Originally published on lalawag
(image credit: IGN)
Remember that Christmas of 2006 where finding a Wii was akin to finding the Holy Grail at retail? Well, get ready to relive those fun times soon because Nintendo just announced that its new gaming console will come out in 2012.
From a note posted to its investors this morning:
To whom it may concern:
Re: Wii’s successor system
Nintendo Co., Ltd. has decided to launch in 2012 a system to succeed Wii, which the company has sold 86.01 million units on a consolidated shipment basis between its launch in 2006 and the end of March 2011.
We will show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo, which will be held June 7-9, 2011, in Los Angeles.
Sales of this new system have not been included in the financial forecasts announced today for the fiscal term ending March 2012.
(Gotta love their salutation: “To whom it may concern.” It really gives you a sense of warmth for investing in the company.)
While it’s not surprising that Nintendo has been working on a successor to the once-monolithic Wii, it does come as somewhat of a surprise that they will already have a playable version of the hardware (codenamed: Project Cafe) at E3 this year. But what’s the “gimmick” for this new system?
According to a quote in Reuters, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata hints that it probably won’t be 3D:
“We would like to propose a new approach to home video game consoles. It’s difficult to make 3-D images a key feature, because 3-D televisions haven’t obtained wide acceptance yet.”
If it’s not 3D, then what is it?
According to speculation by IGN, the controller will have “integrated touchscreens and be capable of streaming games to each controller.” Those who remember the VMU functionality of the Sega Dreamcast back in the late 90s will have an idea of what IGN is getting at, except the Project Cafe implementation will be far more advanced, with presumably HD color displays wirelessly streamed from the console and tighter integration with the games.
IGN’s sources also say that the console will be in full HD and more powerful than the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360:
Additionally, IGN has learned that the system will be based on a revamped version of AMD’s R700 GPU architecture, not AMD’s Fusion technology as previously believed, which will, as previously reported, out perform the PlayStation 3’s NVIDIA 7800GTX-based processor. Like the Xbox 360, the system’s CPU will be a custom-built triple-core IBM PowerPC chipset, but the clocking speeds will be faster. The system will support 1080p output with the potential for stereoscopic 3D as well, though it has not been determined whether that will be a staple feature.
In terms of the design of the console itself, the overall size will be comparable to that of the original Xbox 360 and the system is likely to resemble a modernized version of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).
Hopefully, this won’t be too hard on our wallets. It sounds like Nintendo might not enjoy the same “budget priced console” market segment when this baby comes out.
via Kotaku
