How the Wii's successor impacts the console business

From CNET News.com: One of the most potentially damaging things a consumer electronics company can do to one of its existing products is confirm its replacement. So when Nintendo announced yesterday that its Wii "successor" would launch next year, the obvious question was how would the news affect its highly successful but flagging current-generation console?

On the one hand, would-be Wii buyers could decide to pocket their wallets and wait until the new device comes out. On the other, they could rush to stores to buy one now, thinking that the new system will cost significantly more when it hits store shelves.

And Nintendo isn't the only one in this boat. While neither Microsoft nor Sony have made any announcements about successors to their Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles, respectively, rumors out last week suggested that new versions of both those platforms could be in consumers' hands by 2014.

Yesterday, Nintendo confirmed that it would release the new console next year and said it would show a playable version, as well as talk about technical specifications, at E3 in June in Los Angeles. But sources have told video game blog IGN that the new system is likely to get a big performance boost compared to the existing Wii, a device that used a strong appeal with casual gamers to overcome the technical superiority of its rivals, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
"The system will be based on a revamped version of AMD's R700 GPU architecture...[and will] out perform the PlayStation 3's NVIDIA 7800GTX-based processor," IGN reported last week. "Like the Xbox 360, the system's CPU will be a custom-built triple-core IBM PowerPC chipset, but the clocking speeds will be faster. The system will support 1080p output with the potential for stereoscopic 3D as well, though it has not been determined whether that will be a staple feature."

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