New Wii?

[Flabio]

Eurogamer are reporting this morning that Nintendo have announced a new smaller form factor Wii to be released here by the end of the year.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-17-new-look-wii-out-for-christmas-article

Cause people have always been saying that what the Wii really needs is to be smaller.

[abigsmurf]

Guessing it's gonna be an ultra budget one. With the level of die shrinking available since it was created, it may even be possible to passively cool it which would mean it would be insanely tiny.

Could also be a case of "we're producing millions of Wii SoaCs for the Wii U, may as well take advantage of this".

Seems weird though, you can get a new Wii for ?100 and a used one for ?50-60. There's not too much room for a price cut.

[Neon Ignition]

It's probably an attempt at last minute share recovery, a redesigned Wii at around ?80 at the same time as Zelda, Just Dance 3 etc could probably help tide them over quite nicely.

[toythatkills]

I don't understand why they've announced a new look Wii and then not bothered to release any pictures of what it looks like, which is the sole thing anyone would actually be interested in.

[toythatkills]

Wait, apparently that IS a picture of the New Wii on the EG article?

It's practically identical

[parkinho]

I read that GameCube support has been removed!

[Flabio]

Yup, no backward compatibility. Can't be a CPU or GPU reason for that, so they must be using a cheaper drive that can't handle the smaller disc size.

[abigsmurf]

Looks about 1cm shorter, maybe 2-3 cm narrower. Not terribly pointful and without the stand it looks a bit tackier.

No GC compatibility is strange. The mechanism for multiple size discs in a slot loader must be pence at most,

[Neon Ignition]

Yup, very little in it, they might not even promote it as a redesign.

[Flabio]

Oh, and it apparently doesn't support the GC pad now either. That's probably why they've dropped the back compat, they've removed the joypad ports.

[abigsmurf]

Makes a bit more sense, those ports would be a notable cost.

[egparadigm]

I guess they're just cutting costs to increase profit. Fair enough.

Only other change is that it's horizontal, and all logos have been rotated.

[Grapple Convoy]

Taking out the GameCube compatibility removes the best feature of the console.

Never mind access to the best controllers for Smash Bros, Mario Kart and quite a few other Wii games.

[Neon Ignition]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-17-nintendo-discontinuing-current-wii-model

As expected, the standard Wii will be discontinued

[ItsThere]

This is (IMHO) a cynical move related to the Wii U's lack of GC compatibility.

Get consumers used to it early, make sure they can't buy a (new) Wii that will play GC games and then make them available on the Wii U to download.

Simples.