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Author:
Christain Cullen

Along with pretty much everything else about the Wii, including its name, Nintendo has kept the Wii specs pretty close to its collective chest. Given they're now out in the open, as well as available to software developers, this is a good time to take an in-depth look at the Nintendo Wii specs and find out exactly what you're getting for your money.

In all the fuss about the innovative Nintendo Wii controller, it's been hard to appreciate the underlying excellence of the actual box itself.

The CPU, known as Broadway, was developed and manufactured in association with IBM. It operates at 729 megahertz and bandwidth tops at 1.9 gigabytes per second. The graphics processing unit, developed by ATI, clocks at 243MHZ. It comes with three meg of onboard dedicated graphics memory and 24 MB of high-speed main memory.

The external main memory is 64megabytes of GDDR3 (MEM2) which can be accessed by both the CPU and GPU at a top speed of four gig a second.

The console itself is unusually small, significantly smaller than the PS3 or the Xbox 360. At 8.5 inches high, six inches deep, and a shave under two inches thick (16cm by 21cm by 4.5 cm), it's about the size of three DVD cases. Even with the stand it takes up less carpet or cabinet real estate than other consoles, and can be stood either vertical or horizontal.

In a real innovation, the optical disc drive (which glows blue) supports both the new 12cm single-sided double-layer game discs for the Wii, and the older 8cm GameCube discs. When a GameCube disc is inserted into the Nintendo Wii, the console automatically adjusts the speed of the GPU to suit the game. The drive reads at a maximum speed equivalent to DVDx6. Inserting a disc automatically turns the console on, and turning it off automatically ejects the disc.

The Nintendo Wii console supports a plethora of peripherals. It can process input from four Wii controllers at once. It also has ports, however, to take four GameCube controllers, increasing its backwards compatibility with the older console, as well as slots for two GameCube memory cards. (It's not, however, compatible with many of the GameCube's other peripherals, including its Game Boy player.) On top of this (not literally), the Nintendo Wii also sports two USB ports at the rear and one SD card slot in the front.

Nintendo is adamant that the Wii is compatible with all televisions, existing and forthcoming. It produces up to 480p NTSC or 576 pixels PAL. It works with projectors as well, and supports 16:9 widescreen modes. The console is Dolby ProLogic II capable, and the controller has its own speaker, adding a new dimension to surround sound gaming.

Intriguingly, the Nintendo Wii console connects wirelessly to the internet, even when it's off. It can download updates from Nintendo's WiiConnect24 support service at any time, and you can decide for yourself how paranoid to be about that. It connects wirelessly using IEEE 802.11 or a USB 2.0 LAN adaptor. Mii avatars can also be stored on the internet, or downloaded into the controller for transportation between different consoles.

The Wii also has a parental control mode, where the console can be set to refuse to play games rated above a certain level, highlighting Nintendo's concentration on the family gaming market. Game discs have their rating level encoded on to them, and ratings are keyed with the requirements for each local market.

All in all, even for a seventh generation console, the Nintendo Wii's specs are impressive.

For all the latest updates about Nintendo's new Wii console come visit http://www.ezysearch24.com/nintendowii where you will easily find resources on where you can pre-order Wii.

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A Quick Note From The Publisher... If you like the article above, you may be interested in the following article which is also related to Nintendo Wii... Will The Wii and PS3 Make a Buy for GameStop? As both Sony’s PS3 and Nintendo’s Wii will be released this month (November 2006), you might be interested in purchasing shares of this relatively new company, GameStop (GME) on the basis of increasing sales and revenue from selling these systems. While such a deduction may make sense for a fruitful appetite of purchasing shares, there may be some limitations to the success you may enjoy. As GameStop will be releasing earnings in about two weeks, there is much questioning in terms of how earnings will perform with these new systems coming out in a relatively short time. While these factors will not be directly observed in this quarter’s report, there is a high chance that an increase in consumer consumption on products GameStop sells will rise dramatically over the next few months. Already selling out of pre-orders for these revolutionary gaming consoles, with the strong support of games available for these systems, along with a high price retailed, for at least the PS3, loyal gamers, whether they can truthfully afford the system or not, will not be hesitant to immediately purchase their respective console as soon as they can. What that means is that a company like GameStop will seem a tremendous boost in fundamentals because of large sales and purchases. Already looking at margin increases over the past year after Microsoft’s Xbox 360 released, GameStop has produced over a 70% increase in revenue which includes doubling its operating income. If such fundamentals grew at such high levels just based on one system release, imagine how both Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PS3 will be beneficial to this company. While such may be a valid argument, other investors may say that since GameStop does not support the same P/E ratio that competitors such as Best Buy have and is...