We’re some days out from E3 , that magical place where dreams are made and fanboys and women from all walks of life are simultaneously appeased and slightly disappointed. Surprises are expected from the entire big three this year — particularly Nintendo. How will the gaming giant top last year’s 3DS debut ? All signs point to the announcement of a Wii followup, which we’ve heard alternately known as the “Wii HD” and “Project Cafe.” Rumors, leaks, and the occasional little bit of confirmed information were rampant within the months and weeks leading as much as the development. We’ve weaved all of it together into one handy guidebook, to ensure that we’re all at the same page, come Tuesday morning.
Let’s start with a real little bit of information: back in April, the company’s CEO, Satoru Iwata, confirmed that Nintendo is, actually, engaged on an HD followup to the Wii it’s probably due out in 2012. several days previous to that revelation, the requisite blurry images of console concepts surfaced, detailing controllers with embedded touchscreens that display the system’s 1080p gameplay via a technology called Stream Screen. These certainly weren’t the primary concepts of the console we have seen — they usually were apparently first dropped at light by the parents at 4Chan.
In May, controller rumors turned much more DSi -like, after an “insider” let slip that they’d also pack front-facing cameras for snapping images, potentially letting users live out fantasies of getting their heads pasted on Link’s body. a couple of days later, Swedish tech site TechRate.se had the above images of the black and white plastic consoles, which perceived to line up with the sooner leaked concepts.
Halfway during the month, the above video, claiming to be footage from a closed developer meeting, popped up on YouTube, complete with similar blueprints and a plastic console kind of matching those we’d seen before, which the woman within the video keeps gesturing wildly at, seemingly for our benefit. The month wrapped up with a huge reported spec leak, outfitting Project Cafe with a 766MHz AMD RV770 processor, 512MB of XDR2 DRAM, Blu-ray support, the long predicted HD video, and backward compatibility with both GameCube and Wii discs. Additional info are located within the links below — in spite of everything, you might have about a days to kill before the thrill really starts.
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