There has been a lot of threads about PS3 and X360 making the jump to the 45nm technology, making production costs go down and making the consoles more efficient and reliable.

As far as I know Nintendo has never announced that they will use 45nm technology on the Wii but it seems like a natural move since they will lower production costs and make even more profit from every console sold. Do any of you know if Nintendo will do this?

As for the second question of the title, do any of you think the Wii will be redesigned? Nintendo has never redesigned consoles (only handhelds) and I don't know if the Wii could possibly be made any smaller than it is right now, although that isn't really necessary it would be very cool. Maybe using 45nm technology they could!

The PSP is on par with the PS2 in technical specifications, and the Wii must be about 4 times more powerful than a PSP, that difference in power wouldn't make a big difference in size!So maybe someday the Wii will be the size of a PSP just being bigger because of the DVD drive! And of course leaving the power brick outside the console.

Any possibilities here? 

What would be Nintendo's incentive to redesign the Wii at this point?

^It would lower production costs. More profit per Wii unit or maintaining their profit margins at a lower retail price.  Technically, the consumer would not have to know of the change.  It would not do anything new that any other Wii couldn't do, so it would not exclude any of the 25 million current Wii owners from future games.

Cost-reduction.

Whether or not they intend to shoehorn it into a smaller form factor down the line, it makes sense to shrink it and use it in the current case. They'd get more chips per wafer and heat production would be cut down. From there they could potentially reduce heatsinks, fans, etc. thus further cost-reduction and still more profit.

Beyond that, I'd certainly love to see a Wii that's literally the size of a DVD case with the ability to upscale to 720p.

I predict only new colors.
That's more thn enough to give a boost on Wii sales.
Nintendo haven't redesign the last consoles.

Consider this...

The overhead for a redesign would include R&D for the new chipset, testing, Q&A, risk analysis, multiple levels of support for new and old, redesign of packaging to reflect altered contents, and retooling their production lines for a new SKU.

The cost savings would have to be very significant to warrant a new SKU at this stage in order to cover the overhead. Considering that Nintendo is already making bags and bags of money on their current one without changing anything, it would be foolish to change anything at this point.

Why do I get the feeling that most people saying "cost-reduction" don't know what they're talking about? -_-

Ninetndo has redesigned consoles in a way.

Snes redesign for the USA. Released after the N64.

Source: http://www.friendcodes.com/forums/past-nintendo-generations/82128-my-snes-looks-more-like-a.html

  The NES redesign relesed towards the end of the nes's life.

Source: www.n-sider.com/hardwareview.php?hardwareid=20

iQue was a redesign of the N64, only released in China.

Source: http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/mallorcadisco/infoconsolas/paginas/Nintendo/IQue/IQue.htm

To the best of my knowledge all of these were legitimate ninty based redesigns

Of course there isn't any necessity for a Wii redesign on the outside, but on the inside of the console a jump to the 45nm technology would make the console cheaper to manufacture, so it's a very logic move.

If production costs can be lowered by making the console smaller then business wise it seems a natural direction to take. And we all know console redesings boost sales, something Nintendo doesn't need right now, but maybe in a couple of years.

Technology on the Wii isn't new except the one in the wiimote, and that's in the controller, not in the console. I'm pretty sure a handheld with the power of the Wii could be made, so that means that the Wii could be even smaller, the only part that I believe can't be made smaller is the DVD drive.

A redesign =/= cost reduction. But generaly re-desined consoles are cheaper than the predcessor due mainly to the shrinking and improved efficiency of internal components.

http://www.vidgame.net/NINTENDO/SNES2.htm

 Uh, I owned this one....