Nintendo Wii Mini Leaked

Looks like Nintendo had one more trick up its sleeve for this Holiday season (other than the new Wii U). Best Buy Canada seems to have jumped the gun and revealed there's a new Wii coming... and it comes in bright sexy red: the new Wii Mini.

It will be available on December 7th and it will cost $99. (Including a red Wiimote Plus - and there's also a red Nunchuck, though I don't know if it's included or you have to buy it separately.)

But, that's not all. Unfortunately, the "mini" doesn't refer only to its price. Besides the lack of GameCube discs support - something that the regular Wii as also lost since its inception - this mini Wii also lack internet connectivity. Meaning, although you'll be able to play your regular Wii games, you won't have access to any online services such as leaderboards and online multiplayer.

Depending on the type of games you play... you might be better off scraping the extra $50 (or even less) and getting the "full" Wii model - though I can understand there can be a huge market for people just wanting to enjoy the great collection of Wii games for the least amount of money possible.

Anyway... that's for Canada only... at least for now.

Spielberg on Wii

This is what you get when you let Steven Spielberg make a game:
Boom Blox for the Nintendo Wii.



Can't say it doesn't make me want to give it a try. :)

Double-Layer DVDs affect Wii

The latest game for Nintendo Wii: Super Smash Brothers Brawl is the first to use double-layer discs, and it's causing a lot of problems. Multiple reports of people experiencing lots of disc read errors have been complaining about it.

Now Nintendo has stated that these problems are probably due to dust build up on the DVD drive lens, as the double layer DVD requires more "sensitivity" to be read.
Drives that can read single-layer DVDs may fail when trying to read these DL DVDs.

The introduction of Dual-Layer DVDs seems to have been dictated by "copy-protection" reasons alone - as it's doubtful that such a game would require more than the disc space provided by single layer DVDs.
If that's so, lots of people will have problems when they buy this game, problems that would be avoided if they used a single layer DVD.
"Pirates" on the other hand, will continue to copy these games as usual, with reports of hackers already stripping the dummy data and placing the entire game in a single layer disc.

Making Money with the Wii

We all know the Wii is a money printing machine for Nintendo.
It has sold 14 million units in just one year, and there are no signs that it will stop selling.

So, can you make it print some money to you too?
Definitely you can!

In the UK, stores like Play are selling the Wii for £300 ($617 !), and nearly the same is being asked for used systems on Amazon, while GAME is completely sold out except for their £360 ($740 !!!) bundle.

And people used to say Sony PS3 was expensive! :)

So, if you can put your hand on some Nintendo's be sure to consider selling them on Ebay to our friends in the UK for a nice price...

This Christmas seems to be hard time to get a Wii in the UK - just like it happened last year.