With gaming's largest showcase, the Electronic Entertainment Expo just a few days away, there's not long left until Nintendo unveils its newest home console to the world. With rumours of the console's features flying around the internet - and yesterday's Wii 2 rumour round-up having commented on the likelihood of them all - there's plenty of supposed information out their already - but now we have the first snippet of official information, from a very respectable source.
Looks like this could be closer to the truth than we suspected.
The respected Japanese news outlet, Nikkei, today published the first information about Nintendo's Wii successor, which we've lovingly dubbed the Wii 2, and it makes for some interesting reading. Now pretty much officially confirmed, Nikkei say the controller will have a 6 inch touch screen, as has often been rumoured, along with a set of normal buttons, similar to those found on the Wii's Classic Controller, and a camera, which also backs up what we discovered in our rumour round-up. More interestingly, however, the report also states that the controller will be able to be used on its own, as a portable game machine - although how much of this is getting lost in translation, and how much is true remains to be seen.
While it's unlikely the controller will contain much of a processor itself, and it certainly won't be able to rival the 3DS in terms of handheld functionality, the fact the report mentions it can be used as a portable games machine does lend credence to IGN's earlier rumour, that the new console will be able to stream separate games to each controller, meaning one person could be playing Super Mario Galaxy 3, on the main TV, while another person sits in the bedroom, playing a Virtual Console game that's being streamed from the Wii 2.
Either way, with a respected outlet like Nikkei confirming some of the most interesting Wii 2 rumours, E3 suddenly seems too far away. We'll find out exactly what Nintendo have in store at their press conference, at 5:00 pm, on Tuesday 7th June. The press conference is available to any member of the public to watch by visiting http://e3.nintendo.com. If you fancy tuning in yourself, why not have a bit of fun, and print off our Wii 2 Bingo, and play along while you're discovering about all the latest games Nintendo have to offer.
