Gonna have to agree, not a chance of a new Wii by 2009. The console is selling plenty strong enough to last a full 5 years, give or take a year.

The next Wii will come out after the format war has been resolved and the victorious format is cheap. It will have HD because HD will have broader adoption by then. The most substantial improvement will be a more sensitive and responsive Wiimote. The motion sensing is quite good now, but it's not perfect. Expect Nintendo to sink as much R & D into perfecting the Wiimote as possible. It will push hardware as powerful as it can while keeping the whole package cost at $300 or less.

Hm, I do believe I've made my first prediction. Now I fell like I belong here. ;)

WiiHD in 09 how can someone even think that,Nintendo after making a killing with Wii would shoot themselves in the foot in 2years lose ALL 3rdparty support and lose a possible 25-35million strong userbase only the stupidest company would do that,yeah Nintendo have been pretty stupid in the past by 1.During SNES,N64 eras setting stupid terms and conditions for 3rd partys to follow and 2.Not using CD's during N64 which have probably given alot more 3rdparty support and they would have kept the FF(main series)by doing that and N64 would have won Nintendo their 3rd gen in a row.Nintendo arent stupid enough to make WiiHD in 09 and if they do.......i cant come up with anything that stupid apart from eating all my clothes and staying naked forever BUT 'omgwtfbbq' is doing that and i dont like to copy.

@Game_Boy
Yeah, I figured that would come up, but I also figured it would be less of an issue than me saying PS3 (because the 6axis comes with the system).

I feel that a project that violates international patent law (and likely x360's EULA) probably isn't something that people can reasonably expect from their system.

Also, IIRC it doesn't actually retain the WiiMote's functionality - it just maps certain moves to a certain button. Not nearly 1:1 movement (or at least something very close to 1:1 movement)

That video was cool.I would prefer MotionControl if it was like that but it seems abit too sensitive on the Wii at the moment it looks ok there though.

I know, the setup looks very complicated with several layers of translation and compensation for game not being designed for Wiimote. It would never be viable.

Some of the posts here really making me laugh. Like graphical updated WII version would destroy Nintendo. Patcher thinks the very same way about that as I do. First of all economical for Nintendo it wasn't simply wise to create a console now with the real next gen graphics, HD support, bigger hardware as Nintendo was already selling louzy when it came to consoles. Not to imagine a normal gamepad and yes.. Nintendo was basically dead on console gaming. The cheaper hardware, therefore cheaper price tag and the controls has made the resurrection of Nintendo console gaming. Nintendo even admitted themselves that creating the WII was an amazing risk and only thanks to the high price tags of the 360 and PS3 plus the innovation of the WII controls, the WII is selling so much. Now when it's going economically better for Nintendo I don't see why we won't see a "WII" or any other kind of Nintendo console with HD support in a few years. And "even" Nintendo itself has said that HD support in the nearby feature might be an option, since many people are taking a step to HD Ready or even full HD televisions. So not only am I and a few others who agree with me idiots, but even more Nintendo is an idiot then.

http://www.t3.co.uk/news/247/games/gamecube/hd_wii_on_hold

Besides... a lot of people around here seem to forget the GBA Micro, GBA SP and "even" the DS Lite, which came nearly a half year after the normal DS.

Just skip to around 15 minutes to get the scoop.

No the other way around not, but PS3 has backwards comp as well? I don't see why recent WII games can't be played then.

And again... I'm not the only who's saying this, speculations are going around ever since the WII has been released.

It's reasonable for Nintendo to come out with a new model by 2009. However, if they do, it will not have high definition or other major changes that would cause software incompatibility. Some things possible for a new model that could be released soon include:

Color choices

Built in wired ethernet (instead of having to by a $20 USB adapter) for high performance online play.

Built in hard drive to replace or supplement the built in flash memory

Rechargeable batteries as standard.

Rumble also in the numchuck instead of just the wiimote. How did they miss this in the first design!

Color choices for the glowing led around the drive.  Maybe even have different colors mean different things. 

 

The only way I see Nintendo releasing a high definition version of the wii within 5 years of launch, is if the PS3 or some other model starts to outsell the wii. The more and longer the wii dominates sales, the less likely and less different changes will be.

You are actually fairly limited in your ability to create a revision to your hardware mid generation ...

Size and stlye changes are an obvious possibility and we could see a mini-Wii if Nintendo thought people would be interested; as they move to the 65nm (and eventual 45nm) process the CPU and GPU will produce less heat and can therefore be put into a smaller area without consern for overheating, and Nintendo could use a laptop optical drive.

Trivial resolution increases through upscaling are always a possibility but are generally not what people refer to as a Wii HD ...

Hypothetically speaking, if Nintendo abstracted a certain portion of lower level graphical functions (mainly dealing with output resolution and textures) they could produce a Wii system that had a higher output resolution, upscaled textures while maintaining bidirectional compatibility; essentially they would be able to enhance games in hardware the way software emulators have for years. This would be the least likely of the possible implementations.

Nintendo simply will not release a system that performs like the PS3/XBox 360 in 2009 because it will hurt them. They will be seen as abandoning the Wii after only 3 years which will annoy anyone who bought the Wii as well as developers who just got on board with the Wii. Consider both the person who bought the Wii for $200 in late 20008 and the developer who finally finished their PS3/XBox 360 title in Q4 2008 and began a Wii project; the gamer will not be happy because he will have to buy new hardware to play upcomming games, and the developer will not be happy because they will be expected to either increase development costs to release on a platform with a tiny userbase or to release a game to a dead system.

The fact of the matter is that people made similar claims about Nintendo releasing a follow up to the Gameboy Advance or Nintendo DS in 2006/2007 and we haven't heard anything; Nintendo will probably announce a new platform to replace the Nintendo DS at TGS 2008 which will be released in 2009.