Despite the rather nightmarish raids we've been hearing so much about, as well as Team Xecuter itself announcing in a recent website update that they will be focusing more on non-modchip products, WiiFree kits are still available from a few retailers.

This news comes from Team Xecuter's own website, confirming that one of their retail partners has put up a fresh stock of WiiFree V1 kits for sale at the very low price of just under US$ 20.

This gives Wii owners another chip to choose from the ever-expanding selection of Wii modding chips. It also gives them a "cleaner" alternative, as the WiiFree chips now in stock are sold blank and unflashed. This means that it's pretty much as the end user makes of it, with the modchip open to use any of the wide variety of open-source software that the WiiFree team itself has developed.

The Wiifree Kit V1 currently on sale comes with a Tri-Wing screwdriver and the 12F629 PIC. Potential buyers are reminded to check their territory laws on modchip legality.

Team Xecuter has announced that the design for the Xecuter modification for TCNiSO's Wiip modchip has been finished. No release date has been announced yet but the announcement does give gamers an idea of how much the modchip will cost.

According to a post on the Team Xecuter Forums, the retail price of the Wiip v2 modchip for the Nintendo Wii video game console will not exceed US$ 39.95. This is not the final price though, and the price could still go down depending on demand for the modchip.

Team Xecuter has also released a few new shots of the modchip. You can check 'em out below to see how far the modchip design has gone since the debug prototype was revealed.

  

Thanks to PsPoPPer for the heads up!

Apparently, Team Xecuter's not just providing help on perfecting Wiip version 2. The mod team announced earlier that aside from working on Wiip, they have had several requests to develop an easy-to-install version of the Wiifree modchip. With regards to the latter chip, the team is happy to announce that they've created two versions of their new Wiifree kit:

This kit will come in 2 flavours with and without a PIC programmer. Both kits will include a blank 12F629 PIC of which we have secured 10,000pcs at an excellent price.

As indicated by the a sample shot we picked up, Team Xecuter's Wiifree install kit is an external mount, ensuring that owners won't have to continually open up their Wii consoles. The team is expecting to have a price ready for their two kits within the next few days - we'll let you know in case we pick up info on this.

Remember TCNISO's open-source modchip Wiip? Well, version 2 is coming along nicely and quite surprisingly, Team Xecuter just divulged that they are now part of the project. The group mentioned that they wanted to keep quiet on the matter until things are progressing to their final stages.

Anyway, like we've mentioned, Wiip v2 is almost complete and Team Xecuter posted this list of new functions:

• Legal Distribution - Mod Is Blank From Point Of Sale
• Boots All DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW
• Boots All Wii Backups
•  Boots All Gamecube Backups & Homebrew
• Supports All DMS, D2A and D2B chipsets (D2C is almost done)
• Supports NTSC/PAL/JAP
• Easy Install - Only 5 Simple Solder Points
• 100% Upgradable - Massive 8k Flash
• First Mod To Upgrade Via DVD, LPT & USB !
• Ultra Fast 20Mhz ATMEGA8 CPU
• Huge 8KB of Flash Update Space
• External Clock to Control Read/Write Timing Protocol
• Diagnostic LED's
• Extra Features Via Dip Switches
• No More "Disc Loading Error" That You See On Many Other Mods
• Rock Solid In All Temperatures (Wii Gets Too Hot = No Problems)
• Massive OpenSource Support
• Can Be Used as a Universal Microcontroller Device - Many Future Uses
• Mod Is Not Locked In Anyway Way - You Are In Control
• This List Is Not Exhaustive - Many More Options & Functions Soon

No release date was given yet but Team Xecuter maintained that the design is optimized to be as cost-effective as possible. By the way, the image above is just a prototype unit. According to the developers, the final design will be much leaner with a totally different layout and installation procedure.