Nintendo recently confirmed that a Wii successor would be coming in 2012. Now, the company is giving its best-selling console a welcome push with a $50 price drop from the package currently on shelves and changing the bundled game. Starting May 15, the new price will go in effect and the package will include the smash hit seller Mario Kart Wii and the Wii Wheel racing accessory, plus a standard Wii Remote Plus controller and Nunchuk.
The move is expected to revitalize Wii sales, which were once unbeatable quarter after quarter but have remained stagnant recently as Microsoft and Sony have picked up steam with the launches of their motion control systems.
The company will also launch a new "Nintendo Selects" series of budget-priced Wii games on May 15. Four hit Wii titles will be available at $20 each, including The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess; Mario Super Sluggers; Animal Crossing: City Folk; and Wii Sports which is no longer bundled with the console. Wii Sports Resort will also be removed from the hardware bundle and will be sold separately for $39.99.
There was no mention of Nintendo's Wii successor in the announcement but new details have emerged recently, courtesy of unnamed sources familiar with the company's plans cited by Kotaku. According to the report, the codenamed Project Café console will include 8GB of on-board flash based storage, but no hard drive, and will support either 1080i or 1080p resolutions – significantly more than the current 480p and more in line with the Xbox 360 and PS3.
The site also believes Nintendo's disc format for the new console will hold 25GB of data, which is triple the capacity of the biggest DVD-style discs for the Wii and Xbox 360 and comparable to the capacity of single-layer Blu-Ray discs on the PlayStation 3. We'll probably have a more complete picture of what Nintendo's new console will be like after this year's E3 expo in June, where Nintendo is expected to show off a playable model of the still-unnamed device.