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Nintendo not planning for new hardware soon

by on26 February 2010

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Plenty of life left in the Wii

A variety of sources are claiming that Nintendo thinks that there is a lot of life left in the Wii and they have no immediate plans for a new hardware platform. The quote seems have been attributed to Cammie Dunaway from Nintendo.

The exact quote that we have seen goes similar to this, “I don’t think it’ll be anytime soon,” when recently asked about the possibility of a future console at a Nintendo Summit event. While it is hard to tell how accurate the statement is, we have to think that despite some numbers being tossed around (like the fact that Nintendo has only sold 28 million Wii consoles and Sony has sold 50 million PlayStation 2 consoles) this has little to do with the reality that the Wii is based on a much older hardware platform.

Dunaway is also quoted as saying, “…part of Nintendo’s heritage is to always be looking at innovation.” While Nintendo might not yet have anything new to announce, we have to think that some sort of development is taking place to get the company in the mode of designing a new console for the future.

While who knows when that exact time might come, we have to think it might be much sooner than Dunaway is letting on. The sheer fact that the Wii offers no HD support is becoming more and more an issue. In addition, the retread and recycled GameCube graphics are leading to the console’s inability to handle many of the high-end titles that have to be dubbed down significantly to run on the Wii platform. This has to be of concern to Nintendo, especially when so many developers seem disappointed by the sales of their titles on the Wii.

While the Wii continues to serve an important niche in the marketplace for family gaming as well as appealing to younger children, we have to wonder if this alone will allow the platform to continue to grow significantly enough to continue to extend the Wii’s life cycle. Sounds like a lot more questions than answers, but our sources assure us that Nintendo is keeping an eye on things, perhaps better than they are letting on.

Last modified on 26 February 2010
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