http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/ca...-on-dec-7/
Now, recent models of the Wii have already ditched Gamecube support so this revision's lack of it isn't surprising. It also lacks Wifi, but still has USB ports so it should still be able to connect online with one of those LAN adapters (I use one myself on the Wii U in fact, it's just a quicker and more stable connection, though not everyone has LAN ports run through their home).
Notably, this console has a very different design than either the Wii or Wii U, or even the 3DS XL. In fact, I'd describe it as EXTREMELY 80's, looking almost like the Famicom. It's been a while since I've seen that sort of very "rough" plastic (not just matte, very intentionally gritty), and that duel color thing it's got going, black and red, very 80's indeed.
Hopefully this thing will be labelled to prevent parents from buying it when they already own an older Wii.
If it really has no online support at all (even through a LAN adapter), yeah, that thing's a really bad idea... but otherwise, it's okay; it looks nice, for one, design-wise. Completely different, of course, but in a good way. Why is it Canada only, though? I mean, I know the PSP had a final, no-wifi revision that was only released in Europe, but... just Canada? What? I'm guessing something's wrong there.
But regardless, I guess it makes sense to release another, late Wii revision, like they did with the NES and SNES. I mean, why not?
It has two USB ports. There's no reason at all why they'd actively remove already programmed support for the LAN adapter from the OS when they put it on this hardware. I don't think the reporters were thinking about much more than the "missing wifi" reports. Yeah, missing Wifi is a bit of a mistake considering that these budget Wiis are likely to be living room bound and used as a set top box for Youtube, Netflix and Hulu. At least it has the LAN adapter option, but not many families will like finding out they need to buy an accessory for something like that as well as needing to string a cable across their house to the living room.
Well, either way it's interesting if only for the retro style alone. I'm sick of everything looking like an Apple product these days.
(Incidentally, I upgraded my avatar to Wii style. I finally found the font the Wii logo uses. A little late though... In a few weeks I'll likely upgrade it to Wii U style.)
Ah, so it's Canada only for this year, but might go to other markets next year. That makes more sense.
http://www.nintendo.com/wiimini/
So a lot of people now think the Mini lacks USB ports too. The official page doesn't list any support for USB accessories. That settles it, the device really is wholly offline. I think they're using Canada as a test market before rolling it out. Plus, they don't want to eat into Wii U sales just yet. If the device fails to take off in Canada, they may either scrap the redesign, or put a Wifi chip back in it. Heck I don't even think it has an SD card port, meaning anyone that adopts this won't be able to move saved data over to the Wii U.
I love the look, but that's about it. It's actually too heavily reduced in functionality from the Wii classic. I would LOVE to get one of those red Wii remotes though.
Well, while it does have a USB port, it looks like the internet connection settings options in the system menu were completely removed, so no internet at all with the Wii Mini. Also, it's looking like component cable support is probably gone too, for whatever reason.
Whatever, I dont get the future.
Missed this thread way back when, but yes I found out about what you mentioned all these months back ABF. It is SO bizarre that they'd remove the online options when physically it is still capable of using the one USB port with the LAN adapter. That's just Nintendo not even trying there, since removing the option outright doesn't really save them any money if the USB port is still there. And yes, they not only removed component support (yellow jack only), but they are using the same extremely cheap parts they used in the NES and SNES remodels, meaning vertical lines across the screen too. Yay!
At any rate, that Wii Mini still hasn't been released outside Canada, so it looks like it didn't do too well there either. Eh, that's for the best.
So anyone's guess what they're removing from the inevitable Wii U remodels. The SD card slot will probably be first to go, and I say this because the Wii U (at least as of this date) can't use the SD card slot for Wii U data. It exists purely for the original Wii OS to use.
No, the Wii Mini has also been released in the UK and some other parts of Europe. It may or may not release in the US sometime this year; we don't know.
But yeah, no online, no component (or anything else better than composite), no WiiWare or Wii Virtual Console, no SD card port, no Gamecube. It's really, really bad.
The 360's latest remodel removes features too, though -- the new 360 E has no component support, so it's composite or HDMI only. It also gets rid of the optical audio out jack, which angered some people. And the third PS3 model ditches the slot-load drive for a top-loader. All three are bad compared to the previous models... but the Wii's the worst by far, no question.
Huh... Well that means the 360 S is the best model of the 3. It adds a LOT more than it taketh away (the only thing it takes away is the custom memory card slot the first model had. This isn't any real loss because no games specifically targeted those slots (they were chosen in the OS), and standardized flash memory of all kinds can easily substitute. Worst case scenario, someone needs to transfer data from an original 360 to the 360 S, but even there a far better option is to use a standardized memory card, which a firmware update allows the original model to use. So while it does technically "take away" the slot, all actual uses for the slot are far better replaced with standardized memory solutions so nothing is really missing.
As for the PS3, while the third remodel only takes away the automated disc slot, remember that Sony's been taking features off the PS3 ever since the system came out. Even before the PS3 Slim, they had cut out two of the original four USB slots, memory card slots (in this case, these were standardized memory card slots, so they mattered just a little more, but only a little because one could use a USB adapter and plug the same 3 types of memory into that, but this does take up yet another USB slot, cutting it down to one), and let us not forget PS2 hardware slowly being leached out of the system. In the case of the PS3, the very first model, of which I'm lucky to be an owner, ended up being the very best one.
Ya know, the 360 S, a second revision model, actually being superior to the first model is a very rare thing in video game consoles. I can't really think of any consoles off the top of my head where a revised model was actually superior to the first (outside of internal revisions to fix fatal hardware flaws, like the poor quality disk drive in the original Playstation, or the faulty hardware in the original Famicom). In fact, only two systems come to mind. The A/V Famicom which added a higher quality video cable (composite instead of R/F) and removable controller ports, without removing anything else. Hmm, actually even there they never released a controller w/ microphone so games that used the microphone on controller 2 were out of luck. Hmm, the Sega Genesis 2? Yeah, that one was an all around superior version... well if you got the right internal hardware. Too many of the early revisions of that remodel had really poor audio and video. I happened to know exactly what to look for and snagged a later revision that had extremely good quality components, so mine's got great sound.
With portables it is a different story. There's actually a long line of success stories with portable revisions. The Gameboy Pocket is generally superior in about every way to the original, the Advance SP is essentially the DEFINITIVE Advance to get (it does lack a headphone jack, but this can easily be remedied if you have the headphone adapter, which isn't that big a deal at all to me). The DS Lite is superior in just about every way to the original DS, if you don't mind advance games sticking out a tad (it still ends up shorter than the original). Even the 3DS XL, a system I had originally brushed off as "something for old people", ended up becoming an extremely popular revision of the hardware which, as of the release of the Circle Pad Pro XL, is fully compatible with anything you could want from the original 3DS (though I still think the Circle Pad Pro's features should have simply been built into the remodel).
Weird thing about the mini? If ANY system this gen didn't need a smaller compact revision, it's the Wii. Very odd, but expected considering Nintendo's history.
Oh yeah, the Wii Mini does indeed get rid of the SD card port, and the 360 E also cuts one of the USB ports, so it has only four instead of five as the S did.
Quote: Huh... Well that means the 360 S is the best model of the 3. It adds a LOT more than it taketh away (the only thing it takes away is the custom memory card slot the first model had. This isn't any real loss because no games specifically targeted those slots (they were chosen in the OS), and standardized flash memory of all kinds can easily substitute. Worst case scenario, someone needs to transfer data from an original 360 to the 360 S, but even there a far better option is to use a standardized memory card, which a firmware update allows the original model to use. So while it does technically "take away" the slot, all actual uses for the slot are far better replaced with standardized memory solutions so nothing is really missing.
I'd forgotten that the first model had that... but yeah, that's no loss. The internal flash memory in the 4GB model more than makes up for that. It also added that internal wi-fi adapter, of course, instead of requiring an external one as the original 360 did.
Quote: As for the PS3, while the third remodel only takes away the automated disc slot, remember that Sony's been taking features off the PS3 ever since the system came out. Even before the PS3 Slim, they had cut out two of the original four USB slots, memory card slots (in this case, these were standardized memory card slots, so they mattered just a little more, but only a little because one could use a USB adapter and plug the same 3 types of memory into that, but this does take up yet another USB slot, cutting it down to one), and let us not forget PS2 hardware slowly being leached out of the system. In the case of the PS3, the very first model, of which I'm lucky to be an owner, ended up being the very best one.
What kind of memory card ports did the PS3 have at one point? I thought that using PS1/2 memory cards with it always required an adapter... but yeah, the slow removal of PS2 hardware was a definite issue.
Quote: Weird thing about the mini? If ANY system this gen didn't need a smaller compact revision, it's the Wii. Very odd, but expected considering Nintendo's history.
Well, it's actually only barely smaller. Not much size difference. The biggest difference is how different it looks (it's red and a toploader, after all).
Quote: Ya know, the 360 S, a second revision model, actually being superior to the first model is a very rare thing in video game consoles. I can't really think of any consoles off the top of my head where a revised model was actually superior to the first (outside of internal revisions to fix fatal hardware flaws, like the poor quality disk drive in the original Playstation, or the faulty hardware in the original Famicom). In fact, only two systems come to mind. The A/V Famicom which added a higher quality video cable (composite instead of R/F) and removable controller ports, without removing anything else. Hmm, actually even there they never released a controller w/ microphone so games that used the microphone on controller 2 were out of luck. Hmm, the Sega Genesis 2? Yeah, that one was an all around superior version... well if you got the right internal hardware. Too many of the early revisions of that remodel had really poor audio and video. I happened to know exactly what to look for and snagged a later revision that had extremely good quality components, so mine's got great sound.
The AV Famicom's one. How about the PC Engine (Turbografx)? The CD systems, particularly. The first model is okay (once repaired), but has some issues. The second model is even worse; it's got bad capacitors, like the Game Gear, TurboExpress, and such, and is the least reliable. The last two models, the Duo R and Duo RX (both Japan-only) are the most reliable models of the system, and are the most sought after. The second model Sega CD (the toploader) is also more reliable long-term than the first model, since toploaders last better than try-load drives. And as for the Genesis, for Genesis 1 vs. Genesis 2, which one is better depends on what you want; there isn't a clear winner.
So yeah, there are some systems which improved in their second revision, and even a few which were best in their third... but most third revisions are downgrades, that is certainly true, and so are some second revisions too.
A whole lot of systems produced around the same time had capacitor issues in a large number of their lines. I'm very surprised Nintendo escaped unscathed by that issue, but I think they were one of the few that weren't using capacitors from that particular manufacturer.
As for the PS3, the very first model, the one with full PS2 support, had 3 memory card slots. These weren't for the PS2/PS1 memory cards mind you (as you say, that required a special addon, which I actually have). They were for "Compact Flash", SD Cards, and Sony's own Memory Sticks. Yep, they had slots for all 3 major kinds of memory at the time (since then, memory sticks have died a quiet death, not helped by Sony inventing yet ANOTHER proprietary format for the Vita).