Rumour: Wii Hard Drive and Hardware Improvements Soon?

Nintendo of America's Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communication, George Harrison, (no, not a dead Beatle…) has gone on record this week to talk about the mooted Wii hard drive, as well as other potential hardware improvements to the Wii in future.

Harrison is quoted as saying, "I'm not sure whether we would launch it (the Wii hard drive) or not. Other people have talked about it and certainly memory management is something that consumers want to think about, whether it's just Virtual Console games, so at this point we haven't got anything we're prepared to say about it."

Err? So, you do agree that consumers want it. But you don’t want to talk about. Thanks for clearing that one up George!

Next up, Harrison talks of potential future changes to the Wii's hardware, noting that, "Console hardware has always historically been on a sort of fixed, sequential pattern almost every five to six years and it takes you about five years to develop a new piece of console hardware.

"The handhelds and portables, like Game Boy and now DS, we've always been continuously innovating, and whenever we feel like it's time or have an upgrade, we'll do it, whether it's an improved screen for the handheld or slimmed down like the DS Lite - those types of things. So it's not out of the question on Wii, but we're not even to our second holiday yet, so it's kind of premature to talk about any revisions to the hardware itself."

Finally, on the Sony U.S. PS3 price drop, Harrison cannot resist sticking his oar in, saying, "I don't think they had any choice… [though] it's pretty soon after launch to be dropping your price."

And on Microsoft’s recent ‘red ring of death’ woes Harrison couldn’t help himself, reminding us all that, "It's a stunning admission; it's more than a billion dollars."

^{source: GameDaily}