185w ago - Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has confirmed that in the near future it will test out providing demos on the WiiWare service.

Apparently the reason why demos will be provided on the network is because Nintendo wants to try and lure in new shoppers to the service.

To quote: "During the Q&A session at a recent earnings briefing, Iwata told investors that Nintendo would begin a test program for WiiWare demos some time this month. The test will cover just a few titles.

According to Iwata, Nintendo is undertaking this test to see if it can get more players shopping on the Wii Shopping Channel.

He admitted that the market for WiiWare and DSi Ware is currently small, with the Wii Shopping Channel and DSi Shop browsed only by people who already know the game they want to get."

186w ago - According to Artik of French site Logic-sunrise.com, the Nintendo Wii 2 is allegedly set to arrive in 2010 and include Blu-ray and 1080p support.

This rumor appears to stem from an internal source of the marketing department at Nintendo France, however, little information is available to substantiate it unfortunately.

To quote from Ripten (linked above): "It could be that it wasn't posted on the French site itself although that wouldn't make much sense.

All in all, the rumored "leak" states that Nintendo is working on a Wii sequel with the following:

• The Wii2 system will feature a Blu-Ray drive with a secondary aim of stopping piracy.
• 1080P and lower resolutions will be supported, for blu-ray movies and games.
• The release date is scheduled for third quarter of 2010.
• The release will be worldwide and on the same day for all countries.
• A scheme will be available in which it is possible to trade in the original Wii for a cheaper price on the new Wii 2."

188w ago - As a follow-up to our Nintendo Wii WODE Demos article from earlier today, we now have some Wii WODE final design pictures to share.

A few of them are below, with the rest available HERE. Finally, in case anyone missed the pricing and WODE specs here they are: 79,90 € incl. the vertical stand.

Features:

• Play Wii & GC game ISOs direct from USB Mass Storage
devices @8X read speed (HDD and FLASH drive)
• Complete Solder free install solution
• Easy to use GUI - LCD & Joystick - NO homebrew software
required (no any update of console SO can block this device)
• Region hack, Update blocker, Autoboot.
• Passthrough with FLAT-MOD mode built-in, play your DVD-R
Wii & GC backups and Imports @3X read speed
• Totally Flexible Linux Kernel
• USB hub support for multiple USB devices connection

Great File System support - use existing WBFS formatted
media or 'drag and drop' ISOs to existing USB devices

• NTFS
• WBFS
• EXT3FS
• HPFS

188w ago - A few weeks ago we announced news of the new Nintendo Wii WODE alongside the WODE Jukebox.

Today we have a few videos of the WODE in action. The first is from the Defcon1 demonstration of WODE loading and playing GameCube games from a USB HDD (NTFS formatted).

The second video below demonstrates "The Impossible Mission" where the WODE demo loads Metroid Prime Trilogy from an NTFS game image.

Finally, our Wii Forum Moderator cfwprophet will soon be posting a WODE review on our dedicated PS3 News Reviews page.

Until then, heck out the videos below!

188w ago - Today shagkur and wntrmute have released DevKitPPC rev18 and libogc 1.8.0 along with libfat 1.0.5.

DevKitPPC is a port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and includes a C (gcc) and C++ compiler (g++), a debugger (gdb) and associated utilities, with the architecture "powerpc-eabi".

Download: DevKitPro SourceForge

It also includes standard C libraries based on newlib, which is specifically designed for embedded systems. Compilers and libraries are also included for the MN10200, the Matsushita (Panasonic) chip used in the Wii DVD controller. It is designed to be used in conjunction with libogc, a collection of Wii-specific low-level libraries.

libogc is a collection of low-level libraries for the GameCube and Wii. This collection of libraries was originally written by shagkur for the GameCube and has been developed over the past 6 years.

The final build of devkitPPC release 18 and associated libraries were uploaded to SF yesterday.

DevKitPPC release 18:

* Update gcc to 4.4.1
* Update newlib to 1.17.1 - please note this is not an official newlib release, just a snapshot we used to obtain some requested functions.
* Update to gdb 7.0
...