Nintendo Was Showing Wii's In GameCube Housin...

Nintendo Was Showing Wii's In GameCube Housings At E3

Soon after Nintendo's pre-E3 briefing, rumours were flying high and low that the Wii casings displayed at the event were pretty much empty (save for those pretty blue lights), and that the real hardware was actually running from inside GameCube housings hidded from view. But apparently they weren't hidden well enough, as these photos seem to indicate. After plenty of speculation on this subject, GameDaily.biz recently received official confirmation from Nintendo of America that, since the final hardware is not yet available, other... forms of packaging had to be used:

"Nintendo confirmed that they did indeed use GameCube housing, but that the "guts" or internal architecture was certainly from the Wii. "The Wii hardware we exhibited at E3 2006 was made specifically for the E3 show and is not the final mass-production version. Some of this hardware was cased in Nintendo GameCube housing," the company explained."

So is this a good thing or a bad thing? While some view this as an important setback, others rejoice at the possibility that the graphics shown at E3 2006 weren't finalized, and that the actual games might look a bit better (not that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess looked bad in any way, mind you). Don't get your hopes up however: according to that same guy from Nintendo of America, "as far as what you saw at E3 we think that was very indicative of the experience Wii will offer... It was Wii hardware". That may be, except at least for the graphics card, which is still being developed by ATi.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)