First rumored by an analyst in 2007, the unofficial Wii HD is making headlines again. Now, the same analyst (Michael Pachter) predicts the unit “will likely have a hard drive.” The statements pretty much confirm what everyone already knows: the successor to Wii will have better (HD) graphics and a hard drive to store all those downloadable games that will eventually surpass disc-based games. Not a matter of “if” but “when.” So when do you think it will happen?
Never in this generation. The Wii’s successor will definitely have HD graphics, but it will be an entirely new console, not just a refurbished Wii.
And besides, why do people think adding an HDMI port and the ability to upscale to 720p will change ANYTHING but the resolution of current and future Wii games?
I feel when these “HD Wii” rumors pop up, people have it in their mind that suddenly the Wii will have games that will be graphically comparable to those of ps360.
NO, THEY WILL NOT! It takes more than upscaling resolution to do that. They would need to add more ram, a better cpu/gpu ie., A WHOLE NEW SYSTEM!
When has there EVER been a console so significantly modified and rebranded by Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft that its graphic fidelity suddenly far surpases that of its sibling in that “current generation”?
Never. Its called a new gen console. The most “graphical upgrade” any Nintendo console has seen within its life cycle was the N64 ram pack, and that helped mostly with resolution and framerates in the games supported.
Hard drives, usb/media ports, wifi, power supply, form factor, these are the things that console manufacturers alter and tinker with throughout a console’s lifetime, NOT it’s graphic limitation.
Finally, The Wii already uses component cables for 480p and I can fit my entire VC/WiiWare collection on an 8gig SD card with 6gigs to spare. Would I buy a new Wii simply for 720p out and an internal hard drive? No.
Would this proposed “Wii HD” spur new sales among the hardcore “Wii is for babies!” crowd? No.
Will those currently interested in a Wii know or care for the difference? No.
I question their whole understanding of Nintendo winning strategem and one thing I know they no longer do; they no longer play into the GPU warfare one up-manship expectations that the rest of the industry has for them. Generally they has learnt to give the people (the real people, not some minority gaming aristocracy of ‘true gamers’) what they didn’t even know they wanted at an affordable price.
Thus while I do expect their tech to improve as processing advances become ubiquitously cheap, Nintendo are just as likely to make their evolution/revolution of mass gaming be a portable 3D augmented reality visor as be a traditional upspeccing of the Wii, which by the way depending on the price and timing certainly wouldn’t compete very effectively against say Natal.
Even the concept of some kind of certainty about a Hard Drive is difficult to imagine, particularly given Nintendo’s emphasis on memory minimalism and efficiency. With NAND flash being the price and scaling the way it is, I expect this to be their mass writable storage medium for quite some time.
Whatever they do, it will only be when they think the people will be ready to pay for it, and certainly only when Nintendo can affordably supply the games for it. Nintendo’s seen the devestation that current gen graphics have wraught on development financials. Nintendo are the one gaming company you can bet on searching for and finding the third way.
Next time I’ll check my post for grammar… Atrocious.
HD output on the Wii would be OK. The photo channel and the internet channel could use the added resolution. But I definitely think it needs to be a new console, not a revision. Basically, I second the two chaps above me.
“atrocious” is a being bit too hard on yourself there… I found your comment a very good read in fact (even with the grammatical errors!)
The Wii is great. Really great. That having been said, I believe that Nintendo’s next generation console will be just as different or “gimmicky” as everyone feel’s the Wii is/was, BUT it will have compatibility with the Wii obviously.
It MAY include some kind of massive up-scaling of Wii games, but hate to break it to people, up-scaled games/movies DO NOT look as good as games made in higher definition, PERIOD.
Nintendo has done and is still doing great things for console gaming, but I wish that they would get off their high horse about what we, as consumers, need or want. What do I mean? There are softmod DVD movie booters and loaders for the Wii, where I can watch a DVD through my Wii, WITH NO ADDITIONAL HARDWARE! Why couldn’t Nintendo do this themselves? Oh that’s right, Nintendo said almost all homes have one (or more) DVD players already, and didn’t need another one to sit right alongside it.
…..end of rant…..sorry…..
Nintendo will (and should) include as large a capacity hard drive as feasible, but more important than capacity is speed. They will need a harddrive that can load games quickly and therefor not impact game performance. To really make this work, Nintendo should upgrade their Wii Shop so if you buy something once, you can re-download it later if you deleted it for some reason, i.e. needing space.
Lastly, while Nintendo’s online shop is easy to use (and relatively easy to navigate) they need to bring more to the online gaming table. Friend codes are not a bad idea, but it needs better implementation, and the ability to select to ignore them and “free game.” Give both options and everyone will be satisfied.
That is what I see/want to happen, and it won’t happen before the next generation, though I think Nintendo will be the last ones at the table again (not that it doesn’t work for them).
I don’t see why a system upgrade would have to be anything drastic like the other posters are suggesting. It would be very easy, and inexpensive to upgrade the wii, the price probably wouldn’t have to change.
All that it would need is decent sized internal memory. Then they could raise the max file size so that wii ware can keep up with even iphone apps (whose apps are 2 gigs max).
Then just add a good upscaler so that on larger hd sets it no longer has ps2 style jaggies.
From what I understand Michael Pachter is pretty much a joke in the gaming industry. He’s well known for his “predictions” and how obvious some of them are “Some day Sony will lower the price of the PS3″ (said 2 years ago) or “Nintendo will sell lots of games this Holiday season”
On the other hand he will occasionally throw out a gem such as “in a couple of years there will be no more gaming consoles” or something of that nature.
Sure the Wii2 might have HD. I predict that it will “likely” also have DVD playing capability. See how easy it is.
Analysts like Pachter have proven that they simply cannot predict with any accuracy what Nintendo is going to do next. They are still attempting to make predictions based on the past, and they fail every time. Someone should tell them that predictions are all about the FUTURE.
They should just stop. It must be embarassing to be wrong all the time. What evidence is there that WiiHD is imminent? Price cuts and motion controls for the competition are not going to affect Wii at all. No one interested in Wii is going to be swayed by Xbox or PS3 at any price. What will Pachter say when the HD consoles drop below $200 and Wii is still outselling them at its original price?
Been a hell of a console war so far.
I’m really tired of hearing Pachter’s name, and his antics have gone beyond simply being annoying. Two of my coworkers think that the WiiHD is a real thing, confirmed by Nintendo, despite that the fact that I keep telling them otherwise, even bringing up Pachter and pointing out that he’s nothing more than an analyst. For some reason, they still choose to believe what they’ve read.
So now it’s not just some loud-mouthed, insistent analyst. It has become misinformation.
“all those downloadable games that will eventually surpass disc-based games”
Brrr…. Quit sayin’ that man… Quit sayin’ that…
I agree, Razor: Often, people don’t understand that a HD Wii means a whole new console.
However, I think it’s rather clear that the 360 and PS3 aren’t getting replaced any time soon. The Wii, however, could see an HD successor in 2011, something that Microsoft and Sony might be willing to compete with new consoles until 2013 or even later.
That said, I think Nintendo could release a Wii update along the lines of the DSi and still be a new SKU rather than a new generation: an internal hard drive or larger internal storage, more memory, and/or tweaked clocks for CPU or GPU.
I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out the successor to the Wii will likely have more power, better visuals, and all that. I think even diehard Nintendo fanboys would balk if we basically got the same machine again.
But I doubt we’re going to see any new consoles for a long time. Which for once I applaud, I personally didn’t like plunking down $250 to $500 every 4 years for a new machine. But I also feel like this gen still hasn’t reached it’s potential. With all 3 consoles, it keeps feeling like we’re “waiting” for something…
To play devil’s advocate, Patcher’s actually pretty good as far as gaming analysts go. So much so that about a year ago, though I can’t find the link, an analysis of analysts (she sells sea shells) found that Pachter outperformed all his contemporaries on public sales prognostications that actually came to pass. True I think his success rate was still something like less than 50%, but far from the insane people at DFC, or say screen-digest, who progressively declared 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 as the year of PS3, and 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 as the year the Wii flops. One of them even had projected wii sales rates actually turning negative in 2010.
Many of his general statements brake the grain of all the other analysts and make some sense to boot (not the HD Wii one). He said sensible stuff like people weren’t investing in Wii where they should, the PSPGo is a rip off, took Take Two and EA to task for poor strategies, that Chinatown Wars probably wouldn’t sell for various audience reasons, that PS3 would probably end dead last etc. Things his competitors missed by a wide margin.
So when we say he’s full of shit, it may be true but bear in mind he’s probably the best paid opinion out there, and others idiots are far more deserving of our ire (ahem, Piers Harding-Rolls cough). For more useful (and cheaper) information, look to the more reasonable members of VGChartz, put your Iwata hat on and apply 3/5ths logic, 2/5ths history.
“Will likely have a hard drive”. Wow. That’s some Nostradamus-level prediction there. Can Pachter see the future? I believe he can.
I think possibly they might come out with it next.
Like think of the Wii, its known all over the world.
Nintendo might finally have a home console series that doesn’t just start with Nintendo ________.
But as for the Hard Drive, they do have something like a hard drive in the Wii, its called a flash drive, the difference is how much energy it takes.
But certainly they will probably pickup the graphics quite a bit, and at the same time give out bigger hard/flash drives.
Am I the only one excited for the next generation of consoles? Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy my Wii/360/PS3, but nothing gets my juices flowing like new hardware rumors and speculation. Even if we don’t get it for 2 years, I’m ready to start reading about it.
I predict the wii hd wii come out in the near future! And be competitively priced with upgraded grafix and control! Now where’s my check
man, wish i can gets to be analyst!
It’ll happen when it needs to. I.E. When its become clear that Nintendo can no longer maintain consistent profits off of the existing Wii than they’ll replace it with a new console. I also get the feeling the new console will be similar to the Wii in that it will be less about improved technology and more about improved interface. After all, Nintendo spent this entire generation proving that you don’t need cutting edge technology to make a good console, why would they go against that and create a new console that doesn’t do anything the Wii didn’t already do, just with better technology. Doesn’t seem to fir their strategy. Although, if HD has had significant market penetration (and I mean like 70-90%), then it probably wouldn’t be too far-fetched for it to be in the “Wii 2″.
This is accurate. 100% greater than nothing is nothing, which is all we’re going to get for the foreseeable future.
isn’t it obvious to everyone now that nintendo will release their next generation system with HD graphics. there will not be any other slight modification of wii other than wii motion plus. they are not going to do a slight upgrade, and try and sell it. they are so completely ahead this generation they have no need to. they are in the driver’s seat. now if MS and sony want to go for this 10 year cycle, then go ahead. but those systems will be competing with nintendo’s next gen console in about 3 years time. that is going to be a losing battle if they rest on their laurels. my gut feeling is that MS will release their next system, but sony will try and stand pat. and sony will suffer tremendously by making that decision.
also, i don’t think nintendo’s next gen system is going to be an incremental upgrade. sure, it’ll HD, but the user interface will be much different than wii. it will again be something out of left field, something inventive; and sony and MS will once again be playing catch up.
@RisnDevil:
“There are softmod DVD movie booters and loaders for the Wii, where I can watch a DVD through my Wii, WITH NO ADDITIONAL HARDWARE! Why couldn’t Nintendo do this themselves?”
They could do it, but didn’t because there is actually a licensing fee to make Wii play DVDs. It’s not much, but Nintendo wanted to maximize profit and didn’t consider that fee to be worthwhile.
While I don’t think that all “added value” features are worthwhile, it would’ve been nice to see this option for Wii. Maybe they could’ve given us a DVD Channel to download, allowing consumers who want that feature to pay the cost themselves?
“To really make this work, Nintendo should upgrade their Wii Shop so if you buy something once, you can re-download it later if you deleted it for some reason, i.e. needing space.”
Pro tip: You already can do this, either by browsing to a particular game you already own or clicking the “Previously Downloaded Titles” button from the front page.
@Skeptical
I didn’t know I could re-download purchased content if I delete it. That is good to know. Thanks!
And I would be willing to buy/pay for a DVD Movie channel from the Nintendo Shop if that would appease the licensing fee people.
I would like to point you in this direction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=manxPVTLth8 (I couldn’t resist because of the posts title, lol.)
It’s coming Holiday 2010, methinks.