cpu the wireless alone provides a massive technical challenge.

Reading through 20 Nintendo apology posts made me sad... they're scamming, it sucks, they admitted it... gamers are NOT picking on Nintendo about this, it blows that anyone would do this and it's especially problematic because some 3rd parties DO get their info from E3 while Nintendo seems to be using it to mislead(however minorly) the consumer.

Whoever said that games will probably look better later could be right but what kind of attitude is that to take when someone lies to you.

The Wii Controller was meant for the Gamecube

Back in 2004, there were many rumours [gamesindustry.biz] that Nintendo was going to announce a new peripheral add-on [ign.com] for the Gamecube that would add new functionality and possibly extend the life of the Gamecube [ign.com]. 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.

Wii in a Gamecube case? AWESOME! Where can I buy?

If Nintendo actually did put the Wii guts into a Gamecube case, wtf is wrong with that? The Gamecube is so perfectly compact and it spits out very little heat compared to an Xbox or a PS2.. I'd love it.

Slow slow ati :3

well,reading some rumors,and some stuff that was told and etc,for me,what happened is like this: IBM did the processor,and its ready :3,and its probably the last unrelased G3 with some heavy nintendo modifications to support game cube code and some new stuff like physics (just look at a truck collision on Excite truck,and tell me,a nintendo coder really can do that on a game cube or overclocked game cube?) but ATI on the other hand is Slow,thanks to the X-box 360 video as we all know,ati had all her vid chips slowed down by the 360 video chip,and i think that the nintendo one is on that slowed down list,so,this wii's on E3 probably are a frankenWiis,with a ready processor,and the original gamecube vid with some overclock on it but Why Wii vid needs to actually be ready,instead of just getting the X1300 of the shelf and etc? my guess is that nintendo instead of reliyng on heavy shader performance,just got a "ok it works" one,and did all the trendy stuff like normal map and sub surface with a dedicated hardware stuff,as dedicated hardware is a lotta smaller than shader execution units,and faster too o.o

sowhat

sowhat... That's really the most appropriate tag for this story and I'm glad people put it there. What they had at E3 was still a working model, and it makes no difference to me if they put it in a gamecube case or if they put it in a pink elephant case as long as it works and does everything as advertised. This really seems like the most innovative console in a long time. Cheers to Nintendo to not worrying so much about the bleeding edge graphics and focusing more on great gameplay.

--
http://www.wiishlist.com [wiishlist.com]

wow. This is the best they can do?

Seriously, Sony last year runs cut-scenes as in-game footage, makes fun of the Wii controller only to hastily copy it, and this is the best that people can use to take jabs at the Wii?!?

C'mon. Normally I could care less and stay far away from this "console war" marketing crap, but this is just re-damn-diculous. People need to realize that no matter if _they_ will buy a Wii or if they even hate every game released for it, that the Wii is the single greatest thing that could happen to their beloved industry as it will cause a rapid break from the never ending sequels and stagnant genre's that have been dead and beaten continuously for years now.

Re:This makes me wonder...

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.

Yes, it did.

Mostly.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/15/ 2132242 [slashdot.org]

Re:This makes me wonder...

yep, but the games will run faster and be harder as result ;)