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The release date for Nintendo Wii is still anyone's guess, as the japanese company's officials still maintain their secretive policy. However, until we get a clear answer it's still good to know that Nintendo (unlike its other japanese competitor, you know who i mean) is doing quite well, respecting its deadlines and all that. "Everything is on schedule, Nintendo is very happy," said Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing and corporate affairs "We still plan a hearty launch in Q4."

If Nintendo is happy we're happy, and IBM made us even happier by giving out some quite interesting news: apparently they have started delivering the Broadway chips, which will be the core of the Wii, in rather large quantities for some time. Thigs get a little blurry here, as Kotaku and Joystiq give different periods (Joystiq says the shipping started in July, Kotaku says 3 weeks ago). Anywho, whichever version is correct, it's clear that Nintendo have lots of Broadway chips on their hands, and that means the Wii is probably already popping out of the factory assembly lines, waiting to invade the shops all over the world. This, to take things a bit further, might mean the much-awaited launch could happen sooner than we had imagined. Yay for Nintendo.

The Nintendo officials also said a few words about the Broadway chip - the succesor of the Gekko (GameCube) processor is built using SOI (Silicon-On-Insulator) techology in 90nm, and "the key point is that it is Power Architecture-based and custom-made and optimized for Nintendo". The chip whill also dissipate about 20% less power while performing "substantially better". Can't wait to see.

I must admit that Nintendo's marketing savvy is obvious in every decision they made about the Wii. From the controversy spurred by changing the already-popular name "Revolution" to a more playful "Wii" (a brilliant move if I may say so, it put them in a totally different category than X360/PS3) to not announcing the release date, a move which keeps fans on their toes, always looking for new information, raising the overall visibility of the console in the media and obviously increasing the entire hype created around their future product. Ah, and the obvious advantage of keeping any little delays in-house, since nobody knows when it's supposed to come out anyways. Nintendo gets and A+ for the whole campaign (so far).

Oh, on a side note, everybody expects big news about the Wii next week, so keep your heart pills close and your browsers hot... or something.