Nintendo has finally confirmed that a Wii 2 is in the works, and that it will arrive in shops sometime in 2012. This follows my earlier report of the latest Wii 2 rumours, and at least one rumour has proven to be true - a fully working Wii 2 will be demoed less than two month from now, at E3 (June 7-9).
Nintendo confirmed the long suspected move in an investor update, which simply read as follows:
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 announced 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.
With no more details until E3, the rumour mill is likely to remain overworked, with the latest rumours suggesting the system will use a three core IBM PowerPC CPU, with a GPU provided by ATI/AMD using the R700 family (with a 4.1 version shader unit, and at least 512 MB of RAM), equivalent to the last-gen Radeon HD 4800 series for the PC (it's fairly normal to use slightly outdated PC GPU hardware for consoles, since planning and development has taken place long before today's announcement). Other rumours say the system will be called "Stream" (which might really be a joke ... stream of Wii/wee?), and that it will be launched late next year with a $350 to $400 price range.
E3 will tell us which one, if any, of these rumours are correct.
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