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Nintendo Wii Games

More Nintendo Console Rumors 150

Posted by Soulskill from the no-wii-stream-jokes-allowed dept.
itwbennett writes "Nothing is official and Nintendo isn't talking, but 'industry sources' runneth over with new information about the company's new gaming console. IGN on Thursday said that Nintendo is ditching 'Wii' and will call the new console 'Stream'. And nothing connotes Internet connectivity like the word stream. 'That's an area Nintendo has really been lax on in the past,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'Pure speculation on my part but I just wonder what, if anything, will be streaming to this new console? Video? Gameplay? A strong online multiplayer component?'" Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has indirectly confirmed that the new console is in development.
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More Nintendo Console Rumors More

More Nintendo Console Rumors

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  • WTF (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Stream? Might as well call it "Golden Shower".

  • Hardware will be interesting (Score:3)

    by the linux geek ( 799780 ) on Friday April 22, 2011 @06:01PM (#35910502)
    I'm curious to see what kind of hardware this thing has - there's not really a strong candidate for a processor right now. IBM's recent work on embedded PPC cores has been more along the lines of multicore low-clocked low-power designs (the PPC A2 and 4xx), which would be much faster than the 750 core used in the GameCube and the Wii but would still be unlikely to match the single-thread performance of the 970's in the Xbox 360 and the PS3. ARM isn't close to fast enough right now to deliver high-end performance and to emulate the Wii. Maybe Nintendo's building an x86 system, like the original Xbox.

    • Why would Nintendo emulate the Wii?
      None of their other consoles emulate. They all have separate processors dedicated to the other device. The DS does not emulate a GBA, it has a GBA on a chip.
      The Wii does not emulate the Gamecube, it has the Gamecube on a chip.
      The GBA does not emulate a GBC, but has a GBC on a chip.
      The GBA add-on for the Gamecube is not emulation, but is an actual GBA that just uses the Gamecube for the controllers, power and to output to the TV.
      The SNES Gameboy adapter was a full Gameboy

      • None of their other consoles emulate.

        Nintendo GameCube emulates NES (several furnis in Animal Crossing) and N64 (Ocarina of Time + Master Quest bonus disc). Wii emulates [wikipedia.org] NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, Neo Geo, and two platforms with 64 in the name. GBA emulates NES as well [wikipedia.org].

      • The Wii doesn't emulate the Gamecube, it is a Gamecube. Just at a higher clockrate and with more peripherals. To run Gamecube games they turn those off and drop the clock rate.

        They can't do that again with the Wii2 because they really need a new GPU now. This little stunt worked because the Gamecube GPU was pretty decent for its time, but if they churn out another console with the same old GX GPU they're going to be the laughingstock of the games industry (no shaders, tiny framebuffer, useless antialiasing

    • According to IGN [ign.com], their latest information is that it will have a triple core PPC processor, similar to the one in the Xbox 360 but running at a higher clock rate. They also claim it will have an AMD R700 based GPU (that's the Radeon HD 4XXX generation).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ravyne ( 858869 )
      So, you're off on your hardware specs --

      The Wii uses a single-core, 32bit IBM PowerPC (a derivitive of the G3 in the original iMacs, with added MMX-like 2-wide vector operations) -- its the same thing they used in the gamecube, just 50% faster and with some minor architectural improvements.

      The PS3 and Xbox use 64bit IBM PowerPC cores, but they are not a derivative of the 970 (aka G5) or any of the other big-iron PPC chips. These cores are essentially a PowerPC ISA equivilent to Intel's Atom processor (
    • I assume by 970 you mean the Intel Core i7-970 which I'm not sure why you think that's in the PS3 or Xbox 360. IBM had involvement in the development of all 3 console's CPUs. The Wii uses PPC, the xbox 360 uses PPC and the Sony Cell CPU was developed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_hardware [wikipedia.org]

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor) [wikipedia.org]

      Quite frankly I don't see where Intel has a leg to stand in the console business. IBM is dominating this market.

      • Try PowerPC 970 [wikipedia.org] . Which isn't exactly identical to the PPC CPU cores in the 360 or the PPU core in the PS3, but it's a reasonable comparison, at least as far as feature set.

  • Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ultra64 ( 318705 ) on Friday April 22, 2011 @06:01PM (#35910506)

    A Stream of Wii

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      A Stream of Wii

      Soak it up with your iPad.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by certron ( 57841 )

      Don't cross the streams! ... but seriously. What kind of name is that? No one is going to call it Nintendo Stream, they'll call it Wii 2 or Wii Stream. All the work of name recognition that was done for the Wii will have to be done again for this new system unless they come up with a 'backwards compatible' name. Rumors and speculation, the article says.

      Being based on an AMD Fusion platform, however, maybe they want to move the programming model toward using 'stream processors' and have computation on the GP

      • What kind of name is that? No one is going to call it Nintendo Stream, they'll call it Wii 2 or Wii Stream. All the work of name recognition that was done for the Wii will have to be done again for this new system unless they come up with a 'backwards compatible' name. Rumors and speculation, the article says.

        I willing to bet that "Stream" is just the development name, like "Revolution" for the Wii and "Atlantis" for the GBA.

      • No one is going to call it Nintendo Stream, they'll call it Wii 2 or Wii Stream.

        Just like everyone called the Wii the Gamecube 2, right?

    • Joke on Leno tonight: Reportedly, the first game on the Wii Stream will be called Jiggle and Dance.... Jiggle and Dance ladies and gentlemen.
    • I got high hope for SuperWii. Just like the NES became SuperNES. What a amazing decade of gaming!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Daetrin ( 576516 )
        I kinda hate to admit it, but that part that's made me most excited so far was the part about "the system is likely to resemble a modernized version of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)."

        I _know_ it's an irrational emotional response, but i can't help it. The SNES just played way too big a part in my childhood. And remember! The "Stream" part is just a rumor as well!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      I hope the don't release the red model again. No one wants a Stream of Red Wii.

  • Really, I think the multiplayer Mario Kart on the Wii works very well. Its easy to get going, keeps the options appropriate for a wide variety of audiences, and works very well. Sure not every Wii game supports multiplayer, but seeing what it can do, what else do you need it to do?

    • I have a Big TV. I want to be able to put 8 people to connect.
      I want to be able to do multi-headed out where 1/2 of the players are on separate screens.

      Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has indirectly confirmed that the new console is in development.

      Really? Does Microsoft need to 'confirm' it's working on another version of Office or Windows? How about Apple working on another iPod, iPad, iPhone, or MacBook?

      • I can see the headline now:
        "Technology company working on next product - shock
        Sources say it may be better than last product. Or worse. Either, really."

      • I want to be able to do multi-headed out where 1/2 of the players are on separate screens.

        2nd Wii, second game disk, and a wifi connection.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Belial6 ( 794905 )
          Even better would be is if you didn't need a second game disk to play multi-player. I don't know a single person that played multi-player on their GB or GBA, even though the systems were technically capable. Nobody wanted to buy 2 of the carts to play 1 game. The DS on the other hand, I see people playing multi-player all the time. We have 4 of them in my house, and only 3 people. My son picks up multi-player games all the time. He sees another kid with a DS, and next thing you know they are playing m
          • Mario Kart on DSi supports downloadable multiplayer, but it is limited to only the "Shy Guy" character and default Kart. You do what I did, and just break down and buy a bunch of used Mario Kart cartridges to distribute to all your kid's friends...

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Belial6 ( 794905 )
              I just searched, and the going rate for Mario Kart DS is ~$25 used. That game is not worth $100 for a 4 player game. It also doesn't cover the half dozen other multiplayer games that he likes to play.

      • I'd be surprised if they didn't start the process pretty much immediately after launching the previous system. These things take time to develop, and I'm sure that they started the necessary research pretty much immediately.

      • As mentioned above, running games in split-screen mode sucks. Better to require a monitor per person, but then you might as well have a separate console per person too.

      • I have a Big TV. I want to be able to put 8 people to connect.

        I'm not aware of a system that can do that now, from any manufacturer. People complain endlessly about how badly they hate multiplayer anything on the Wii, but for such a complaint to mean much it should at least be based on what other systems can do...

        • I'm not aware of a system that can do that now, from any manufacturer. People complain endlessly about how badly they hate multiplayer anything on the Wii, but for such a complaint to mean much it should at least be based on what other systems can do...

          Yeah, god forbid nintendo come out with something no one else has done before.

        • In the past, you could get 10 players in bomberman on the Saturn. IIRC the standard multitap had six connectors, and you could even use two of those instead of the magical bomberman 10 player tap, but still for "only" 10 players.

          So this has definitely been done, but the Saturn died and the desirability has probably never really been tested. I would guess, though, that there is little to no demand for 8 players on one TV for most genres.

    • I want a different kind of multiplayer -- the ability to use a Wii as a server for 8 3DS portables running Mario Kart. Running Mario Kart in split screen mode sucks.

  • Given the rumors of a 6.2" screen on the controller this sounds more and more like they are building an iPad competitor that will get gameplay streamed from the console. Kind of like Sony already did with the PSP and PS3, which could be linked to play PS3 games on the PSP, however only a small number of games actually supported that and it was slow and laggy.

    • More like GBA-GC (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'd liken it more to the Game Boy Advance Gamecube connectivity era, where a handful of multiplayer games (the greatest being Zelda Four Swords Adventures) used the GBA as a controller and personal screen for each player, allowing shared content on the TV alongside private content for each player. It solved the perpetual problem of local multiplayer: how to have some information which is public and some which is not. (Stop looking at my screen!)

      Sitting in front of your television with that touchscreen al

      • I agree; I kept expecting Nintendo to do a Wii game using DS for controllers (they all have WiFi, so there is no technical reason they couldn't). But then, I kept expecting them to support external USB drives to store downloadable content on too. Sure, they are trying to keep connectivity simple, but they fail at that too.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I'd love to see online games alongside improvements to the Wii-mote style motion control. I'd love to see games that let one player control two Wii-mote type devices--one in each hand), because the possibilities would be far improved over the current Wii-mote + nunchuck system. Imagine a swords and sorcery game where one controller represents your weapon and the other a shield or focus item. Imagine spells that are activated by specific gestures. First person shooters with two firearms. It puts me in a
    • Couldn't you do that with Kinect?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

      The PS move does this.
      The Gladiator game for instance uses one move controller for shield and one for the weapon. It is actually pretty neat. The boxing game uses one for each hand, for boxing!

    • I'd love to see them get rid of the damn cord between Wiimote and nunchuck, and just use 2 wireless controllers. Hint to Nintendo: some people's arms are longer than your nunchuck cord! Maybe that's not a problem in Japan or with kids, but for people over 6' tall, it definitely is.

  • They've released a new console every 5-6 years, I wouldn't be surprised if they do show off new kit. It would be great for marketing "Those other guys are sticking with their 5-year old consoles."

    They've been making money on Wii from day-1. It seems to me Sony and MS are going more long term in order to make up losses. Nintendo doesn't have that problem.

  • Nintendo & Sony weren't exactly in a hurry to replace the N64 & PSOne, then along came the Dreamcast. Nintendo's in a position to do the same thing, but then again Sony could hype'em to death with the PS4. Sega made a lot of really, really bad decisions though ($100 mil for Shenmue was nuts, and the Dreamcast ad campaigns never showed those amazing games, just Sonic rapping with the NBA). Nintendo is a lot more Savvy then Sega, after all.

    Glad I'm not a Nintendo engineer though. All the investors

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tuffy ( 10202 )

      Sony could hype the Dreamcast to death because it was easy to get everyone to transition from the previous generation's most successful system (the PS1) to its successor (the PS2) and bypass Sega's entry entirely.

      They won't necessarily be able to get everyone to transition from this generation's most successful system (the Wii) to the PS4 in such an automatic way.

      • PS4 wont be called that and is release 2014 neway

        different market release name and internal name, don't expect a dev platform alpha until late 2012 and that might shift a few times

        my main concern is the pricing for the dev is way too high and they don't show any desire to drop it for some reason

    • Wii was targeted at casual gamers, not gaming fanatics. Turns out that was a good strategy, because there are a lot more normal people than there are videogaming nerds.

    • Nintendo & Sony weren't exactly in a hurry to replace the N64 & PSOne, then along came the Dreamcast. Nintendo's in a position to do the same thing, but then again Sony could hype'em to death with the PS4.

      Sony cannot deliberately kill a Nintendo console with a release of fraudulent specifications as they did with Sega's Dreamcast because Nintendo does not compete on the basis of performance. They tried it with the N64 and decided they didn't like being in that position, and that was that.

  • Nintendo -> Super Nintendo. Wii -> Super Wii. It will be a heavily criticized name (for unoriginality), but people will still be comforted by the good ol' naming scheme, imho, and they will still preserve the "Wii" aura, while releasing the equivalent of Wii++

  • Trademarks? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Sounds too close to Steam, Gabe will be mad.

    • I was going to say, if they took out the "r", Stream could be an excellent platform for delivering games over the tubes.

  • and i'm already running alpha dev code to allow the iPad3 to connect to it remotely over wireless N.

    going to be sweet.

    i should warn you marketing has a bad habit of changing the release name, so don't etch that in stone yet.

  • between $350 and $400? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HappyEngineer ( 888000 ) on Friday April 22, 2011 @06:42PM (#35910916) Homepage
    All the speculation I see in those articles seems far fetched to me. A price between $350 and $400? They're going to court hard core gamers? The controller will have an HD screen?

    If they're doing any of those things they're basically doing exactly opposite of what they've done so successfully with the Wii. I assume the console will be able to do HD video, but putting an HD screen on the remote is unlikely given that every portable game system they've ever made has had screens with a lower resolution than TVs.

    • um, you do know how much the Nintendo 3DS sells for, right?

      the price seems about right - expect this for release pricing and you should be able to find some $399 bundles with a set of games at specific retailers, plus a $299 pricing for certain marketers in the 4-6 month post-release phase.

    • They can introduce an HD system at twice the price, and still continue selling the Wii (perhaps cost reduced) to the low-end market for quite some time. It's not a bad strategy, really.

  • OT -- Slashdot UI Problem (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    When I click on the header for these stories, the summary expands. All well and good; but if I click it again I go to the story.

    When you expand the headline into a summary, clicking again should collapse it. If I actually want to read more, there should be a separate link. I think it would work well if that link were to the right of the headline.

    Alternatively, you could have a collapse link to the right on all the stories, letting us collapse stories that were expanded by default. Actually now that I th

  • Pretty sure the unlikely name Stream would indicate the console streaming game video/audio to the touchscreen equipped controllers, either to augment traditional games, or to optionally allow game play with only the controller freeing the television for others who may wish to watch a movie or TV show.

  • I know i know ... stream. but it's a dev name, nor marketing.

    the main question is: what will be the Final Fantasy game released for it?

  • And tomorrow they are going to say the new nintendo console is made of wood, got 7,32 screens and got some new silly codename. Seriously, those rumors are just too much, even for a nintendo console; my bet is a Wii 2 with a new amazing useless feature and a lot of casual games, who's with me?

  • My predictions (Score:3)

    by Daetrin ( 576516 ) on Friday April 22, 2011 @08:32PM (#35911676)
    The Wii let you plug in old GameCube controllers and introduced the new Wiimote. You _could_ buy a new "classic" controller for the Wii, but it wasn't necessary.

    Project Cafe (i'm really dubious of the "Stream" name) will probably let you use the old Wiimote and sensor bar while introducing the new high tech "regular" controller. There have also been rumors about upgraded motion controls (Wii Motion++?) that will be even more accurate than the Playstation Move, but they will be entirely optional.

    They _may_ even make the new analog stick/touchscreen controller optional as well in order to keep the price of the console down. The Kinect and Playstation Plus (not to mention the Wii Board) may have shown that old wisdom about add-on controllers being dead on arrival is no longer true.

    Two things which they really need to fix but i'm not sure if they actually will, there needs to be a way to transfer both save files and purchased Virtual Console games to the new system. And that includes those damn protected save files, one of the worst ideas ever.

    And finally, what's up with the "Miyamoto has indirectly confirmed it" bit? All he's done is say that they're always working on the next iteration of hardware long before it gets announced, sometimes even before the previous hardware launches. Anyone who thinks that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft aren't all working on new hardware right now is deluded. The only question is when they're going to announce it and when they're going to launch it.

    • The Wii let you plug in old GameCube controllers and introduced the new Wiimote. You _could_ buy a new "classic" controller for the Wii, but it wasn't necessary.

      There ARE games which support the classic controller and DON'T support a gamecube controller.

      Project Cafe (i'm really dubious of the "Stream" name) will probably let you use the old Wiimote and sensor bar while introducing the new high tech "regular" controller. There have also been rumors about upgraded motion controls (Wii Motion++?) that will be even more accurate than the Playstation Move, but they will be entirely optional.

      The only way not to piss off customers is to permit them to use old Wiimotes with Motionplus, but not to allow non-Motionplus because that would hold developers back too far; I won't even PLAY non-Motionplus games because they are too inconsistent and they piss me off. That means that the only Wii game I play any more is sports resort. Good thing I like it.

      They _may_ even make the new analog stick/touchscreen controller optional as well in order to keep the price of the console down. The Kinect and Playstation Plus (not to mention the Wii Board) may have shown that old wisdom about add-on controllers being dead on arrival is no longer true.

      I suspect they're more likely to try tethering again. Furthe

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