Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Before you go running off to troll post on various message boards, we'd like to give you some specifics. A recent CNN technology feature details some of the various chips and components found within the forty-dollar Wiimote. Among the Bluetooth converters and accelerometers is a component listed as an "audio translator," which "converts analog data such as human speech into a digital data stream. This feature is unused now but will probably be employed in future games." The approximate cost is listed at $2.00.

So, what's the deal? First, there is no actual microphone (a device capable of converting vibrational energy into electrical signals) found within the Wiimote. Though basic electrical engineering principals allow a standard speaker to act in such a fashion, the signal quality and frequency response would be unacceptably low. This chip actually requires an expansion device for it to be used at all. So why add it? It's only two dollars, but this rather unnecessary addition has cost the company several dozen million dollars. We can only assume that Nintendo or significant third parties are planning a title utilizing an expansion microphone, which will be presumably cheap enough to bundle with a title and incur no markup in price.

God knows the masses need a mainstream karaoke game (we know about Karaoke Revolution for the PS2, but it never really took off), and the Wii is just the system to do it. Like a Virginnnnn ... hey!

After a tour of the country last year, Indian President Abdul Kalam described the Philippines as a "smiling republic." Wherever he went, Kalam was met with smiling faces. Well, you'd be grinning too if you saw how cheap their games are. Thanks to the black market, popular Nintendo Wii titles are priced as low as $5 in some shops. Piracy has become so widespread in the Southeast Asian country, even Sony admits that most of its Playstation software sold in the Philippines are bootlegged copies.

Filipino site GameOPS found that many stores also offer modchip installations. For about $51, you can have your system hacked to play these counterfeit games at the local mall or market. Furthermore, some shops advertise console bundles, selling imported and modded US Wiis with five copied games of your choice for around $450. Similar deals for chipped Xbox 360 systems with 10 pirated titles are actually cheaper at $388.

With such a high level of piracy already in place, Nintendo will have a lot to work against when -- or if -- it decides to finally launch the Wii in the Philippines.

If you've been curious about fixing your Wii to dabble with homebrew or play titles from other regions, but don't trust your abilities enough to mess with the console's innards, there might be a solution in the works for you. WiiNewz forum member Takrin recently posted photos of his hardware project in progress, a prototype modchip that requires no soldering to install.

With nothing to attach the modchip to though, how does it stay in place? Takrin suggests "double sided tape on one side" and "foam which presses it to your drive on the other." That doesn't sound like a very stable setup, but we hope to see this development spawn more sophisticated and accessible mods in the future. To be honest, if a monkey can't install it, we probably wouldn't be able to either.

[Via MaxConsole]

IBM announced that their custom-designed Broadway chip for the Nintendo Wii has been sitting in Nintendo's hands since July, resting ever-so-silently, poised to strike like a Puma silently stalking its prey. Ron Martino, director of IBM Technology Collaboration Solutions, commented that production fears should be nonexistent as "We have been shipping well within this quarter (July)," and going on further to say that "In fact, we have shipped a significant volume in this quarter."

All well and good, but what about you, the one craving the Wii so bad you've been drawing pictures of it in your notebook, perhaps encapsulated by a red heart with a cartoonish arrow sticking through it reading "Nintendo & Chad 4 Ever?" What does it mean for you?

First off, don't ask how we've seen your notebook. Second, you should be thinking "Well, if Nintendo had these chips since July, why haven't they been manufacturing Wiis?" That last one, we really don't have an answer for.

So would Nintendo go the way Sega did with the Saturn, springing it upon gamers much like that Puma in the first paragraph leaped upon its prey? Probably not, but it makes that event coming on the 14th that much more interesting.