Nintendo Wii 2 Gets Rumored Features, E3 Reveal Likely

The games industry has been set ablaze by recent reports concerning a successor to the massively popular Nintendo Wii console, with many publications and websites citing inside sources and revealing details about the new device.

Nintendo's Wii home console is starting to show its age, with sales slipping each month, while rivals like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 are reaping the benefits.

As you can imagine, many industry pundits are trying to find out if Nintendo plans to release a new device in order to keep the dominance it earned with the Wii.

We already heard a few weeks ago that Nintendo could make an official announcement about a Wii 2 (or Wii HD) at this year's E3 conference, but now, various inside sources are claiming that this reveal is a certainty, and that the Japanese company is already in serious talks with third-party developers and publishers about starting work on games made especially for the new console.

First up, we have Game Informer, who says that the Wii successor will support high-definition resolutions, just like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, but it's not exactly clear if it's going to match the two consoles in pure hardware power.

The magazine says that an announcement could be made at E3, if not sooner, and that the system will be released on the market next year, giving developers enough time to get some titles ready for launch.

It seems that Nintendo has learned from the mistakes made with the Wii, which wasn't supported that much by other developers, and will create a serious relationship with them in order to get lots of games for the platform.

Kotaku reports pretty much the same thing, but reveals that the new Wii console is going to be more powerful that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in terms of hardware.

CVG arrives with the biggest speculation, as its own inside source claims that the controller for the Wii has a built-in high definition screen.

As unreal as that may sound, the website says that it’s unclear how the screen will work, but this might be the big, next generation feature of the Wii 2, just like motion control was for the original console.

"Nintendo's plans sound unreal," CVG's source said. "Publishers are already planning launch titles and it's all very exciting. The hardware is even more powerful than current HD consoles and backwards compatible with Wii. The controller will be all-new and has a HD screen on it."

Overall, it seems that the Nintendo Wii successor is all but confirmed for an E3 reveal, so we'll just have to wait and see what other details appear until then.