‘Multiple sources’ have leaked increasingly believable reports to suggest that the ‘Wii 2’ is set for an imminent unveiling. What can we expect and are Nintendo too late?
By Leo Stiles
When news came in this week that the Wii 2 was rumoured to be well into production, I sighed into my cornflakes and began to read what I expected to be tenuous speculation from Nintendo fanboy Twitter accounts.
At first it was the usual “Wii but in HD” nonsense but reading on I quickly realised that this round of rumours has the whiff of truth about it and just might be the opening salvo of the next generation of hardware wars.
Before we delve in and try and separate fact from fiction, let’s have a look at the historical context here. Up until the current generation, console hardware cycles have been fairly predictable, with new machines hitting shelves roughly every six years.
This usually coincides with the level of tech on gaming PCs reaching levels that put console hardware in the shade and anyone who has seen Epic’s latest tech demo or played Crysis 2 on PC at its Extreme setting can attest to the fact that our regular consoles are looking decidedly long in the tooth.
Of course the Wii is a special case because Nintendo gave up the graphical arms race back in 2005 and instead launched a machine that could only visually compete with the Playstation 2. Obviously this bold decision by Nintendo to stop competing in terms of raw power was vindicated in their championing of motion controls and its appeal to a much wider gaming audiences.
The Kinect has managed to make the Wii’s capabilities and unique selling point look outdated
To date the Wii has sold over 85 million units in the last five years; a good 35 million console more than Sony or Microsoft who are currently tied at 50 million sales each for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
Since launch, the Wii has countered the high performance of its rivals and their HD visuals by catering to a burgeoning casual gaming audience and producing unique gameplay experiences. But with Sony and Microsoft now encroaching successfully on its territory with Move and Kinect, the Wii is beginning to show its age and its current sales slump bears this out.
Every year it seems since the Wii launched we have had to deal with rumours around this time of year that Nintendo is upgrading their home console or adding new features or even replacing it with a successor. So what is different about this year?
First of all, that Wii sales slump is significant and slowly but surely the monthly sales appear to be in decline. Next you have the spectacular success of the Playstation Move and Xbox Kinect which are playing to the same audience and offer prospective buyers consoles that pretty much do everything and have online capabilities that wipe the floor with Nintendo’s offering.
Next is the fact that the Wii is about to get a major price cut in the next two months and all the signs are there that Nintendo needs to begin addressing their future and with the 3DS launch out of the way, the time appears to ripe for a major announcement.
So what are this year’s rumours saying?
- The Wii 2 will have significantly greater graphical graphical horsepower than its current-gen rivals.
- It will sport a Blu-Ray disc drive.
- It will offer superior motion controls that may take the form of traditional handheld controls and a Kinect-style motion camera.
- It will be backward compatible with the Wii.
- It will be western-influenced and be aimed at hardcore gamers and may not even be Wii-branded.
- It will be shown off at this June’s E3 event in Los Angeles and will be launching in late 2012.
- The controller will have a HD touchscreen built into it.
- Publishers already have development kits and big hitters like EA and Ubisoft are already hard at work on games.
Now that is a sizable amount of speculation but there are a couple of them that do stack up.
A new Wii using the Blu-Ray disc format is highly likely and if the machine is as powerful as the rumours suggest, then a high capacity medium will be needed, with Blu-Ray being an obvious and practical choice.
Backward compatibility is also a certainty as Nintendo have always made the transition to new hardware less painful by including this feature in their new consoles- just look to the 3DS for proof.
Controller queries
I’m going to call shenanigans on the whole idea of controllers featuring HD touchscreens. One thing that the media has never been able to predict is what kind of controllers Nintendo cook up for new hardware.
You only have to look back at the utter shock in the gaming press when the Wii Remote was first unveiled to see that this is true. Not to mention that this idea sounds prohibitively expensive and Nintendo have survived this long on always making money on their hardware rather than taking a loss like Sony and riding it out until production costs come down.
The other thing to remember is that Nintendo have always designed their gaming hardware around a controller concept, with the exception of the GameCube and anyone who claims to have penetrated Nintendo’s wall of secrecy on this is talking out of their arse.
The same goes for its potential motion control set-up. I’ll buy that the new machine will include a more advance motion control method but any claims to know what this might be are totally spurious. We’ll know about this one only when Satoru Iwata climbs the stage at E3 in June and announces it.
What really intrigues me are the multiple references across the internet that the new machine will be Western-centric and focused on core gamers. I absolutely think that this is on the money because Nintendo have already won a sizable casual gaming audience but it was always at the expense of the hardcore gamer which have deserted the machine en masse. Casual gamers are just that; they don’t have any commitment to it and the sales slowdown is indicative of that.
If Nintendo makes a Wii successor then I think that the casual audience will follow and with a real push towards the core market, Nintendo just might produce a machine that caters to all tastes. Naturally the thought of a proper first person shooter with whatever new motion controls the Wii 2 might have is quite exciting.
The last issue really is one of timing and back in February, Nintendo were jumping in front of every microphone they could to declare that the Wii has years left in it. They are absolutely right but with one big caveat; the Wii will service its installed base for years to come but will never see the kind of growth that characterised its second and third years.
A Christmas 2012 launch would be just right and if Nintendo do actually announce the Wii 2 (or whatever they eventually call it) at E3, then it would certainly fit previous machines launch plans where they are publicly announced about 18 months before eventual release.
The strangest thing about all this speculation and reference to Sony and Microsoft is that they are not the rivals that Nintendo should fear – it’s Apple. Smart phones have been eating into the gaming market since the launch of the Apple App Store, with Apple swallowing up whole sections of gaming audiences, both casual and increasingly core.
Are Apple Nintendo’s next competitors?
Recent high profile Apple personnel appointments make it clear that Apple have got gaming firmly in their sights and there is no way that the company is going to ignore the under the TV space for too much longer. In fact the company may be already there with indications this week that Apple TV is to be updated with app-running functionality.
If this happens then all of the console manufacturers will have some serious competition because the hardware that runs the iPhone 4 and the original iPad is identical to the innards of the Apple TV and has already proven to be adept at providing rich gameplay experiences for the casual and core game alike.
Apple TV has sold close to two million units since its launch last October and if these machine are suddenly updated with a software patch to run apps and games, Nintendo will have a serious headache because not only will the Apple box cost just €99, it will come with a massive library of inexpensive games, many of which it has to be said, look a good deal better than a lot of the Wii’s back catalogue
Clearly the clock is ticking for Nintendo to announce a product that will reinvigorate its audience and reposition the company in the mindshare of the gamers. I’d be shocked if some of these new rumours didn’t come true and a new Nintendo home console would make for not just a thrilling E3 but the first offensive in what will be a savage fight for the hearts and minds of gamers.
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