Wii Details Emerge

Man I wish I could take credit for this story but the following post can be found at Cubed3.com. Over at their quality site, they had unearthed some new Wii details. Here is what they had to report:

"Firstly, Wii's remote will apparently run on AA batteries. Fear not though, as using the precise pointing functions continuously will give 30 hours of life, while using accelerometer functions only continuously will give around 60 hours of battery life. On average then, if you're using the two functions, there should be upwards of 40 hours uhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifsage before needing to change or recharge your batteries.

Next up is the long-speculated issue of internal memory inside the controller. Now, this has seemingly been confirmed, with 6kb of 'non-volatile memory'. While this isn't a lot, this could be used for storing profiles, meaning that each person in a household could have their own controller tied to them with their own personal account, and things such as online data or records may be able to be stored in it.

The SYNC button behind the front flap on Wii is confirmed to identify controllers nearby the system and assign them unique wireless IDs. It would be pressed first, then another SYNC button would be pressed on the Wii remote itself, similar to what you would do with a wireless mouse, though it is not known how often this would have to be done. IGN’s documentation also suggests that pressing the 1 and 2 buttons together at a certain point, presumably during boot-up, would do the same thing as pressing the SYNC button on the console.

The controller LEDs also have two functions – firstly, to show player number, which is obvious already, and secondly to show battery life. When starting up, a number of lights will flash – if four, the controller has 75% to 100% life left, three and it has 50% to 75%, two and it has 25% to 50%, and one to indicate 0% to 25% - time for a battery change!

The rumble is standard and does not change in sensitivity according to context, but quick flicks of the motor being activated and deactivated will apparently intensify the vibrations if a developer wants to do so. To add to this slightly disappointing news, the documentation confirms that there may be some interference on occasion from halogen lamps, mirrors, some plastics and fluorescent light sources, and to get around this the controller must make sure that it is identifying correctly with the sensor bar (which houses two sensors, one at each end of the 20 centimetre rod).

The final piece of information is speculation from IGN based on information in the design document. It seems that the Wiimote measures coordinates between 0-1023 on the X-axis and 0-767 on the Y-axis; therefore, it is almost seeing a megapixel image. IGN has come up with the thought that the pointer will somehow be able to act as a camera, which would solve the rumours of camera support in the system – could this be the last secret? This is entirely unconfirmed, though.

Remember that details are subject to change, and we wouldn’t be surprised if a rechargeable battery source was put into the controllers rather than AAs at the last possible moment. Also bear in mind that IGN seem to be the only ones with these design documents, so they may have misinterpreted them in some way".

Long post but some very interesting stuff indeed. What do you guys think? Do you think Wii will still have some secrets up its sleeve or has Nintendo not shown their full hand? Keep it here gamers, Game ON!