Nintendo Launches Wii at E3, Kind Of

[JustBlaze]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Nintendo announced a few more details for Wii, but not many Nintendo's E3 announcement just finished up, but was surprisingly short on details. Nintendo's Executive Vice President, Reginald Fils-Aime, opened the conference claiming that price and availability for the console will remain a secret for a little while longer, but left out the tidbit that Wii is "more fun for less money" and "you'll be playing Wii in the fourth quarter of 2006."Nintendo stresses that the Wii is supposed to be the "every-man" console. The console is supposed to bring gaming to everyone, particularly people who have not played console games before. The announcement featured dozens of gamers using the new motion sensitive controller. Like the new Playstation 3 control pad, the Nintendo Wii controller will feature six degrees of freedom over the main controller and an external dongle (dubbed by Nintendo as the "nunchuck") for the other hand. Nintendo's Wii relies much more on the motion sensitivity of the controller than its Sony counterpart. There is also a small speaker inside the Wii console pad, as well as a built in rumble feature. Fils-Aime claims this speaker will provide an extra level of surround sound.Nintendo announced a few games at the event as well. The newest Zelda will launch with the console, but it was not clear whether or not the new Mario Galaxy will be a launch title or not. We will be on the show floor tomorrow giving one of the 27 games already in playable demo form a test run just to see how effective the new design is. Wii will also have a "Virtual Console" that allows the system to emulate older titles.Saturo Iwata, Nintendo's President, finished up the conference announcement. Both Iwata and Fils-Aime stressed the point that Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS are "disruptive" technologies, that break the norm set by Microsoft and Sony. Iwata claims Wii will have a feature called Wii Connect 24, meaning the system will be constantly connected to the internet and constantly in standby mode, even when the system is in "off" mode. This way, players can receive messages or "gifts" from other gamers, even when no one is on the console.</div>

 

[JustBlaze]

Update:

The Wiil will also offer a more traditional controller for those not interested in motion controlNintendo opens up more details about its Wii console Just a few hours after Nintendo launched the Wii, its official Wii website has gone live with all the latest "specifications" of the company's new console. One of the main features that Nintendo is boasting is the fact that the Wii will be able to play over twenty year's worth of Nintendo games. Not only that, the Wii will also be able to play all the classic Sega and TurboGrafx 16 games. Nintendo says that its Wii will also be able to support games from indie developers. Whether or not users will be able to create home brewed software for the Wii will remain to be seen. The Wii will also accept 80mm GameCube discs.As written previously, the Wii will ship with a PowerPC CPU jointly developed between IBM and Nintendo. Nintendo says the codename of the processor is Broadway and was manufactured using a 90nm fabrication process. IBM claims the PowerPC CPU is based on the 750FX processor designed by the company several years ago. System memory will come in at 512MB of internal flash memory. The Wii will also be home to a number of memory ports for reading back compact flash and SD cards and also be equipped with two USB 2.0 ports. For network communications, the Wii only comes equipped with 802.11b/g wireless capabilities but Nintendo says that a USB-to-Ethernet adapter will be available. Nintendo DS owners will be happy to know that their hand-held will be able to wirelessly communicate with the Wii.On Nintendo's official Wii hardware "specifications" page, the GPU of the console is listed as still being developed with ATI. Whether this means that the GPU is still being tuned or there was simply a grammatical error on the site is up in the air. Very little is known about the Wii's GPU, codenamed Hollywood except that it is part of ATI's R520 family.Source: DailyTech

 

[BrewCityBuck]

This thing is going to bomb.

 

[JustBlaze]

We'll see, it'll either make or break Nintendo, if this console fails then they're done. I either see this is as bombing or doing very well, I don't think it have mediocre success, it's one extreme or the other.

 

[Pistonfan11]

The controller is very strange in its design, I don't expect it to do too well.

 

[JustBlaze]

Well they have the "groundbreaking" controller and now a new more conventional design, so I don't see that as being an issue. Obviously the selling point will be the new input device though.

 

[KMart?]

Ya this thing is going to suck. Nintendo is aiming for younger gamers, yet their system is going to be atleast $300. Who's gunna buy a $300 system for a 10 year old?

 

[JustBlaze]

It's going to be $200 from what I've heard, and it's not for 10 year olds.

 

[KMart?]

Well judging form Gamecube's selection, I can only hope they don't follow the same path

 

[JustBlaze]

They learned from their mistakes, that's evident soley based on the Wii's design. This console is aimed at every age group, there's no specific demographic. Nintendo's hoping that the revolutionary (The Revolution was a better name btw) input device will attract a new audience who previously were intimidated by the complexity of video games.

 

[KMart?]

I'm still not buying it :closedeyes:

 

[JustBlaze]

Ok then, be stubborn. I'm going to have to wait and try it out first.

 

[KMart?]

I was joking homie