Hi,
I am posting this in the rumours thread as it is probably the best place for it.
I have great info on the Wii and I am pretty sure this hasn't been reported anywhere else. In fact, I can't believe that this information has come my way and it's taken something this big for me to sign up with a Revo-Europe account as I have been visiting this site for years but never actually contributed.
I don't expect you all to believe me as I know what you will probably think as this is my first post but I know what I have seen and hope that in a few months time when this is proven true, my post will be on here as proof !
Big Nintendo fan here, so when I came across this I almost bricked it.
I worked for a pretty big media company in London. Well I did until I a few weeks back when I moved companies and now that I'm doing something completely different I can't see me getting in any trouble for this. Please note that although it was a media company, I didn't actually work for anything media related at all. And I never signed no NDA as my job was totally unrelated and I came across this completely by accident.
Anyway, my old company only really did a few projects for Nintendo, none of them major. In the past I have seen Nintendo DS VIP boxes as well as various in-store promotional material. But nothing particularly major and probably lots of things I don't know about.
I know they got a big contract earlier this year from a major software company and I can only presume this is Nintendo based on what I have seen.
Anyway, sometimes as part of my job I had to work in different offices and there was this one time when I saw Nintendo box designs showing the Wii. This was before E3 but not long before and I am pretty sure they were incomplete or just prototypes. But I know in one office I saw box designs with both the Wii and DS Lite on the same packaging. I can only assume from this that Nintendo are planning some kind of duel console deal. I also saw several box designs which had a Wii on them and then in one corner a game which I think was Metroid Prime, Zelda and Wii Sports but it was called Wii Play then so I don't know if they changed the name or are going to change the name. All I know is what I saw !
There was a camera on one of the boxes and I think it was external but I didn't get much time to look at that one. But the best thing by far I saw was some kind of "standards" brochure that had been produced. I think this may have been a Nintendo thing but it was very well presented but pretty technical and didn't look like something for consumers. Now I barely looked at this as I was bricking it that someone would walk in on me but it showed what I can only describe as TV's, PC's, DVD Players and other household devices that had Wii logos on them (a bit like the ATI badge on the Gamecube). They weren't Nintendo products or anything like that, I don't think Nintendo are about to start making TV's. What I got from the document and the bits of text I read is that the Wii itself isn't just a console but some kind of technology which hardware manufacturers can add to their devices which, I think, allows those devices to basically have built in Wii consoles. So the chipset can basically be added to TV's and the like by the manufacturer. Kind of like a TV might have a Freeview tuner or a built in DVD player. I don't know if this is the hardware secret that Nintendo are holding off on announcing but it's pretty significant if Nintendo intend to promote the Wii as more of a cross device technology than just another console, and something that anyone can license to include in their electronic device.
The weird thing is that it didn't really click at the time because this was before the Wii name was announced and I didn't think they would ever choose a name like that. Only when I saw the Wii name up in lights did I actually believe that what I saw was genuine and not just experimental stuff.
So there you go, make of it what you may. I hope somebody finds this interesting. I am glad to get this off my chest as I have been bursting at the seams and checking the games news (and this thread!!!) every day waiting for this stuff to be announced before I finally gave in and got the courage to post somewhere.
Thanks for reading.
