E3 2006 News | Integrated Bluetooth on Nintendo Wii

Broadcom Corporation, the global leader in all things semiconductor related, have today announced that the Nintendo Wii will feature Broadcom Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies. This will ship out of the box and be included as part of the Wii hardware.

"The Wii game console will take advantage of the most popular wireless technologies to deliver an advanced user experience that no other competitive console can match," said Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director, General Manager, Integrated Research & Development Division for Nintendo. "Broadcom's ability to supply and support custom features for both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi has enabled us to provide our customers with a unique gaming experience powered by high-performance, field-proven wireless solutions."

The Wii is the first major gaming platform to introduce Bluetooth as a standard feature out the box, eliminating the need for cables between the console and other devices (like the DS and we presume other Wii consoles in the same room?). The technology will also be featured in the Wii controller, in order to provide gamers with a fast, accurate and high quality interaction. The Broadcom Bluetooth chip solution also features "exceptionally low power consumption, maximizing battery life to simplify upkeep and maintenance".

"Nintendo's visionary approach to wireless connectivity provides a compelling illustration of how Bluetooth and Wi-Fi complement each other to provide a unique and convenient user experience," said Robert A. Rango, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Wireless Connectivity Group. "Broadcom's leadership and ability to add custom features to our standards-based Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies provide advantages to product developers seeking dual mode solutions that avoid interference, while delivering advanced performance and features that no other supplier can match."

The Wii console also includes Broadcom's single-chip 54g(R) Wi-Fi solution, which provides a high-performance wireless link for playing online or multi-player games. The Wii will also make use of Broadcom's BroadRange technology (this gets a bit complicated now), which allows you to maintain higher data rates further from the access point. Both Bluetooth and 802.11g Wi-Fi products operate in the 2.4 GHz radio frequency band, introducing the possibility of radio interference between the two radio signals. To address this concern, Nintendo drew upon Broadcom's extensive co-existence experience to optimize the wireless performance for optimal simultaneous throughput of both technologies, minimizing the possibility of radio signal collisions, blocking and other phenomena that could degrade the performance of either device. And thank the lord they did.

Good news for the Wii and good news for you and me. More soon.