Screen Digest analyst Piers Harding-Rolls believes that an updated Wii console will be released soon to keep the Wii a player in the console war. The new Wii, he says, will act as a raft until Nintendo can release the successor to the Wii sometime in 2013.
“We expect the Wii to have a shorter lifecycle than the high definition consoles,” he told GI.biz. “We're actually pitching it for an end of 2012 Japan release and the rest of world in 2013.
“Our forecast actually incorporates the idea that there will be an upgraded version of the Wii available. There is potentially significant movement to come from Wii pricing in the future. If you look at the handheld strategy they've got the DSi and the 3DS, so I think they've got room to have to this iterative version before a 2012 or 2013 release.”
The comments come after Harding-Rolls told the BBC yesterday that “there will be a new Xbox and Wii by 2013 and 2014 for a new PlayStation."
1 Comments
August 6, 2010
I think Mr. Harding-Rolls didn't do enough research, because most of IG's audience remembers that Pachter pitched the same exact idea for several years before giving up, conceding Nintendo simply won't do a "Wii Plus".
Wii games look resplendent in HD, but Nintendo, after doing years of research leading up to the launch of the Wii, determined the numbers weren't there to spend extra money for a true HD console experience. I'd be very surprised if Nintendo created a "bridge" console after what they've said and shown for the past 4 years. I realized they released a redesign of the NES and SNES, but I doubt they got enough sales to make back what they spent on it.