Nintendo announces new Wii for 2012
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In a statement released alongside the company’s latest results today, Nintendo has confirmed that a new home console is indeed on the way, and will be released sometime in 2012. The statement was brief and contained no other details, but did state that the Wii successor will be playable at this year’s E3, and that more specifications will also be released at gaming’s premier event.
The confirmation comes alongside gloomy results for the Japanese gaming giant, with the company reporting a decline in full year profit for the second year in a row. Profit fell by more than 50 per cent, with Nintendo recording 171.1 billion yen ($2.09 billion) in the year ended March, 2011, compared to 356.8 billion yen in the previous year. Declining Wii sales was one significant factor in the results, with global sales recording 15.2 million units in the financial year gone compared to 20.1 million units a year earlier. DS sales also dipped, with 17.52 million units sold in the last year--a fall of roughly 10 million units from the year prior. Nintendo also missed its target of 4 million 3DS units sold, hitting only 3.61 million units by the end of March.
Rumours of a Wii successor have been gaining steam in the last month, with magazine Game Informer tipping a HD-enabled Wii 2 would be announced at or just before this year’s E3. Other sites have also emerged with leaked details, including speculation that the new Nintendo home console would feature controllers with a built-in 6.2-inch touch screen.
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Good luck to Nintendo, and despite the PS3 and XBox 360 fanbois, they have at least made a good profitable living off this and the DS range - I think Sony and Microsoft have made little if any money off their hardware.
Both Wii and DS range are technically inferior to competitor products, but Nintendo 'get' gameplay and they both hugely outsold the competition.
Nintendo just need to decide if they want to do a stop-gap incremental update to the Wiii, or a wholly new generation.
A mediai friendly Wii-i would be enough for a while so long as it was HDMI native, and had (akin to the DSi update to the DS) some new features like Boxee Box/WDTV Live aping media streaming, DVD/Blu-Ray as standard, although the Wii Store has had them for ages, a Wii App store rebrand with NetFlix, Amazon/Love Film along with existing BBC iPlayer App (though debugged this time). A better web browser and a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse could also make a device capable of driving Office 365 or Google App's.....
A totally NG console will need to be fully Wii compatable, which means an optical drive. Nintendo may want to reconsider a N64 style reversion to cartridges, as Flash memory can almost rival optical these days, instant loading and anti-piracy would be the draw here for them.
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