Booster pack for Wii?

[Dakare]

So I've been hearing news lately about a possile Booster Pack that Nintendo might be releasing for the Wii. It would be similar to the expansion pack from the Nintendo 64 and would boost the power and graphics up to those of an Xbox 360's. The only thing fishy about these numerous claims is that it will cost $100 and yet it would be required to play Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Now we did see that in the past with the N64's expansion pack, with the game in question being Donkey Kong 64 (among others later on, DK64 being the first to use it), but with Donkey Kong 64 came packaged with the expansion and only cost an extra ten dollars.

Dismissal?: So now here comes the tricky part. Is this thing real, or is it a hoax? I've only been hearing about it via forums, and Nintendo themselves have not announced anything about it (E3 being the main place they would have if it was required for MP3:C), and when you Google it only forums show up (not even any independent news sites).

So what do you have to say about it? Is this true? If it is, do you think it is required for MP3? Or are we just looking at skewed leaked info about a possible Wii 2.0?

 

[UltimaLink007]

If it were required for MP: C, Nintendo would lose incredible amounts of money because not many people would be willing to pay an extra $100 in addition to the $50 for the game itself. So I think that that statement itself is false.

I am not sure about there being an actual product like this, but I personally don't buy it. I say hoax until I get concrete proof.

 

[Dakare]

Yeah, I tend to agree. This is what I found:

Earlier today, Nintendo unveiled its new Wii booster pack designed to narrow the gap in its system's performance in comparison to the technically superior Xbox360 and Playstation 3. Though details on how it will be used, and to just how much of an improvement it will provide are still unknown, Nintendo has stated it will retail for around $99. At this point, it is unsure which games will utilize it, however Nintendo has announced it will be required in order to play Metroid Prime 3.

It all sounds very plausible until the bold. I mean, if it was required for anything, I think they would wait until more games needed it until releasing it, or make it cheaper. Not to mention where would it plug in? I could imagine them making a firmware update that turned your SD card into extra RAM or something. But other than that, a USB plugin would be odd because everything would get bottlenecked in the port.

 

[webmasterbob]

I would say this is completely bogus. First of all, MPC is released exactly three weeks from today. Second of all, the Wii is capable of producing graphics about 1.2 times great than the original Xbox, of which MPC certainly fits in that category, graphically. The Wii is underpowered compared to the other two current generation consoles, although people underestimate the Wii's production ability.

The expansion pack was less of a graphics upgrade and more of a memory upgrade to allow processing of more pixels on screen without a slowdown. During the development of games, like DK, Nintendo experienced rampant slowdowns, causing the game to lose appeal. Thus, they created the expansion pack, fitting nicely into the expansion port. The original jumper pack was only a power conductor, not a processor or memory of any kind.

 

[Dakare]

*Sigh* I kinda realized it was a hoax, but I was kinda hoping it wasn't. Now to add it to my list of Wii accessories that will probably never happen. The list is kinda long now...

• USB hard drive
• USB DVD drive
• USB Gameboy Player
• Booster Pack

 

[animaldude]

This is fake... I would love to see this happen but nintendo would never require it with Metroid... so I agree with ultima. Nintendo would be hated for such an act.

I really wish they would make one but remember, Nintendo is "in a league of their own" during this console race, and they obviously aren't worried about people liking the graphics.

I agree with Bob... for example TP was basically a gamecube port and it still looked really good. The article I read on MP3 say the graphics are incredible... so yeah the wii does have the ability to create good looking games.

And dakare... I think there's a pretty good chance the first two on your list will happen

 

[Dakare]

Hm, yes, well I would expect maybe the DVD drive, but maybe not the hard drive. And with the DVD drive, I always hear that it would be a new version of the Wii, not an attachment or firmware update. Nintendo themselves said it is not as simple as a firmware update, and why bother with an external drive when they could make a Wii with it built in, and when the attachment would just be normal DVD. They would piss off a lot of fanboys who bought the earlier version, though. And as for the hard drive, that is highly unlikely as well unless an IPod nano sized one is put into the "Wii 2.0" along with the DVD playback abilities, but that would again piss off fan boys. The only way they might make an external hard drive would be if they started with downloadable content for the games, which would require people to keep the data on their Wiis for playing purposes.

And as for the booster, well that might be another thing in the "Wii 2.0", but we might never know considering it is slated for Japan launch only...