Nintendo's next console will be their best yet

[Resident_Hazard]

Speculating on the follow-up to the Wii is just pure folly at this point. Hell, even a year an a half before the Wii came out, speculating on the GameCube follow-up was folly--and no one expected what we saw when the Wii and Wiimote were finally revealed.


The only things that may be guarantees are that the follow-up will have a harddrive in it, will be HD compatible, and will be several times more powerful. Nintendo is feeling the heat and taking in the complaints that the Wii is too weak compared to the current trends and that the lack of high-def and a harddrive are pissing off a lot of people.


I highly doubt, given Nintendo's history, that it will use Blu-Ray. Nor do I think the follow-up to the X360 will use Blu-Ray. Hell, the PS4 might not even use it. The Wii doesn't even use DVD's, it uses a DVD-like technology developed by Matsushita so that Nintendo doesn't have to pay DVD royalties. That's part of the reason the Wii isn't a DVD movie player, on top of which, who really wants a Nintendo system to play movies? I already own at least 3 different DVD players, I don't need the next Nintendo system to play movies. No one does. New storage formats are constantly being developed and researched, so Nintendo will, if their current status holds, use a new disk-based technology developed by Matsushita that can hold several gigs more memory than a regular DVD. Perhaps even more than an HD-DVD disk or Blu-Ray disk. Who knows?



Aside from these things, there's no telling what the Wii2 might actually be like. A smoother, bigger, vastly more powerful Wii? Hell, I'd like that. And add a couple buttons to the Wiimote to make it more versatile. Put stronger rumble features in the Wiimote and add them to the Nunchuck, make them both wireless with rechargable batteries.


Going by general video game history, all three (or more) next-gen consoles following this generation will likely have motion controls that are vastly improved over this generation, and all will likely be on more even ground when it comes to power and the like. The Wii2 will likely be the cheapest to purchase and develop for because that's the way Nintendo works. All three will be HD and have large harddrives, and most likely all three will have wireless controllers, some sort of optional motion control, and wi-fi. This generation is showing more legs than before, however. The current generation will likely last quite a bit longer than before.