New Wii loses backwards compatibility

[HomelandReloaded]

I totally hate Nintendo for that..

Sony did something similar with the Playstation 3. I think backwards compatibility is only added to persuade existing customers to upgrade. Presumably by now most customers only buy a Wii to play Wii games. I will be angry with Nintendo too if they do not put a big red warning on the box like "WARNING: this console will NOT play GameCube games!".

[wii_HD]

Someones done it.

GameCube returns

http://hackaday.com/2012/05/24/grab-you ... o-the-wii/

This forum also gets a heads-up.

[megalomaniac]

Nice hack

[BenoitRen]

Yes, and they did the same move with the GameCube then by removing the digital port.

I don't think it's quite the same thing as it was early in the GameCube's life and the digital port saw very little use (in part thanks to Nintendo hoarding the required cable...).

I totally hate Nintendo for that..

Sony did something similar with the Playstation 3.

Nintendo kept GameCube compatibility for... 5 years? That's a lot longer than the PlayStation 3's compatibility with PlayStation 2, which didn't even last one year. Not to mention that the PlayStation 2 compatibility had several different implementations with varying degrees of compatibility. To make matters worse, the early models compatible with PlayStation 2 tended to die after a couple years, if not sooner.

[BenoitRen]

Good news, everyone!

I was in the Media Markt yesterday for a job and at the end of my break I took a quick look in the video game section. I saw an Inazuma Eleven Strikers bundle, which must be pretty new. The interesting thing was that you could see on the box that the Wii was standing vertically. Looking at the list of contents, I saw the console listed with a model code of RVL-001. The GameCube's first version, with the digital port, also had 001 as the number, while the second version, without the digital port, had 101. I then looked at a bundle with a horizontally positioned Wii, saw the "doesn't play GameCube games" note, and found the listing of the contents. The Wii console had a model code of RVL-101, which confirmed my model code theory and by extension that the Inazuma Eleven Strikers bundle has a Wii that is backwards compatible with GameCube games.

Looks like there are going to be GameCube-compatible Wii consoles for some time to come!