Analysts and gamer’s alike have constantly discussed the eventuality of Nintendo releasing an HD enabled console.  With the unparalleled success of the Wii, it’s pretty much a given that they simply could take the existing Wii model, give it the ability to pump out HD video and put a little more oomph under the hood while they kicked back to watch the “money printing” continue for several more years.  This all sounds great except for one thing… Reggie from Nintendo says they’re not working on an HD Wii at all.  Wait, that may be a little misleading…

An anonymous tipster sent in what we believe is a fairly authentic looking “leaked” memo detailing internal Nintendo plans for the next three years and I have to say I’m quite surprised while at the same time not surprised at all by what I read.

It would seem Reggie wasn’t lying after all, the memo does reveal a sequel to the excessively popular Wii and it does seem to be an improvement to the Wii in every way.  In true Nintendo fashion though, “improvement” is a relative turn with a lot of room for interpretation.  The new system doesn’t seem to be what people are going to be expecting from them…   Still expecting Wii HD?  Don’t…the minimum spec most people consider for “HD” is 720p (native 1280×720 resolution) but what Nintendo is planning is much more like “Wii ED” (our name, not theirs.)

With a native video output resolution of 1024×768 and a color palette of only 32 colors, the Wii ED will awkwardly straddle the grey area between standard definition video and high definition video.  Sure, it will be a noticeable improvement over the Wii in terms of resolution which maxes out at 480p (720×480 resolution or about 2.7 times the number of pixels per frame) and looks horrible on larger modern HDTVs but the reduction in color space made us scratch our heads.  Our initial reaction is that Nintendo wasn’t going to be bothered to support full HD but wanted to stop as soon as they reached what they considered “acceptable” resolution on an HDTV.  Presumably this will allow them to keep costs down and profit from hardware sales at launch; a strategy that has paid off enormously for them in the past.

Another enhancement detailed in the Wii ED is to the audio subsystem.  In a strange twist, the system is reported to support a rather non-standard 4.1 channel speaker setup (support for a center, left front, left rear, right rear, and a subwoofer are supported.  Where is the right front speaker support?!?!)  This information should start hitting the more mainstream gaming press anytime, just remember where you read it first!