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| Project Cafe |
Here’s the text of the statement:
Nintendo Co. has decided to launch in 2012 a system to succeed Wii, which the company has sold 86.01 million units on a consolidated shipment basis between its launch in 2006 and the end of March 2011.
We will show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo, which will be held June 7-9, 2011, in Los Angeles.
Sales of the new system have not been included in the financial forecasts announced today for the fiscal term ending March 2012.
The company gave no other details on the new console.
The new console is reportedly known internally as Project Cafe; there arereports on some gaming sites that the controllers for the new system will include video screens.
I’d note that sales of the Wii have recently sagged, as gamers shifted to the Microsoft Xbox 360, driven by the new Kinect motion sensor controller, and the Sony Playstation 3, driven in part their own new controller, called Move. For the gaming industry overall, the planned launch of a new console system will be a welcome boost with the potential to boost recently lackluster sales.
