Can’t stand the heat? Stay out of the kitchen.
Most people familiar with current generation consoles have probably heard of Xbox 360′s infamous overheating issue (a.k.a. the Red Ring of Death). This problem eventually forced Microsoft to extend the console’s warranty to three years on certain situations. Apparently Xbox 360 isn’t the only next-gen console suffering from similar problems. Wii has it’s own share too, although this one is much less common.
Apparently some Wii units suffer from graphic errors that are speculated to have something to do with an overheating Wii. Instead of malfunctioning entirely (as in Xbox 360), red pixels start to flash on the screen during games. For some people, the graphic errors also appear on Wii menus. The amount of graphic glitches seems to vary from one Wii to another, some units have huge areas of flashing pixels around the screen while others only have few that appear on certain conditions. There have also been some cases posted on YouTube. Many reasons have been debated to cause this, ranging from defective heatsink to Wireless card heating while WiiConnect24 is enabled. As far as I know, Nintendo has not officially recognized this issue, so the real reason is still unknown.
Last week this issue concerned me personally as I finally sent my Wii for repairs. In my case, the graphic errors occurred only under certain conditions and were not as severe as other people were having. Few areas on Twilight Princess had red pixel coating (Lake Hylia and Sky City) and Super Mario Strikers displayed. Still, I thought it’s not worth risking anything, especially since the warranty ends this December and the flickering looked rather disturbing. I mailed Nintendo’s tech support and they suggested sending the console in. Which I did.
So, now I’m waiting for Wii to travel back and see what’s up. My hopes are on next week. This incident inspired me to finally publish the Thoughts on Wii-article that I actually wrote about six months ago. I had to update it a bit though, so technically it’s brand new.