Hasta La Gadget!

Turns out our snooping was spot on — Nintendo has just made official its intention to drop the suggested retail price of the Wii down to $149.99, and will additionally include a copy of Mario Kart and the Wii Wheel peripheral with all purchases of the console. They’ll replace the current bundle of Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort games. The steering wheel, along with the Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuk controllers, will match the color of the console you buy, whether it be black or white, and will also be available to buy separately for a scant $9.99. See Nintendo’s full press release after the break.

Continue reading Nintendo drops Wii price to $150 from May 15th, throws in a free Wii Wheel and copy of Mario Kart

Nintendo drops Wii price to $150 from May 15th, throws in a free Wii Wheel and copy of Mario Kart originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 May 2011 03:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nintendo has just announced it plans to introduce a successor to its Wii console next year, a “playable model” of which will be shown off at the E3 gaming expo in Los Angeles coming up on June 7th. No details are available as to how the next Wii will improve on the first one, though we imagine Nintendo will be happy if it simply matches the success of its current-gen home entertainer — the brief note publicizing the new roadmap also comes with a total of Wii sales accumulated between its launch in ’06 and the end of last month: 86.01 million. That’s said to be on a “consolidated shipment basis,” so maybe Nintendo is mixing its definitions of sales and shipments the way Sony likes to, but it’s a mighty big number either way. Bring on E3, we say!

Update: Bloomberg has provided the first official hint about Nintendo’s next console with a quote from company President Satoru Iwata. Nintendo will “propose a new approach to home video game consoles,” though it won’t be a simple move to 3D, as Iwata notes “it’s difficult to make 3-D images a key feature, because 3-D televisions haven’t obtained wide acceptance yet.” Given that motion gaming is no longer new and 3D is off the table until 3DTVs go mainstream, we’re now left facing only one potentiality — Nintendo is planning on bringing genuine innovation to our living rooms. We suppose it also adds fuel to the rumor of a crazy next-gen controller to go with this next-gen console.

Continue reading Nintendo confirms next Wii coming in 2012, will preview it at E3

Nintendo confirms next Wii coming in 2012, will preview it at E3 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 03:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nintendo’s kid-tested, researcher-approved Wii Balance Board has struck at the heart of the medical supply industry yet again — this time, the Bluetooth-connected scale is being used to help physically challenged children at Shriners Hospital in Houston. Seniors at Rice University hand-machined a set of force-sensitive parallel bars and programmed a monster-shooting game called Equilibrium to get kids excited about improving their walking gait, where they can play and score points with each proper step they take. The game automatically ratchets up the difficulty as patients improve, and handrails will play a part too, with a custom three-axis sensor box able to detect how much patients rely on the parallel bars (and dock points accordingly) in an effort to improve their posture. Yep, that sounds just a wee bit more useful than the Balance Board lie detector or the Wii Fit Roomba. Video after the break.

Continue reading Students use Wii Balance Board for kids’ physical therapy system (video)

Students use Wii Balance Board for kids’ physical therapy system (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 17 Apr 2011 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another year, another chance for Nintendo to deliver what it’s alternately denied and teased since day one — a successor to the Nintendo Wii capable of displaying games in high resolution. Will Nintendo finally make it happen? Multiple totally anonymous sources say yes: they told Game Informer, IGN and Kotaku that just such a system will debut at E3 2011 in June, possibly with a teaser of some sort next month. While the ninja moles didn’t provide many hard details — mostly just the typical iffy claim that the system will wipe the floor with competitors in terms of speeds and feeds — they told IGN that it will support 1080p resolutions and be backwards-compatible with games for the Wii. Naturally, we’ll believe it when we see it… so here’s hoping we see it fairly quickly.

Wii HD rearing long-rumored head at E3 2011? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Liquid-cooled Wii takes console mods to a ridiculous extreme originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 05:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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