Square Enix : New Wii in 2011

The CEO of game publisher Square Enix has said that he’s expecting a new Wii in 2011, and that motion sensing controls won’t be the success for Sony and Microsoft that the companies are hoping that they’ll be.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Yoichi Wada said that Nintendo’s next Wii will be released in two years time, with functionality more like that of the Xbox 360 and PS3 and “possibly a different controller”.

New Wii

It’s expected that a followup to the Wii would include the powerful multimedia centre functionality of the console’s rivals, as well as the ability to output in high definition – a weakness of the current console is that it’s limited to 480p output.

Wada also said that although the potential of motion controllers like Microsoft’s Project Natal is “fantastic” and would become standard, the impact on sales of the consoles will be “small”, as they only have an effect on the gaming part of the console – not the machine’s other features.

“Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine. Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small. They are an extension of the gaming function”.

Square Enix plans to release Final Fantasy 13 in Japan this December.