Plenty of Wii

[Yegolev]

Maybe I should make separate threads for Wii news instead of quarrantining it all into one thread?  Not that this is any sort of solid news, just a reassurance that may or may not remind people that Sony is dropping the ball , stepping on it, then taking a big shit in the middle of the field.

Stolen from Wii.IGN:

"Wii is on track to ship in Q4," Nintendo offered in a statement, "with plans to ship 6 million systems to retailers around the world between its launch in the fourth quarter of 2006 and the end of its fiscal year on March 31, 2007."

[Simond]

Twist that knife, Nintendo.

[Miasma]

IBM says the first CPUs are now ready.  So if the chips haven't even made their way over to Japan yet then Nintendo's brag that they have been in production for months seems a little overblown.  When I hear "production has been going on for months" I think finished products in shiny new cardboard sitting on palettes in a warehouse.  If none of them have their chips yet I guess Nintendo just meant that the sheet metal used in the cases is good to go.

[Riggswolfe]

I wonder if in 6 months Bill Gates will hold a press conference and have nothing but a poster of a Wii and PS3 behind him. The whole speech will be "You guys said our launch was bad?" At which point he turns around and walks away.

[Yegolev]

I was thinking of posting that one, Miasma.  I also read that Nintendo had begun manufacturing a while back, and since I don't know anything about manufacturing -- and very little about the manufacturing even my own company does -- this might just mean that the buttons and plastic housings were being made.  I have a slightly-more-informative link from IGN, quoted in its entirety here because my love for the F13 reader is bigger than the Xbox controller:

September 8, 2006 - Hot on the heels of Sony's confirmation this week that PlayStation 3 will not ship in Europe until 2007, and that only 400,000 units will be available for launch in North America, IBM and Nintendo revealed Friday morning that the Wii CPU, codenamed Broadway, is all wrapped up and ready to go. In fact, an IBM rep announced that the Broadway chip has been available to Nintendo for three weeks.

"The first chips are in our possession," said Genyo Takeda, Nintendo's senior managing director and general manager of its integrated research and development division, in a statement. "Today's milestone marks the final stage of our drive to reach both core and nontraditional gamers with an inviting, inclusive and remarkable gaming experience."

The Broadway CPU is a 90-nanometer PowerPC-based chip that includes silicon-on-insulator technology. The chip is approximately 20 percent more efficient than its GameCube predecessor, codenamed Gekko.

"When millions of gamers take the controls of Wii this holiday season, the IBM logo will once again be front and center on this innovative new product," said Ron Martino IBM's director of technology collaboration solutions.

Nintendo said that it plans to ship six million Wii units around the world through the end of March of next year.

Details regarding the console's price and release date are expecting next week.

[Murgos]

The way chip fab works is that it's done in batches.  Fab plants are retard level expensive and no one does a plant to support one chip.  Add into that the length of dev time for even a simple ASIC and you would have fabs sitting idle most of the year if that's the way the system worked.  Once the masks are set up and the kinks worked out they can pump out a surprising number of wafers in a short time and then switch to the next design that needs to be run.

Dropping a chip onto a board takes a fraction of a second for a good assembly line.

[HaemishM]

Dropping a chip onto a board takes a fraction of a second for a good assembly line.

Yeah, not having the CPU chips isn't going to mean that no manufacturing has been done.

Also, that's not a knife Nintendo is holding, that's a dildo-shaped Wiimote. And that's not Sony's stomach it's been stuck into.

[OcellotJenkins]

From Here

PES running on Wii
Wednesday 4-Oct-2006 3:10 PM Exclusive: CVG can reveal that Konami has PES playable on Wii and the developer is working on how to implement the Wii controller

There's been no official announcement regarding Pro Evolution Soccer coming to Wii from Konami, but PES producer Shingo 'Seabass' Takatsuka has confirmed to CVG it's in development and testing right now.

According to Seabass, the game is playable on Nintendo's next-gen system and they're experimenting with various controller options.

The team is said to be looking at using the Wii remote and Nunchuk for throw-ins, passing and even shooting.

Seabass also revealed that he's heard whispers of EA getting busy in R&D, by looking at strapping a remote device to a player's foot for shooting. Quite what that turns out to be we don't know, but you can bet that it'll have FIFA in the title.

[sigil]

I have visions of an overanxious guy trying to crack a shot and smashing his  Wiimote laden foot into the corner of the coffee table. or the controller coming loose from its holster and flying across the room.

[HaemishM]

Not so sure about the kicking with the Wiimote thing, but the PES sounds cool.

[tazelbain]

What about a LAPD game? Use the wiimote to deal out a bit baton justice.

[OcellotJenkins]

How many virtual console games can you fit on the Wii's built in 512MB memory card?

If you spend $250 on NES games, $250 on Snes games and $250 on N64 games, you’ll have 106 games and 358MB of space used. Look a graph!

[OcellotJenkins]

Wii Production Ahead of Schedule

From the source the above article linked to:

Nintendo built 2 million of its soon-to0-be-launched Wii console games in the third quarter, with at least 7 million more - and potentially as many as 9 million - expected to be manufactured in the fourth quarter, according to UBS chip industry analyst Alex Guana. That would put Nintendo’s production way ahead of the 6 million units the company has said it planned to ship by year end.

Oh yeah, and despite the rumors of Gamestop not doing pre-orders, their site seems to imply they ARE planning on it.  In light of the production news, pre-ordering may be a non-issue though.

[Miasma]

Toys R Us added the Wii to its "Hot Holiday Toys" list a while ago.  They only do that for items they feel confident of having enough stock to meet demand, it's actually the first time a new console has made the list.  So hopefully there will be enough to go around.  That wiimote had better not suck.

[Yegolev]

That wiimote had better not suck.

Worst case, you will have dropped $250 on a self-contained online web-browsing combo NES/SNES/N64/TGFX emulator.

[Bokonon]

That wiimote had better not suck.

Worst case, you will have dropped $250 on a self-contained online web-browsing combo NES/SNES/N64/TGFX emulator.

Don't forget C64:

Summer Games anyone?

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

[OcellotJenkins]

WTF?
[ Link in above page NSFW, page itself is SFW ]

[ How about you not post those kinds of pics here? ]

Edit:  Sorry about that.  It won't happen again.

[schild]

Assuming that's the SNK pedophile thing, heh.

That story has been everywhere lately.

[OcellotJenkins]

So does Nintendo not have control over what gets developed for their system?  Can publishers just run wild with the license?

[Margalis]

It's Japan. What more needs to be said? Japanese arcades have naked variants of Magical Drop and Qix in them...

[schild]

It's Japan. What more needs to be said? Japanese arcades have naked variants of Magical Drop and Qix in them...

Gal Panic is pretty fun dude.

[OcellotJenkins]

Video of Super Moneky Ball in action.