New HD Wii coming in 2011?
Final fantasy: Concept art for a Wii HD version of Crysis.
(Credit: vgoboxart.com)This isn't the first time we've heard rumors about a new Wii HD coming in 2011, but when the head of Square Enix, Yoichi Wada, predicts it, you tend to pay more attention. Wada, whose company is behind the uber popular Final Fantasy franchise, was recently interviewed by the Financial Times and had some interesting comments about a potential Wii HD, as well as the future of motion controllers.
Not surprisingly, Wada predicts the new Wii will feature similar graphics capabilities as the current PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles (why the Wii doesn't at least have an HDMI connection at this point seems ridiculous). While he thinks Nintendo will bring out a brand new motion controller, his more biting comments were reserved for Microsoft's and Sony's upcoming motion-enabled systems. He largely dismissed them.
"Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine. Compared to these three pillars, the (new motion) controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small," Wada said.
I tend to agree with Wada. Then again, I think the whole motion controller thing is pretty gimmicky at this point, with so few Wii games out there that are truly enhanced by using a motion control scheme.
What do you guys think? Is the Wii destined for tepid sales for the next couple of years, even with a price drop to $199? Or is 2011 the prefect time to come out with a new system?
(Source: Gizmodo via Joystiq via the Financial Times)
Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel. E-mail David. Follow David on Twitter. 
For instance, the ps3 has yet to use its full potential, why? developers need to invest huge amounts of money and time to learn how to get around the consoles potential. This means that's actually the contrary, the more a console stays around, the more we get out of it. The only reason why the wii can come out with a new console is because it will be the same juice with more sugar (hd) this time and also because they were selling a product that did not yield a lost ala ps3 or 360. By the time the wii hd comes out we will have around cheaper 360's cheaper ps3's and to top it all, they will have more advance motion controllers than nintendo. The weather for nintendo? cloudy and with chances of rain....... but then again, thats what i said back in 2006,hope they prove me wrong......
Square had trouble with the 64 because the cartridge memory was too small to hold the FF games they wanted to develop in 3D. The N64 was touted as a powerhouse in terms of processing speed and graphics relative to the PSX and Saturn, but if I remember correctly, the expensive chips needed to develop the games were prohibitive for many developers, which found Sony's PSX a cheaper compromise. Since that experience, I haven't seen Nintendo develop a console aimed at powerful processing or graphics; rather, they have been pushing creative gameplay and the fun-factor of games (with minimal load times....they seem to still be nostalgic for the era of the cartridge.)
What a waste. I don't want a rehashed system touted as "new". Give me an actual new system. Same problem I have with the PSP Go and the many iterations of the DS...I never buy because I'm waiting for the next gen,which is long overdue.
I'm guilty of this discrimination, too. I initially thought Bloom Blocks looked kiddy (ok, I still do) cheap, but the puzzles are challenging, creative, and engaging. I can say this for many Wii titles such as Mario Galaxy, No More Heroes, Metroid, PES 2008; the game-play is more than fulfilling despite HD amplification. Mind you, there are plenty of garbage games on retail shelves, and that comes with the territory of a platform that's easy to develop for (and very popular)....then again, the PS3 and 360 have a their fair share of garbage titles,too (in HD).
My point the graphics may be the most obvious difference between Wii games and HD systems, but I don't believe it's that significant in terms of a game being great or fun. In addition, it doesn't matter how powerful your platform is if you don't have style; with out a solid artistic design for the elements in your game, high definition will not help.
I should mention that I would not consider myself a 'videophile', so maybe I'm bit bias for game-play over graphics. ;-)
I realized with the last generation that I quickly get bored with amazing graphics, so if the game isn't fun to play on it's own or at least have a great story, I can't finish it.
That said, I'm still getting a PS3 after I get an HDTV. I also like some of Sony's 1st and 2nd party games.....and I could use the Blu-Ray player. Oh!...and the cell-processor allows for some very impressive physics calculations, which translate to deeper game play elements when used right. I don't know if that's what everyone is implying when they wish the Wii had 'HD'. 0_0
'Wii Next Gen'* = Winter/ Early 2012.
The gamecube was released in Winter of 2001 the Wii came out 5 years later in 2006.
I don't think it's a stretch to say it can last longer than the Gamecube, right?
*HD is already old news in the world of gaming. Nintendo will look for another feature to showcase leaving HD to be an assumed feature. Similar to how 3D Link in Twilight Princess wasn't a big deal compared to the game-play and the 'adventure', HD versions of Wii games probably will not be all the rage in 2 - 3 years.
Wait a second, none of those are for 8 year olds....
the same thing?
are you getting paid.
So lets hope that the Wii HD doesn't just offer games like Zelda and Mario. Which by the way the only reason I bought a Wii was to play The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess such a great game.
Also, I do think that Sony will be able to keep that 10 year plan since they have mention the possibility of adding 3D capabilities to the PS3, but current PS3 could just buy an attachment much like Project Natal will do with the Xbox 360.
Motion control isn't a gimmick, it's an interface. And like all interfaces, some are poorly implemented. There are some great motion implementations on the Wii and PS3 and there's some horrible ones. Again, it comes down to the games.
~86-91, 91-96, 96-01, 01-06,
I'd expect a new console in 2011 following that trend.
However it remains to be seen if Nintendo wants to upgrade consoles like they have been doing for the past few decades, or if they want to do progressive upgrades like Sony seems to be doing with their consoles/handhelds.
Look at Nintendo's handhelds -
Gameboy, Pocket, Color
In a way Nintendo perfected the "upgrade/slim" concept of making new devices even before Sony's PS2 hit shelves, and long before the PSP, which has undergone many makeovers.
Gameboy Advance, SP, Micro, SP+Backlight
DS, DSlite, DSi
Nintendo knows how to revamp a system. They are *masters* at remaking handhelds, but they have essentially *never* done it to a home console.
Will Nintendo apply their knowledge/experience of handheld repackaging/upgrading to the console?
The Gameboy and Gameboy Pocket were 100% compatible. The color has some exclusives, but most color games (the black catridges) worked on as early as Game Boy Classic.
All GBA games worked on any GBA.
All DS games (save Guitar Hero, I suppose) on all DSes.
So, if Nintendo *upgraded* their Wii, it would be a cosmetic upgrade - maybe a reduced size/weight -, video output upgrade. Maybe some extra menu options or browsing/audio/video features. Extra media slots like SD, etc. Maybe DVD playback, who knows.
However I don't think Nintendo would make a "New Wii" that has games that Wii cannot play, especially considering their audience right now is fairly casual gamers who are not used to hardware upgrades like the Game Boy or PSP crowds are used to, I'm sure, and even those upgrades did not have gams that ran exclusively on newer models.
Due to the shifted audience of Nintendo, and the success of longer product lifespans (Think Game Boy, 1989-2000, GBA 2001-2004(-2008? tagging along with the DS slot), DS 2004-2009 and beyond) I would not be surprised if Nintendo decided to stick with Wii for 7 or 8 years or longer, instead of the normal 5, and make a reduced weight/size version or add media playback, etc.
tl;dr -
Nintendo will do one of 2 things, and I believe it to be sometime by 2011:
1. Release a new console.
2. Upgrade the Wii, but maintain 100% game and virtual console compatibility.
I expect 2. to be the most likely.
What does this mean? No games that run on blue ray discs or require more processing power than a standard Wii.
WHAT CAN THIS MEAN?
What this can mean is a Wii with *upgraded video or processing hardware* such that it can render *all* Wii titles in high definition.
Half Life 2 runs on my old laptop - in 640x480.
If Half Life 2 wants to run in 1080p on my desktop at the same framerate, I simply increase my video processing capability.
You could make a Wii that is more powerful and renders old games in HD, and new games in HD. New games can also have larger texture packs on the DVD if there's room). All games still run on all Wiis, but the new Wiis can play all games in HD.
You could also put in a HDD and retroactively let the Wii copy the game disc to the HDD to play without load times. All games still run on all Wiis, but the new Wiis can play all games off the HDD.
You could also have a browser and media player that benefits from both the above additions, and still have no effect on cross-compatibility of the two consoles.
tl;dr - There are ways to upgrade a console and make games look better and still maintain 100% compatibility.
Incidently, you do know that the Wii was essentially an upgraded Gamecube, didn't you?...so much for you saying they've "...*never* done it to a home console." (Suggest your check your history before making guesses at the future.) The transistion from cartridges to optical media made it difficult for Nintendo to simply "upgrade" the N64 to the Gamecube.
It all depended on how Sony decided to implement the PS1 function of the PS2.
"you cannot upgrade a game disk"
That was my point. With the exact same software, but on a different system, you can have different performance.
Take an N64 emulator. It can run a ROM in many different resolutions, and some plugins can extend the aspect ratio to 16:10 without stretching and without modification to the ROM.
Gamecube and PS2 emulators can run the physical discs themselves at higher resolutions than originally intended, and depending on your host PC's power, can get a variety of frames per second.
What would be up to developers is texture-size, since it higher resolutions would make them appear blurry (or however the GPU decides to map textures).
It's not outside the realms of reason to upgrade the Wii's hardware, from Nintendo's perspective, and get 1080p from, say, an original copy of Super Mario Galaxy.
The GBA can stretch and blur a Game Boy Classic game. Even with Game Boy hardware inside of it, the handheld can still modify the video. If you play Pokemon Red on Stadium for N64, you can play it at 2x or 3x speed. How fast you run a game or the resolutions you run it at are dependent on the hardware, and can be modified by the OS/firmware without needing to alter the game disc.
It just all depends on how Nintendo decides to implement their system, but it's not impossible. Think of a Game Disc as a piece of software (which it is) and the console as a computer (which it is). The developer makes and tests the game so it looks good and runs at a decent framerate given the default hardware configuration. However, a different implementation of hardware could run the same software differently. I don't know why you wouldn't be able to grasp this.
@viper396:
I'm not pretending anything I know what Nintendo will do next.
"Considering" ... "I'd expect" ... "it remains to be seen" ...
I'm trying to use logic to infer what they might do next. There's a difference.
If I knew what Nintendo was going to do, then I'd be able to just tell you and then I'd get some C&D letters from Nintendo, that's all there is to it.
I was using the term "upgrade" loosely to mean a revamp of a previous console.
Also, I don't hold Wii to be an "upgrade" of Gamecube. Look at all my analogies. Look at them.
Generation 1 hardware can play games from Generation N+1 hardware's availability.
Now, Wii is PowerPC based. So was Gamecube. They're similar enough for Wii to run Gamecube games, as Nintendo has designed it.
Nintendo 64 is completely different. If N64 had been mini-DVD based (like gamecube) and they wanted backwards compatibility, they would have based Gamecube on N64's architecture, or they would have included N64 hardware in the Gamecube. I don't know where you're getting this assumption that Nintendo's didn't support N64 on GCN because it used cartridges. ?_? The CPU and GPU were completely different, not to mention would backwards compatibility even been in Nintendo's mind at that point at all? We don't know.
What constitutes on upgrade? Technically you can pretend a backlit GameBoy Advance SP is an upgrade over a 1989 Game Boy. I suppose. That's not what I was getting at or intended to mean.
The article addressed the reader as such:
"Or is 2011 the prefect time to come out with a new system?"
My thought is that by 2011 they will either make a new system (which runs new games) or "upgrade" the Wii in the same way a PSP slim is an "upgrade" of a PSP fat, or a DSi is an "upgrade" of the DS. I don't know why you wouldn't be able to grasp this.
i meant to say
"I'm not pretending anything... I don't know what Nintendo will do next."
Things looks better at a higher resolution, regardless of polygon count.
For instance, Resident Evil 4 in 1080p-
http://i34.tinypic.com/14wpwzk.jpg
vs. what Resident Evil 4 would likely look like at 480p upscaled to 1080p-
http://i38.tinypic.com/2jaf0uv.jpg
You get a clearer image at a higher resolution. Have you ever run a PC game ever? Run it at 640x480 and then run it at 1280x1024. Which looks better? The software. Is. Exactly. The. Same.
"Sillyhermitcrab is correct, you cannot magically change software."
Irrelevant to my point.
You would, however, as I argued, experience a slowdown at those higher resolutions. If you don't have the video processing power to handle higher resolutions, the same software will simply run slower.
To compensate, you would do one of two things. Upgrade your video hardware, or reduce the graphical settings of the game.
This is where you'd be changing the game. Most developers don't let you alter things such as lighting, texture size, etc. However, things still look better and cleaner in HD, even if all settings remain the same.
"Wii is going to look 99% the same on the Wii HD."
I would disagree here, but it's just that I prefer clear images over blurry ones. If you don't, then so be it, I suppose.
I totally agree to EVERYTHING YOU SAID!!!!!!
Not exactly... not even close in-fact.
PC games, unlike console games, include lots of different texture packs, 3d models etc, designed for different resolutions.
It is not simply "upscaling" but a whole load of other software changes which make it work.
For example, have you ever noticed that regardless of the max resolution of your monitor, most games still do not let you run a game at every possible resolution. On a 30" HD Cinema Display, with a resolution of 2560x1600, it is rare to find a game that runs at that resolution.
But why not? if it were a simple matter of upscaling, and my graphics card is powerful enough you should be able to run any game at any resolution you like, but you can't... Why? Because the software was never designed to do so!
Although theoretically on-console upscaling is better than a TVs upscaling, as demonstrated by playing a PSOne or ps2 game on a PS3, the results really don't live up to the hype.
And if nintendo plan to keep Wii compatibility for new games produced for both consoles, it is a stretch to assume that the "New" Wii would have anywhere near the horsepower of the PS3, and therefor, the upscaling abilities would be similarly affected.
If i was nintendo, I doubt they are planning a mere upgrade for the Wii.
I would guess they are not planning to end-of-life the Wii either. Rather, i guess they have in mind an entirely new console with a new focus.
If i remember rightly, and i can't find the quote, so feel free to correct me if i'm wrong, but i remember reading someone high up at nintendo saying that the Wii was not their response to PS3 or Xbox 360, but rather their attempt at creating a new gaming paradigm. I also think they hinted at the fact that even back then, they were working on a true response to the other 7th Gen consoles, but the Wii was something else entirely.
If i was nintendo, i would create a true 7th gen console, similar in power to the PS3, building on the Wii Motion Plus platform, but incorporating more traditional style controls too. Motion control would be supplemental to traditional controls, but not a replacement for them. I would also base the console around Blu-Ray and maintain 100% separation from Wii.
I would then drop the price of Wii to maybe around 149, and, focus it even more on casual and interactive gameplay. I would look to add some kind of media centre and more online and even productivity and educational tools to it too, and let it be more of a digital-hub-with-gaming-capabilities platform.
Although the Wii has been extremely popular (don't deny it), it still suffers from the same problem that the two previous Nintendo consoles suffered from; lack of games. Invariably, the best games on a Nintendo system are made by Nintendo. The third-party support isn't as high as the other consoles, for various reasons, most of which don't hold water.
Nintendo is not totally blameless. They hold onto winning franchises that they do not have the time to develop further. Nintendo has released one Mario Kart, one Metroid (don't count the new trliogy), nothing with Donkey Kong, and so on. Animal Crossing barely had any development in it (at least that anyone could see). Now Metroid they did farm out to Retro and had great success, but only under the watchful gaze of a Nintendo rep. It was a glimpse at a winning idea to farm out established franchises to developers who have the resources to develop it. Why don't we have more courses for Mario Kart? Why can't we get online with Wii Sports?
So I guess my argument boils down to one word; content. Success in video games is dependent on the quality and quantity of content. Graphics is just one variable in the quality of content. The rest is up for grabs, but no one wants to reach for it.
If Nintendo releases the new Zelda next year and perhaps a new Kid Icarus, those should keep us busy for a little while. We buy Nintendo for Nintendo games. And 2011 is not too soon to pay for another console. When people shell out $250 for a Beatles game, then why not buy a new console for the same price? I better be backwards compatible. Many of the people who bought the Wii aren't gamers, so they definitely want some compatibility.
The thing is ... I use my 360 a lot more. If a game comes out on both systems, 9 times out of 10, I'll buy it for the 360 even if it's ten dollars more. Mainly due to graphics. If the Wii HD does come out, I hope that it's going to be a much bigger improvement than from the transition from GameCube to Wii was. Don't expect Blu-Ray on it though.
Driving in a car game will make everyone look like they are milking an invisible cow.
They'll love it. ;)
Generally speaking, when an article starts with a question, you can always answer the question with NO. Also you'll notice on the picture included it has a blu-ray logo on it and on top of that, the lines on the plastic casing are too rigid. Again, this article is all smoke and mirrors and so is the idea.
Nintendo... unless they improve their motion sensing like what Project Natal is gonna be, they are going to lack the thing that killed the Gamecube and pretty soon the Wii... 3RD PARTY GAMES! I dunno about you, but I will never buy a console EVER AGAIN that only has good 1st party games! Sorry but I sold my Wii after I played the HANDFUL of 1st party games, the Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Smash Brother games... after that, the Wii was collecting dust, it had barely anything else to keep me entertained that the 360 or PS3 can't offer... if not BETTER cause it was HD from the start and looks better!
Sorry Nintendo... the Wii was the last straw! I ain't buying anything from you anymore!
Yea i agree with you too, cant praise the natal if it isnt out yet. The idea is great but i wonder if MS can make it happen without issues. Just like the xbox360 was a good idea but they messed it up, hence the RROD & other issues.
But your comment,"I would sell my PS3 and Wii for it. Nintendo rocks, but they are a little behind now. I think 2011 sounds like a good time." I hope to god you were kidding, its also kind of hypocritical of you for bashing on the OP for praising the natal when it isnt even out yet, but you seems to be praising the Wii HD that is rumored(but most likely) to come out. A little behind? yea because 5 years is not much....right?
Constantly forcing your consumers to upgrade the system and peripherals in a relatively short period of time is no way to build loyalty to that brand. Eventually, consumers (like me) will get fed up, cut their losses, and move on to a system that has a much more stable revision cycle.
Yes, we all had to buy 3 additional Wii Remotes and Nunchuks (assuming you want four total).
But let's look at the other peripherals:
Wii Wheel - Free with Mario Kart, ExciteBots
Zapper - Free with Link's Crossbow Training
Motion+ - Free with any number of games (Wii Sports Resort, Tiger Woods, Grand Slam Tennis, Red Steel 2). It doesn't particularly make sense to purchase these separately as most of the games you will use them with will include one free.
In the end you get all those peripherals while still only having paid for the original remotes and nunchuks.
The exception would be the Balance Board, but that is a non-essential accessory used only by a handful of games.
- by enzo319 September 21, 2009 1:04 PM PDT
- If you dont own a dvd player by now and have it hooked up to your TV, i think you have some major issues. Sure it would be nice not to have that extra piece of equipment sitting on your equipment rack. What about the 360 that doesnt even play anything high def? sure it streams netflix, but it doesnt take into account of it only playing in stereo. You still need to log into your account and put that movie in your queue. Pain in the @ss. Take a movie by the same name and play it on a PS3 (blu-ray) and on the 360 (DVD) and u'll see the real difference. Blu-ray is the way to go. Wii's problem is the games suck. There really arent anything that stands out (except for nintendo releases). You need some good games, period. c-ya in 2012
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- by sting7k September 21, 2009 4:31 PM PDT
- The 360 now has 1080p instant-on Netflix movies that works very very well, no need to go to your queue online. As well as a huge library of HD movies on Xbox LIVE to rent.
- Like this
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