Last nintendo Wii secret? anyone heard this one?

[mac000]

"At the E3 press conference Nintendo hinted that there are more "hidden" features for the Wii to be revealed and now it has come to our attention that in Nintendo Wii patents they have mentioned 2 audio input sources which most likely means microphone on the wiimote and VoIP for the Wii. To think of it - Wii is going to be always ON so calling from it using technology similar to Skype would be even easier than calling from a PC."


taken from gameboy-advace-rom.com, haha yea' i know.

anyone hear of this? it will be really interesting to see if that is / to me it def. seems possible, and would def. compete with xbox live.

[Dagless]

VoIP is possible. The hardware is there, assuming there is a Mic in the controller. Which would make sense, what with the DS and all.

Of course it won't be the secret, even if it is real.

[mac000]

VoIP is possible. The hardware is there, assuming there is a Mic in the controller. Which would make sense, what with the DS and all.

Of course it won't be the secret, even if it is real.


what are you thinking its along the lines of?

[Dagless]

what are you thinking its along the lines of?

Well seeing the last few major press releases from them have included a dual screened handheld, a gyroscopic phallic symbol and a drastic name change - I could not possibly make any guesses. They're being very radical this time round.

The Wii being powered by chocolate eclairs would be a realistic announcement for them.

[maddav]

Well seeing the last few major press releases from them have included a dual screened handheld, a gyroscopic phallic symbol and a drastic name change - I could not possibly make any guesses. They're being very radical this time round.

The Wii being powered by chocolate eclairs would be a realistic announcement for them.

I hope not, because I'll never get round to powering the Wii... :p

[FleurDuMal]

I think we all know what the secret will be.

It will be that the Wii will be High Def and will sport a mini-DVI out so I can use the Apple 30" Cinema Display that Nintendo plan to give away free with every Wii...:o

[Ja Di ksw]

I think we all know what the secret will be.

It will be that the Wii will be High Def and will sport a mini-DVI out so I can use the Apple 30" Cinema Display that Nintendo plan to give away free with every Wii...:o

I think you've been eating too many chocolate eclairs batteries :D

Do people think there is really another major hidden feature coming out? Something as major as the nunchuck, or even the built in microphone? I'm not saying they're wrong to think that, I'm just not sure I see something "major"ly important being announced this close to the release date (which will be Sept 14th. Please Nintendo? Please?). I think if something big was still out there, it would have been leaked on accident by a third party at this point. Wasn't the nunchuck leaked by EA on accident, talking about Madden?

[zap2]

Well seeing the last few major press releases from them have included a dual screened handheld, a gyroscopic phallic symbol and a drastic name change - I could not possibly make any guesses. They're being very radical this time round.

.


Don't the change the Wiis name, to much work up about it. And a dual screen handheld? For what? Thats what the DS is right?

[Counterfit]

They're being very radical this time round.
Revolutionary even? :D
The Wii being powered by chocolate eclairs would be a realistic announcement for them.
Well, you would need an emergency sugar source for those late-night Wii-Sports sessions.


I'm going to go somewhat bland and say a gun-type accessory (with detachable stock for rifle simulation) for all those awesome (and I guess not-so-awesome too) FPSs coming out.

[twistedlegato]

Its going to be a microphone.....AND...........Free HDTV's even though the wii cant use them:p

[thegreatluke]

HEY.

Maybe...
Voice recognition in all games?

So instead of clicking on a button to go somewhere you say it...
that's a bad example, but maybe some other interesting ideas?

[Dagless]

Actually! There is a mic in the controller, or in a headset at least. Nintendo copyrighted a system that determines the tone and mood of your voice AND use speech recognition to translate your voice to ingame text (tone and mood altering colour and text formatting). I think it's given there will be a mic, oh and the above points too :p

I've been thinking that perhaps the Wii has a 2D chip, after the 3D chip has processed the image it's passed through a specialised miniature 2D graphics card that simply adds a resize filter to spread the image up to any given resolution (within the chips power, of course). It means graphics will be pseudo-HD and require no extra coding for developers. Nintendo are applying a new rendering technique to Virtual Console games too. I suppose something like that would silence HD addicts and keep it extremely cheap to manufacture.

[rockthecasbah]

Voice recognition / use in games just seems far too gimicky for me. In reality it would just show up in a bunch of games with half-assed programming just to cram it into a game as another advertisable feature. Cool on paper, bad in execution. Voip, why not i guess it could work for talking on online games, but other use of it other than to communicate with another player, meh.

[plinkoman]

voip in a gaming console? ummm, why??

[Mackilroy]

To talk to other people, of course.

Why else?

[Tommyg117]

VOIP would be pretty cool, but I hope that there is something else as well. I think they will have something completely radical as well, or maybe the early september 14th launch is the secret;) Until we find out, I'm with Jimmi on the chocolate eclairs.

[Ja Di ksw]

Don't the change the Wiis name, to much work up about it. And a dual screen handheld? For what? Thats what the DS is right?

He was summarizing the last three big things they did. Made a dual screen handheld (the DS), made a gyroscopic phallic symbol (Wiimote or whatever it's called), and made a drastic name change (Revolution to Wii). He wasn't suggesthing things that they might do.

[Prom1]

There actually IS a microphone inbedded in the wireless new controller along with that small speaker. Nothing new hear. However how the implement it will be HUGE>

[GFLPraxis]

There actually IS a microphone inbedded in the wireless new controller along with that small speaker. Nothing new hear. However how the implement it will be HUGE>

And where did you hear this? Nintendo hasn't confirmed any microphone on the Wii remote, and there wasn't one at E3.

[mrgreen4242]

And where did you hear this? Nintendo hasn't confirmed any microphone on the Wii remote, and there wasn't one at E3.

It was announced in an IGN (I think) hands on sneak peak thing months and months ago. I have to leave for work in a minute, so I can't look up the link, but they used the system and (this was prior to the official speaker announcement perhaps, or just after) mentioned they played a "game" where the speaker was used as a mic (nothing special or unusual there - most speakers can be used as a cheap mic). If I recall right, the game was one of those things where you listen to a small recorded message, then whisper it back into the mic, and pass it to the next person, who listens to you message and re-records it. You go around the group and then the original message is played for everyone and the final one that was whispered into the mic and you see how much it changed.

I always took it as granted that the speaker on the Wiimote would work as a mic anyways - I mean, why not? Anyways, final secret is going to be that they are partnered with Apple, and the Wii is a FairPlay compatible device. You can stream iTunes to it ala with AirTunes, but more importantly you can stream iTunes TV video files to it and watch them on your TV.

The 'one more thing' is going to be that Apple is going to offer HD movies and TV shows (maybe start with just HD TV and DVD quality movies, moving into movies next year?) for download and the Wii will decode and play them via either specially burned DVD-R (DL?) or streamed from your Mac.

$200 HD movies player and huge selection of HD movies/TV shows for less than HDDVD or BR discs and Apple/Ninty will surpass both HD disc based formats as the HD medium of choice overnight. BlueRay in the PS3 will seem even more of a pointless waste of money, and the HDDVD addon for the 360 will flop... why buy a $150 add of for watching movies when you can get a second system that will play a cheaper format for $50 more?

:)

PS I like Jimmi's idea of a built in scaler - that would work well with the Wii being an online media hub, too. As for VoIP, I thought about that back when the speaker was announced... I think it'll be more akin the the XBox Live messenger or whatever, just letting you contact friends to see if they want to play Mario Kart or whatever, or leave them messages etc. I don't think it'll ring or anything like that when you "call".

[AP_piano295]

the wii may not have mic's?? then i dont want it

[Dagless]

the wii may not have mic's?? then i dont want it

then don't buy it :)

funny reason to want a console...

[mkaake]

I think the last secret will be the mic... honestly. I love big N, but I really think all the hype will be for a mic...

Kind of like a lot of the hype at E3 being based around... the speaker.

[mrgreen4242]

I think the last secret will be the mic... honestly. I love big N, but I really think all the hype will be for a mic...

Kind of like a lot of the hype at E3 being based around... the speaker.

I'm holding out for a software announcement. I think all the hardware features are, more or less, known. But, we know almost NOTHING about the software, other than that there will be an Opera browser and a multi system emulator with an online store attached to it...

[jdechko]

I think all the hardware features are, more or less, known.

Except pricing and the release date. :)

I think this will be the "Big One" for Nintendo. Sept 14 is an exclusive Nintendo date, is it not? All eyes will be focused solely on Nintendo, and I think this is the place where they'll announce price, date and contents for the Wii launch. I also think that a 6-8 week pre-launch period seems adequate for a first-to-mid-of-November launch. It should be plenty of time to launch a marketing campaign on TV and in the stores with the demo kiosks.

I think that they will also reveal more specifics about the software, mrgreen, but I have a feeling that it will be more about price and date.

[mrgreen4242]

Except pricing and the release date. :)

I think this will be the "Big One" for Nintendo. Sept 14 is an exclusive Nintendo date, is it not? All eyes will be focused solely on Nintendo, and I think this is the place where they'll announce price, date and contents for the Wii launch. I also think that a 6-8 week pre-launch period seems adequate for a first-to-mid-of-November launch. It should be plenty of time to launch a marketing campaign on TV and in the stores with the demo kiosks.

I think that they will also reveal more specifics about the software, mrgreen, but I have a feeling that it will be more about price and date.

Well that's hardly a secret feature of the system. I mean, we know it has a price and a release date, just not what. The original rumor we are all discussing is over another secret feature. I contend that it's software, not hardware, and will be revealed on the 14th along with full release info.

[srobert]

I don't think the last "secret" feature is something we should old our breath for. It's probably just something we're taking for granted.

A lot of people got disapointed last time a Wii "secret" was revealed (The Wimote speaker) because they had such high expectations. My guess is that it will be something small but interesting, like the Wiimote speaker.

[jdechko]

True, my bad.

[GFLPraxis]

It was announced in an IGN (I think) hands on sneak peak thing months and months ago. I have to leave for work in a minute, so I can't look up the link, but they used the system and (this was prior to the official speaker announcement perhaps, or just after) mentioned they played a "game" where the speaker was used as a mic (nothing special or unusual there - most speakers can be used as a cheap mic). If I recall right, the game was one of those things where you listen to a small recorded message, then whisper it back into the mic, and pass it to the next person, who listens to you message and re-records it. You go around the group and then the original message is played for everyone and the final one that was whispered into the mic and you see how much it changed.

I always took it as granted that the speaker on the Wiimote would work as a mic anyways - I mean, why not?

I googled but I could only find speculation and rumors, no confirmation or mention of IGN.

The only thing to point to the possibility of a microphone is that Nintendo owns the domain WiiKaraoke.com. But Apple has owned mammals.org, iphone.org, ikids.com, and ischool.com for years and never did anything with them.

Anyways, final secret is going to be that they are partnered with Apple, and the Wii is a FairPlay compatible device. You can stream iTunes to it ala with AirTunes, but more importantly you can stream iTunes TV video files to it and watch them on your TV.

The 'one more thing' is going to be that Apple is going to offer HD movies and TV shows (maybe start with just HD TV and DVD quality movies, moving into movies next year?) for download and the Wii will decode and play them via either specially burned DVD-R (DL?) or streamed from your Mac.

$200 HD movies player and huge selection of HD movies/TV shows for less than HDDVD or BR discs and Apple/Ninty will surpass both HD disc based formats as the HD medium of choice overnight. BlueRay in the PS3 will seem even more of a pointless waste of money, and the HDDVD addon for the 360 will flop... why buy a $150 add of for watching movies when you can get a second system that will play a cheaper format for $50 more?
While I like the idea, the problem I see is that I don't know if the Wii has the power to decode HD movies. The first HD-DVD players on the market had 2.5 GHz Pentium 4's and NVidia graphics cards powering them to play HD-DVD movies.

The Wii could certainly output a HD movie, if it could handle the decoding...which perhaps it could, depending on how it was streamed (which would take a huge amount of bandwidth) or what format it was encoded in.

480p would work at least.


PS I like Jimmi's idea of a built in scaler - that would work well with the Wii being an online media hub, too. As for VoIP, I thought about that back when the speaker was announced... I think it'll be more akin the the XBox Live messenger or whatever, just letting you contact friends to see if they want to play Mario Kart or whatever, or leave them messages etc. I don't think it'll ring or anything like that when you "call".

I thought of the VoIP thing to- IF it were to have a microphone, think of the Wiimote as a phone and the Wii as the hub for it.

[mrgreen4242]

Well, ATI is known for their video decoder chips, and it's not impossible the GPU could handle part or even all of the decoding. I'm not saying it's likely, just possible, and that if they pulled it off, it would probably become the standard for HD movies, surpassing HDDVD and BR almost overnight.

I googled but I could only find speculation and rumors, no confirmation or mention of IGN.

The only thing to point to the possibility of a microphone is that Nintendo owns the domain WiiKaraoke.com. But Apple has owned mammals.org, iphone.org, ikids.com, and ischool.com for years and never did anything with them.


While I like the idea, the problem I see is that I don't know if the Wii has the power to decode HD movies. The first HD-DVD players on the market had 2.5 GHz Pentium 4's and NVidia graphics cards powering them to play HD-DVD movies.

The Wii could certainly output a HD movie, if it could handle the decoding...which perhaps it could, depending on how it was streamed (which would take a huge amount of bandwidth) or what format it was encoded in.

480p would work at least.



I thought of the VoIP thing to- IF it were to have a microphone, think of the Wiimote as a phone and the Wii as the hub for it.