should've seen it coming...

Nintendo: Revised Wii "not out of the question"

Jul 23, 2007 @ 1:43pm

I know it's just talk for now, but until I came across this article, I hadn't even considered it to be a possibility. It's still a mere rumor, a hint of suggestion borne from an interview.

"It's not out of the question," Harrison said when asked in an interview with GameDaily if a revised Wii is already in the works. "But we're not even to our second holiday yet, so it's kind of premature to talk about any revisions to the hardware itself," he concluded. -Article at GameTrailers

Revising and re-releasing hardware is incredibly common in the game industry. I remember I had been dragging my feet about buying a Nintendo DS and by the time I actually bought one, the DS Lite was announced. I still have the clunky DS, with the few design flaws it has, and don't plan on upgrading for another $130+.

The thing that surprised me the most about this article is that the Nintendo Wii is only 8 months old, and rumors about a re-release are already blossoming. Sure, Sony's Playstation 2 underwent many revisions since its release in 2000, but nothing extremely noticeable until the Slimline version, a smaller, more compact PS2, was released in September of 2004.

So why has this topic merited a few paragraphs? Most likely when a new system is released (in this example, the Wii), keep in mind an upgrade will be on its way in 1.5-2 years or so.

The only time this is actually a good option is:

• if you haven't bought the older version yet (However, I wouldn't skip on buying the initial release just to wait for the upgrade)
• if the older version happened to die on you

OR

• you are such a hardcore gamer and absolutely have to have those extra spiffed-up specs (which as far as family gaming is concerned, this usually isn't the case).

##fin##