October 13th, 2012

The latest edition of Iwata Asks has discussed the hardware of the Wii U, and showcased the above photo of the Wii U with its internals for the whole world to see (just like they did with the 3DS XL). What’s interesting to me, however, is that Iwata said he “never imagined” the Wii would have a six-year hardware cycle. This ties in with something Michael Ancel of Ubisoft said in a recent interview:

…we thought Wii U would come out a lot earlier. We worked very closely with Nintendo [on Wii U] early on, giving them feedback on the various prototypes.

So it sounds like Nintendo had planned to release the system at least a year ago. I wonder if there an ultra-specific reason the plans didn’t come together. Maybe it was just Murphy’s Law at work. Either way, there’s more photos of the Wii U’s internals after the break.

http://wiiublog.com/this-is-a-transparent-wii-u-and-was-the-wii-u-supposed-to-come-out-a-lot-earlier/#more-6643

Do you guys think there is any credence to this; and if so what effect do you think it would have had on the next-gen console race?

They did announce the Wii U a long time ago. I'd agree with the statement, just like Sony and Microsoft a few years ago were probably expecting to have announced by now too.

It should have been out last fall, Nintendo's done nothing for the Wii for the last year but let it sit and die and lose further brand momentum.

Nintendo was too busy trying to revive the 3DS after a botched launched for most of last year unfortunately.

Probably, but last year was too early as they didn't yet have the 3rd party support they needed, and the console would have been at least $50 more expensive.

I'd rather have a console that's been thoroughly designed and tested with strong support at launch instead of a rush job a year earlier to fill an artificial void that would have made no difference in the grand scheme of things.

Heck, a year ago they were still working on the hardware. We just recently found out that it would support two U Pads and the pads themselves have been redesigned in the past year. It would have been nice to have an HD Nintendo console on the market earlier but I think it's right on schedule.

Probably but like someone already said it would have been at least $50 more expensive and the hardware would have not been as good. Would have run on 45nm chipsets architecture, now its pretty much confirmed that the launch units run on 32nm chipsets.

Maybe, but it would have been a 3ds repeat with no support and higher price. However its interesting that we know so much has changed in wiiu over the last year. Both controller and hardware. Rev5 just came out at e3

Exactly, I would imagine that the 3ds launch made them wait with the WiiU. To make it a bit cheaper and make sure the launch line up would be great this time.
I would have liked it last year though, and it might have cost them a lot of sales going to Kinect instead.

The Wii U is releasing this year, which is precisely when it should be launching.

Nah, this year makes more sense, and it's when I always figured it would be released. PS2 had a six year life span, and until recently when the Wii sales bottom dropped out from a dried up supply of games, it was following a similar sales trajectory to the PS2.