No More GameCube, Wii 2.0 On the Far Horizon 153
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.
Re:DVD Playback + Wii 2.0 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:nice (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Wii-tf (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Ad-whoring jerkfaces... (Score:2, Informative)
GameDaily BIZ: The Wii did quite well this holiday season. At last count Nintendo sold over 3.19 million units worldwide. Did you expect to sell that many or did that level of success surprise you a bit?
Perrin Kaplan: We actually projected really strong numbers like that before our launch, because any public company needs to do that... But again it was a really high risk to bring out something that innovative and different and we are really kind of in awe that consumers are so high on the product. I mean we had hoped for it, but when you do something that different you never really know how people are going to react, and the fact that everybody--teens, dads, moms, cousins, young kids--everybody is totally into it, and then the DS is selling extremely well... we're kind of in awe of all of it. It's a great, great thing and I think it means a lot of good things for the whole industry.
BIZ: That was actually something that Doug Lowenstein talked about earlier today in his speech. He said that the industry needs to take more risks, and shouldn't rely on the same type of content over and over. And he specifically mentioned the Wii and Will Wright's Spore...
PK: Well, consumers are really savvy. They've been enjoying [what the games industry offers] for a long time, but I don't think [purchase patterns] reflected a healthier appetite. Buying games has been sort of staying level, but I don't think people were feeling inspired. In fact, some of the core gamers were like, "I thought I was getting bored and I wasn't sure, and now I realize I was totally getting bored. And I now I feel reinvigorated." And those who've left gaming, we need them to come back in order for the industry to grow, and then those who've never played, we really want them to enter the fold because it's very fun. So yeah, we've got to get risky and get out there, and obviously sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
BIZ: Nintendo built up a lot of momentum over the holiday season, but what's the plan to keep that momentum alive and well? Inevitably there's going to be a lull, so how do you keep the buzz around the Wii and people buying it?
PK: Well, there's various buzz now. If you look on the Internet, there's everything from how to hold your own Wii party to how to do a Mii parade to change Mii codes to how to lose weight... all these different branches that have come off this tree. So the momentum has not slowed down. Conan O'Brien and Serena Williams were just playing Wii Sports tennis on TV the other night; that's the kind of stuff you thought would only happen during launch and it's still fast and furious. There's a lot, a lot of talk about it. You have to remember that even though you played the Wii many months ago, it's still new to a lot of people; there's a lot of "eurekas" to be had by a lot of consumers. So for us I think it's just about continuing to get the product out there, letting people have a chance to touch and feel it themselves and play it, because hearing about it is one thing; seeing someone play it is another exciting thing; and the third thing is if you play it yourself, for the most part, 99% of the time, people are like "I love this!"
BIZ: How much credit would you give Nintendo's marketing team for this early success? You've had some unique marketing where you took the Wii to an AARP convention, advertised with Oprah...
PK: Yeah, a lot of that actually started with the DS with Brain Age and Nintendogs and our efforts to try to take those products and populate it into different kinds of audiences. You know, the AARP thing was a little bit tough at first. They were like, "We don't really want to talk to you because we're all grandparents and we already buy stuff for our kids," and so we said, "No we want to talk to you about you." It took several attempts for them to finally say, "So why do you want to talk to us?" And it's because we have products for them as well now; so it really started with the DS and has continued on with the Wii. But I will say, at the end of th
Consoles over, but not the games (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Wii-tf (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.computercloset.org/SegaGenesis1.jpg [computercloset.org]
http://akamai.edeal.com/images/catalog3091/folder
http://www.emulationgalaxy.co.yu/images/systems/M
http://di1.shopping.com/images/di/47/74/30/333945
(ok ok, that last one is not a console exactly, as it doesn't come with the ability to swap carts, but it does use the exact same chip as the 3rd real console, same manufacturer even - you can rewire it to accept controllers and games!)
The first genesis lacked some of the output options that the second one had. So this is nothing new!