Don't worry, Wii Remote - you still have a few more years left to live!

Some new details from Kotaku (unsourced, of course, as usual) tell us that the Wii 2’s controller measures exactly 6.2 inches in size, and has eight buttons, echoing the very first “leak” we heard almost word-for-word.

The more interesting part of this report, however, is that Project Café’s controller is designed to co-exist with the Wii Remote or a Wii Remote-style controller. Some games would benefit more from using the motion-centric wand-like option, while others (perhaps the more hardcore-oriented titles) would stick to the touchscreen gamepad.

It is unknown at this stage whether Nintendo will release a new “Wii 2 Remote” or whether they will continue to use existing Wii Remotes, but I’m willing to bet that they’d go for the second option, if for no other reason than that the controller would probably be virtually identical, and would save the 70-million or so existing Wii owners from having to re-buy what is essentially the same device with a new logo on it. That’s just my opinion, though – who knows, the “Wii 2 Remote” may turn out to be drastically different from the Wii’s.

Incidentally, what we’ve just heard sounds eerily similar to a prediction a user made a few days ago.

With all the crazy Wii 2 rumours flying around, it’s unavoidable that someone finally decided to publicly ridicule them. Feature after feature has been getting announced, from a touchscreen controller to a freakishly powerful GPU. Penny Arcade has done just this in one of their more recent comic strips, which I just happened across. To summarize it would be to ruin its comic effect, so just the break to see it! But be warned – they make a slight sexual reference in there, albeit for a very brief moment. Continue reading…

Admit it, Miyamoto: we all know what you're up to.

In an interview earlier today, Shigeru Miyamoto was naturally quizzed about the Wii’s successor. He pretty much confirmed that it was on its way, telling us to “be patient” while he and Nintendo decided when they would announce it. Here’s the full quote from EDGE Magazine:

Speaking at a behind closed doors event in London today, the Nintendo legend was inevitably quizzed about the rumoured Wii successor, which we first reported on late last week.

“Don’t ask!” he said. “Even when the Wii launched we were developing new hardware, work on 3DS had already started. It’s a matter of when we announce it.”

Pressed on whether we can expect an announcement at E3 in June, Miyamoto said: “Please wait. Be patient until we decide.”

In a separate interview, he later acknowledged the Project Café codename, telling us that he read the rumours about it and that “it’s normal” for speculation about their next console to arise. “You know, for Nintendo, as with the other platform holders, our job is to create new hardware,” he said.

In a new outpour of unsourced leaked information, IGN had a whole ton of new information to reveal.

First of all, they claim to know that the Wii 2 may be called the “Stream.” However, they note that this is only one of several names Nintendo is considering for the console.

Next, they reconfirmed that every controller has a touchscreen built into it, and that games can be streamed to them. However, IGN mentioned that the console is so powerful that it may be possible to provide an entire virtualized console for every controller.

The console’s design will supposedly look like a modernized version of the SNES, and be roughly the size of an original-model Xbox 360.

Moving on, IGN says that the console will probably cost between $350-$400, due to its relatively high manufacturing cost. Along with that, they announced that it’s being manufactured by the Taiwanese company Foxconn – no big surprise there, as Foxconn already manufactures the overwhelming majority of our electronics. The first units will supposedly begin shipping out in October, meaning the earliest possible release date is between mid-October and November; but it’s far more likely that Nintendo will wait until 2012 to release the system, so they can spend time building up a large supply of units and quality launch titles.

Lastly, IGN reconfirmed that the system will utilize a GPU from AMD’s R700 series, which is noticeably more powerful than the PlayStation 3’s GPU. It was also restated that the Wii 2’s processor was a custom triple-core solution by IBM similar to the Xbox 360’s, but running at far higher clock speeds. They mentioned support for 1080p and stereoscopic 3D output as well, but the latter will probably not become a staple feature of the system.

Remember, all this is still strictly rumour and should not be taken as fact. However, they are so confident in their sources that they wrote this article to explain why you should trust what they say. You might want to have a read through it if you’ve got doubts.

Yesterday, an image of what was thought to be a Wii 2/Project Café document leaked out, depicting a number of controllers for the system. It also included a colourless schematic of the Wii 2 console itself, which looked like an unexciting white box.

Today, that box suddenly gets a bit more exciting. Nintendo Master published a new picture today which appears to reveal the unit in its full glory. They note that if the image is, in fact, real, it is one of a development kit, so it may not look exactly like the unit that consumers will get to buy in stores. See the image after the break. Continue reading…

From another French site comes another juicy tidbit of news: GameBlog.fr had the chance to sit down for an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto. Naturally, one of the questions that was asked pertained to the Wii 2/Project Café. Miyamoto answered by saying that Nintendo “is always working new hardware” and that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” – meaning that if the rumour mill’s starting to spin about the Wii’s successor, it probably means it’s close to daylight. He did, however, warn us not to believe everything we read online, implying that some of our earlier rumours may have turned out to be false (and one already has).

In the same interview, Miyamoto also reconfirmed that he’s aiming to release Super Mario 3DS this year, is still working on a new Pikmin game, revealed what they’re planning to do for The Legend of Zelda’s 25th anniversary, and a few more little nuggets you might find interesting. Check this translated and summarized post on NeoGAF for those.

Thanks, Jikayaki!

You can put those fears of Microsoft’s and Sony’s next consoles prematurely crushing the Wii 2 to rest now, as “industry sources” have told Kotaku that both of Nintendo’s competitors are gunning for 2014 to release their new consoles. By the sound of the (anonymous, as always) report, Microsoft have just barely begun to develop the successor to the Xbox 360, not even knowing what parts will be going into it; and Sony are still trying to milk every last sale out of the PlayStation 3.

This means that Nintendo could potentially remain uncontested in the eighth generation of consoles for quite some time, allowing them to build up a solid reputation before Microsoft and Sony even have a chance to react. The best they could do if they feel “pushed,” according to Kotaku’s source, is hastily move their new console launches to 2013 – still most likely an entire year after the Wii 2 will have come out and caused an international gaming sensation.

Good news, if the word on the Wii 2’s incredible graphical capabilities is to be believed. In a recent interview, Crytek assured us that the latest edition of their legendaray CryEngine, CryEngine 3, was designed with the next generation of home consoles in mind.

We’ve been considering the next generation and what it will likely consist of for many years now, so everything we did in CryEngine 3 has been with an eye on future hardware architectures.

We’ve been waiting for the next generation of consoles since we released Crysis 1, as the high end PC features we invented back then will be pretty standard on next gen consoles, we believe. Developers can work with CryEngine 3 right now, running real-time GI, sub-surface scattering, movie quality camera effects, etc. in vast worlds with extreme complexity and be confident that the technology they are working with will be scalable to the next generation.

~Carl Jones, Crytek

This is awesome news because developers can start working with CryEngine 3 on computers right now, and (assuming that CryEngine 3 will play nice with the Wii 2, which Crytek seems to be confident in) know that they’ll be able to get their game onto a major console platform once they’re able to get development kits for it. Add Crytek to the list of companies we can expect to hear more from in the hopefully not-too-distant future…

Not too long ago, we got a report that Retro Studios are busying themselves with a sequel to Eternal Darkness. Now, we’ve got another rumour telling us we’re in for a sequel to one of 2010’s best Wii games, Donkey Kong Country.

The new rumour comes courtesy of Fudzilla. While the elegance of the language isn’t the best and the story is sourced as coming from “back chatter,” a DKCR sequel is almost certainly more in line with the earlier talk about Retro making something that “everyone wants.” The game was supposedly originally in development for the Wii, but in a Super Paper Mario-like turn of events, has been moved to its successor. That would fit in with my prediction that developers have only just recently begun to receive Wii 2 development kits.

Another possibility is that Retro is working on two games at the same time, though I highly doubt that this is the case as they are a relatively small studio. But who knows?

An earlier rumour of Grand Theft Auto V set to make an appearance as a Wii 2 launch title (naturally) caused much stirring in the gaming community. It seems that rumour took a real punch now, as Games.On.Net has been contacted by its original source, 01net, and made aware of a glaring error: nothing was ever mentioned about GTA 5 – 01net only meant to say that Rockstar had their hands on a development kit. Here is the full letter from 01net:

We did publish a story on Monday about Rockstar, but to say that the British studio already have a devkit. Nothing more. We have absolutely no idea about whether or not a GTA V is planned on Wii 2, nor if Rockstar is willing to have a launch title.

Our details about the NGP specs and then the Wii 2 “project Café” console are serious and we try not to be engaged with unserious rumors.

This doesn’t mean that Grand Theft Auto V isn’t coming to the Wii 2, or that it won’t be a launch title, but it definitely moves the possibility from “could actually happen” back to “wishful thinking.” For now, though, consider the rumour debunked.