The Nintendo Wii 2 is making preparations to take the world by storm. The portable console industry is on fire with the 3DS and Xperia Play, but the static console industry is rather stale. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are passed their life cycle with no signs of bowing down to a successor any time soon. In fact the Kinect and Play is proof that there's nothing new on its way for a long time. The Wii however, is set to make its second coming sometime next year and the gaming industry is excited already. An unnamed source got the buzz started after he told CVG-“Nintendo’s plans sound unreal. Publishers are already planning launch titles and it’s all very exciting. The hardware is even more powerful than current HD consoles and backwards compatible with Wii." So what will the shiny new beast look like?
Here's a quick rundown of what's known so far (obviously all speculation at the present time.)
The controller-
A lot of the talk about the new Wii is centred on the controller which is set to completely change. Rather than a simple plastic baton the new handset will be its own world of fun with a 6inch HD screen capable of being an integral part of a game. It will have also have the same touch capabilities as a DS.
Graphics-
If there's one thing holding back the original Wii it's the terrible cartoony graphics. It's all well and good when you're playing Mario Carts but with titles like Resident Evil, the graphical limitations suck the life out of gameplay. It's no surprise that Nintendo are focusing a lot of attention on improving graphics. If the visuals are going to be 'better than the Xbox and PS3' which is what's being said now, then the Wii is going to make a big impact when lands in 2012.
Gameplay-
It's obviously hard for people to predict gameplay before any actual games are produced but it is strange that we're hearing a lot about graphics and the controllers but nothing about how the games will work. The controllers tell us that we're not getting full body motion control akin to the Kinect, but then a touch screen controller could really change how we play Wii games. At the moment it seems that we're looking at an improved Wii so don't expect any truly radical changes. But it's very early days. We'll keep you updated as we find our more.