Nintendo Wii Fanboy

With the Wii almost two years old, we thought we'd check in with our old pal, the GameCube, and present some of the wonderful things people have done with it. Hit the button below to check out five of our most favorite GameCube mods.

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And by "Wii hard drive" we actually mean "portable air conditioner." This image emerged from the bowels of the internet earlier today, purporting to be a Nintendo-designed hard drive for the Wii. The pranksters responsible for this didn't count on the razor-sharp observational skills of one JC Fletcher, who located this familiar-looking air conditioner at Amazon Japan. Nintendo had earlier dismissed the image as "rumor and speculation" when CVG inquired, but this pretty much nails it.

Not that this forgery is good for nothing -- for example, it does give us an excuse to once again raise the issue of where the heck our storage solution is, Reggie, and also a chance to guide you into our Wii mockup gallery of lulz.

Yamazen portable air conditioner here
Nintendo's denial here

[Update: Spelling correction!]

Reggie recently sat down for a little chat with Stephen Totilo from MTV Multiplayer to discuss what's on everyone's mind. No, not the company's showing at E3, but rather the storage issues of the console.

He said that "from an Americas-centric perspective," the Wii's storage limitations are becoming a "mainstream" problem. Again, he reiterates that the company is working on a solution, but isn't ready to reveal any specifics yet.

Seriously, Nintendo, how long are you going to wait? Each week, more Virtual Console and WiiWare content releases and gamers can't download because they have no space!

[Thanks, il_duce620!]

One of the benefits of being a major company is that you get to find out things first -- like how much stuff you sold. When the NPD Group informed Nintendo of the most recent figures, the Big N sent a love text to our Joystiq overlords, bragging about their current sales standings in the U.S.

But we already know that the Wii sells a lot, so what's the big deal this time? According to Nintendo, NPD figures confirm that the Wii has surpassed its competitors as the North American console leader. As of today, the Wii has sold almost 10.9 million units, which was enough to give it the edge over the Xbox 360.

Of course, there's much more to being the king of consoles than selling a lot of hardware, as you need the software to match. However you feel about the Wii's game library, though, this is quite an accomplishment for the little white console that could.

It's not uncommon in the least for gaming hardware to be revised and changed. The GameCube controller made way for the Wavebird. The PS3's SIXAXIS controller paved the way for the Dualshock 3. Even the original Xbox controller was slimmed down eventually.

So, as perfect as the Wiimote is, how would you change it? Slim it down? Increase the battery life (uh, yes please)? How would you change or improve the Wiimote?

Every other week, Mike Sylvester brings you REVOLUTIONARY, a look at the wide world of Wii possibilities.

If you're smitten with the Virtual Console, one thing we're sure you aren't in love with is having to swap games between an SD card and your Wii's internal memory, or even worse -- deleting games to be re-downloaded later. WiiWare is on its way and it's hard to imagine My Life as a King demeaning itself to share its estate with less noble games. And certainly not with it bringing microtransactions to the royal ball. And wouldn't it be dandy if some of our multiplatform ports had somewhere to store that downloadable content that everyone is raving about on other consoles?

We want need more storage, and some of you have gathered to plead with Nintendo to sell a Wii Hard Drive. It appears that your cries just fall on deaf ears because they seem hardly driven to provide one. In this edition of Revolutionary, we'll examine why Wii can't have a hard drive.

Even though the Wii is barely past its infancy stages, many can't help but wonder when the system's successor is coming out. As of now, those of us at Nintendo Wii Fanboy are content to put that question on the backburner and simply enjoy what we have in the present. Analysts are always hungry for this type of speculation, though, and Pacific Crest Securities has decided to throw their opinion into the ring.

So, what's their guess? According to PCS, Nintendo's next platform will be out by 2010. Evan Wilson of the firm stated, "We believe that peak industry sales will occur in 2010, given that Microsoft will likely introduce its next console that year and Nintendo will likely launch before then."

Now, we're not pretending to be analysts (okay, maybe a little bit), but we couldn't disagree more. We think the Wii will have a longer lifespan than three-and-a-half years, based on its current popularity and past systems' life cycles. Considering also that much of the Wii's success can be credited to the casual market, releasing a new console so soon wouldn't be a smart business decision. While core gamers and Nintendoholics would gobble it up, casuals would probably be more wary about dropping another few hundred dollars on a video game console in such a short amount of time.

The firm's analysis brings up another interesting question -- will Nintendo release its next console before Microsoft? While we agree that Sony will be the last to upgrade its hardware, it shouldn't be taken for granted that Nintendo will be first, especially since the company seems to be in no rush.

[Via Games Industry]

So, how did the fair Wii fare in the land of the rising sun this week? Regarding hardware sales, the Wii just barely eked out in front of the PSP to take second place with 168,000 units sold, jumping up over 50,000 units from last week. As for the software, there's some good and bad news. Check after the break to see the numbers.

According to the sales data from Chart-Track (your friendly neighborhood UK chart compiler), the Wii's total hardware sales surpassed those of the Xbox 360 in the land of Great Britain. Wait, the Xbox 360 was on the market for an entire year before the Wii, you say? It ain't no thang. Nothing can keep that little white console down.

Chart-Track declined to release the total sales numbers of each console, due to corporate policy. The charts did reveal, however, that 100,000 Wii units were sold in the UK last week. That may not be enough to meet demand, but still shows that Nintendo is supplying a good amount of consoles to the region.

[Via Gamasutra]

NeoGAFfer JoshuaJSlone has devoted a serious amount of time to compiling weekly hardware sales figures in Japan, as they appear in Famitsu. That sounds like a task of almost Sisyphean proportions, but it's not all thankless. This week, for instance, his legwork and terrifying table of numbers (mercifully translated into the graph above) threw up an interesting little factoid: lifetime sales of the Wii in Japan have now surpassed those of the GameCube. Which is darn impressive, considering the Wii has been in Japanese stores for just 54 weeks.

Our new favorite NeoGAFfer also took the time to compare those first 54 weeks of the Wii's life with other consoles. Turns out the GBA needed only 40 weeks to reach where the Wii is now, and the DS an almost identical 53.7 weeks. What could have been in a world without Wii shortages, eh? Interestingly, the Wii is even outperforming the PlayStation 2, which required approximately 66 weeks to reach the Wii's current total.

For more graph-related tomfoolery, and to see how the PS3 is faring against the Wii (clue: it's not faring well, but let's not be complacent), head past the break.

Ah, here's something else to place in the next time capsule we bury at the bottom of the Wii Fanboy garden, along with our copy of Cruis'n (we feel future generations should understand the horror). Research company Screen Digest broke out the pencil crayons and came up with the graph above, forecasting exactly how the now-gen console race will look come 2011. And while things don't look, erm, massively promising for Microsoft and the Xbox 360, Screen Digest has the PlayStation 3 almost neck and neck with the Wii by year-end 2011.

Naturally, we'd advise taking this with a rather large dose of salt, because this industry has proven time and time again to be an unpredictable beast. After all, would such a graph have been published one year before the Wii first came to market?

[Via CVG]

Over at the always entertaining UK: Resistance, resident jaded cynic Cmdr_Zorg has a few strong words to say about certain UK retailers, specifically those who refuse to play fair when it comes to the increasingly rare Wii.

The source of Zorg's chagrin? That said merchants are now using the insane popularity of the Wii and crippling shortages to flog desperate consumers bundles which are, to put it charitably, a load of old bumwash. Electronics chain Dixons is one of the culprits in this growing trend, with its cheapest Wii bundle clocking in at £350 ($725). All have sold out, presumably to people who would normally have lol'd heartily at the idea of buying Smarty Pants.

Admittedly, some of the bundles being offered by Dixons contain titles that every one of us should own, but that's not the point: let us make those decisions!

Nintendo might well be cracking the whip on the Wii production line, but pretty much everybody still seems to be feeling the pinch of shortages. UK shoppers, for example, are becoming increasingly desperate for the console, with online retailers now getting in the region of 100,000 requests a day from panicky, possibly hyperventilating Brits.

Meanwhile, Amazon's UK arm recently sold 1,000 machines in under 10 minutes, while the console on its own is typically going for around £300 ($615) on eBay. In other words, Wii fever is hitting some quite ridiculous heights on this side of the pond, and if Reggie is to be believed, things ain't going to get any better in the immediate future.

[Via Go Nintendo]

The UPC code currently associated with the "Wii Play 'n Learn" name has been revealed as the most boring of all new hardware configurations, according to Chris Kohler: the regular Wii package with a Wiimote jacket included. But something as pedestrian as that probably wouldn't get an edutaining new name, right?

1up contacted Nintendo about the UPC, and Nintendo told them in no uncertain terms that "Wii Play 'n Learn" was definitely not related to any hardware bundle, including the one it's associated to. They cited a possible mistake in the UPC filing. That means that "Wii Play 'n Learn" is something else. Our guess is that it's probably some kind of game which enables you to learn-- while playing.

The new Wii hardware bundle discovered last week looks like it's going to be something a little more significant than just the same Wii with included controller jackets, or a second controller. The UPC information has been updated with a new name for the unit: "Wii Play 'N Learn." Which certainly makes it sound like a toy for preschoolers. Or maybe it's Wii-themed playground equipment! It certainly doesn't sound like Nintendo is marketing this new bundle at the older audience they usually go for. Could this mean that Nintendo is switching gears to a more kid-friendly marketing scheme?

Ill-advised branding aside, the obvious guess for what's in the bundle would be Wii Play and maybe Big Brain Academy. Really, any bundle that includes Wii Play('s extra controller) will be very welcome during the holiday season. Of course, we have no idea what'll be in the Play 'N Learn box, or even if that will turn out to be a real product.

[Via Game|Life]