Nintendo Wii hardware info officially released

Just a few hours after Nintendo launched the Wii, its official Wii website has gone live with all the latest “specifications” of the company’s new console.

One of the main features that Nintendo is boasting is the fact that the Wii will be able to play over twenty year’s worth of Nintendo games. Not only that, the Wii will also be able to play all the classic Sega and TurboGrafx 16 games. Nintendo says that its Wii will also be able to support games from indie developers.

Whether or not users will be able to create home brewed software for the Wii will remain to be seen. The Wii will also accept 80mm GameCube discs.

Daily Tech - Nintendo opens up more details about its Wii console

The Wii will ship with a PowerPC CPU jointly developed between IBM and Nintendo. Nintendo says the codename of the processor is Broadway and was manufactured using a 90nm fabrication process.

System memory will come in at 512MB of internal flash memory. The Wii will also be home to a number of memory ports for reading back compact flash and SD cards and also be equipped with two USB 2.0 ports. For network communications, the Wii only comes equipped with 802.11b/g wireless capabilities but Nintendo says that a USB-to-Ethernet adapter will be available. Nintendo DS owners will be happy to know that their hand-held will be able to wirelessly communicate with the Wii.

On Nintendo’s official Wii hardware “specifications” page, the GPU of the console is listed as still being developed with ATI.

Guru3D - Nintendo Wii Hardware Info released

Nintendo said that its self-loading optical media bay will “play single- or double-layered 12cm optical discs for Wii”, as well as 8cm Nintendo GameCube discs. It is unclear whether Nintendo plans to use a proprietary format for the Wii, or will stick to traditional single-layer or dual-layer DVDs.

Wii game console will be able to work with three-axis motion-sensitive Wii Remote controllers as well as Nunchuk controllers. The Wii Remote also includes a speaker, rumble feature and expansion port, and can be used as a pointer within 5 meters of the screen. The Wii Remote has a power switch, plus pad, A, B, Minus, Home, 1 and 2 buttons. The Nunchuk controller includes an analog control stick and C and Z buttons.

X-bit labs - Nintendo Details Wii Game Console Hardware