X-bit labs

Nintendo’s Wii May Launch Earlier than Expected.

Category: Multimedia

by Anton Shilov

[ 07/07/2006 | 03:06 AM ]

Nintendo, which has publicly stated that it would release its Wii game console at approximately the same day with Sony’s PlayStation 3, may release its game machine code-named Revolution much earlier, in September or October, according to analysts.

Paul-Jon McNealy, who covers consumer and gaming software sector for American Technology Research, reportedly wrote in one of his recent reports that Nintendo has initiated production of the Wii game console and anticipated that October release of the game console would be reasonable, reports CNN Money web-site.

The column over CNN Money also claims that Microsoft’s first Xbox 360 did not roll off the assembly line last year until 69 days before the on sale date of November, 22, which was the reason behind the shortages of the console. Given that there are 85 days left till the first of October and over 130 days till the launch of the PlayStation 3 (on the 17^th of November), it can be assumed that by beginning Wii production now Nintendo either wants to make a huge amount of consoles, or plans an early launch.

Nintendo said, its new game console, which is called Wii and which features motion-sensitive game controller, will retail for “less” than ¥25 000, which is currently about $225, a price-point, which was anticipated by analyst earlier this year. The console may really end-up costing just about $199, just a predicted. In addition, the firm is reported to have said that it would ship about 6 million game consoles at launch, just like Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., which has not yet started manufacturing, according to the column.

Nintendo Wii console will feature IBM’s custom PowerPC architecture based microprocessor named Broadway clocked at 729MHz and code-named Hollywood chip with built-in graphics core, DSP and I/O features from ATI that will operate at 243MHz, earlier reports suggested. Nintendo revolution will use 91MB of memory in total: 23MB of “main” 1T-SRAM, 64MB of “external” 1T-SRAM and 3MB texture buffer on the GPU. Nintendo’s Wii does not feature a hard disk drive, instead, it boasts with 512MB of flash memory, but the console will also have a card reader, which will allow installing more memory.