facebook rss twitter

All is not what it seems at the unveiling of Wii

by Steven Williamson on 22 May 2006, 10:09

Tags: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo (TYO:7974), Wii

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qafrs

Add to My Vault: x

Wii or not Wii - that is the question

Over the weekend a story has surfaced revealing that Nintendo did'nt have any working Wii consoles at E3. The demonstations were actually housed on current-gen GameCube hardware.

Nintendo's public relations manager at Nintendo of America, Matt Atwood, has stepped forward to clarify that the GameCube hardware was present, but was actually modified with components for the Wii. They stated that "The Wii hardware we exhibited at E3 2006 was made specifically for the E3 show and is not the final mass-production version. Some of this hardware was cased in Nintendo GameCube housing,"

Nintendo have said that it's fairly common practice that hardware shown at E3 is not the exact hardware that we see at retail. They also confirmed that the games on show were "indicative of the experience Wii will offer...It was Wii hardware."


HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
Posted by DavidM - Mon 22 May 2006 10:33
In otherwords - some of the silicon was unfinished, so they encased it in a bigger box?

This does happen.. I remember a product demonstration I saw many years ago which had a massive PCB of 120 logic chips, shrunk on a production model to one single ASIC … so it's not so unlikely that something similar happened here.
Posted by beanbandit - Mon 22 May 2006 10:55
And? MS did the same at last years E3 (Apple G5's) Sony did the same this year running PS3 demo's on dev kits. Its nothing new and will happen when showing unreleased hardware.
Posted by DavidM - Mon 22 May 2006 11:08
<snippity snip>
Posted by UltraMagnus - Tue 23 May 2006 07:50
it was faked…… from what i hear it was either running on a (very) upgrade gamecube, or a &#163;3000 PC….