Nintendo Wii - Beyond the Hype

Way back in September 06, I wrote an essay with my response to the Nintendo press conference on the Wii and mentioned three concerns I had about the console: would the very hyped controller be a gimmick or an actual fun way to play, would lack of "adult" games turn away gamers and would the "Gamecube hardware" times two eventually hurt the system.

Having finally picked up my own Wii after a grueling wait for it to return into stock and having even tried to buy one earlier by lining up at Circuit City...I am finally a proud owner of the Wii. For you parents who have tried to buy this console for their kid since who knows when, you should be pleased to know that as of Feb 11th, Wiis have started to appear more in stock than ever before (my friend reported a whopping 95 at his local Target in Orange County) and if you are still having trouble, the Ebay market seems to have nearly saturated, as they seem to be going for not more than $300.

Ok, so now after a lengthy 40 hour play marathon with the console, I feel I’ve got enough experience to answer the questions I brought up and also even delve into concerns I have for this console's long-term future and whether or not the fun goes beyond the first several weeks of gameplay.

The Wii Experience

The most important thing of the Wii experience is essentially linked to the Wii-mote. How well the sensor detects your movements and so on is critical to the success of this console.

The results I've had are ultimately mixed, and before you start blaming me for not aligning the sensor bar properly, let me just say that I did follow all the sensor bar precautions about keeping it level, centered, turning off other light sources that can distract, and so on. I personally also don't feel like the average consumer should be spending any more than 15 minutes adjusting this thing, the product should be designed for easy use and minimal setup.

That said, there are a few things to mention here. The Wii-mote is incredibly fun to use! Swinging, hacking, pushing, pulling and pointing are all movements that really encourage group play. For those that don't like video games even remotely, they will enjoy watching others play, and for those that do, this novel approach really made me realize I have no desire to ever go back to a gamepad. It's kind of like the escalating bar, Nintendo with the Wii-mote has made a bold shift in interface design toward user-experience (aka virtual reality) and there is no going back.

However, the few glitches I encountered in some of the games I played is that occasionally some movements aren't read properly (understandably if you swing the gyroscope in a strange way) and occasionally the wii-mote won't synch well (which can be a real killer in Warioware). These minor frustrations aside though, and the Wii-mote works wonderfully. It is important to position yourself well before playing as two player games can offer a lot of motion and potential for breaking things.

The Wiimote is one of the best controllers I have ever seen and far more innovative than any controller ever made. The built in speaker in my first impression seemed like an odd thing to stick on a controller but it’ll make quick sense when you do your first slash in Zelda. The added whoosh of the sword makes the experience just so much more legitimate.

The vibration built into the controller is another amazing feature as it’s constantly used by the games to give you tactile feedback when you are either typing on the screen or clicking buttons. The Wiimote uses the vibration to define the clicking region a lot (so if you mouse over an area you’ll feel a light jolt). This might seem strange at first, but it’s extremely useful and lets your hand know you’re in the right place.

There was a bit of controversy with a flimsy strap last year breaking people’s TVs and windows, but that has all been done away with. All recent Nintendo Wiis now offer thick straps and Nintendo has a strap replacement plan for those of you still using the old ones which can be found at their website.

Important to keep price in context here...a console costs $250 and you must absolutely buy at least one more Wiimote at $40 so you can play Tennis at least and other two-player games. To get in boxing, you'll need to get another nunchuk ($20) and so I'd say at minimal, consider a decent Wii package about $250 (console) $40 (wii-mote) $20 (nunchuk) $50 (game) = to be a solid $360 (...coincidence anyone?). If you're looking to involve an entire family which is one of my friend's plans, then 4 Wii-motes w/Nunchuks and Wii is a whopping $430 which is not cheap by any standards. Hopefully some third party developer will eventually be able to bypass the heavily patented Wii-mote by some other sensor means so we can get cheaper controllers. Until then though, the peripherals will cost you an arm and a leg.

Design

The Wii itself should win awards for product design. It's the size of 3 dvd cases stacked together, exceptionally quiet and has a number of useful ports that many will appreciate, like an SD slot for photo display and 4 (read em 4!) gamecube ports so you can continue to play old mario party until the new one comes out. The minimalist design with the kind of neat slightly slanted vertical case makes it a rather attractive fit in any living room.

Controller-wise, I was surprised the Wii-mote was smaller than I expected, and the batteries give it a decent heft that is actually needed (too light and the thing will just go flying). The buttons are all placed in excellent intuitive places allowing you to hold it in a variety of configurations (like a remote or horizontally like a quasi controller) and the minimalist design with varying button sizes and textures make it easy to keep track of what you're hitting. This again makes it a lot easier to pick up and use, because rather than memorizing which button is Square and Circle, you can just think, the A button is the big plastic circle, the 1-2 are located next to each other on the bottom and are smaller and made of white plastic, etc. My only little gripe is that the d-pad is too tiny but this is a minor complaint at the most.

It would have been nice if the console used some kind of rechargable battery system as the 2 AAs each Wii-mote uses will eventually add up but I've heard 3rd party peripherals are already out to remedy this at a price. My Wii-mote has so far lasted about 24-hours on two fresh AAs (the ones provided by Nintendo) so your mileage will vary depending on what kind of batteries you use and what games you play.

The more interesting things to think about in terms of design is the actual console interface itself...it's spectacular and I think in part kicks 360s overly convoluted one in the face. Rather than having a lot of menus to go through, Wii uses a kind of main page with a number of channels, where you can select content you want to interact with. So if you feel like browsing photos, or playing the game, or shopping for more games, it's all on the same page. There is a slight downer to this interface and it's the actual load time for the Wii Menu is like 3-4 seconds, rather than a clean instantaneous load (and trust me you will notice this) which is kind of a bummer especially when you want to go from Weather channel to starting a game. It's too bad there's no kind of channel hop menu that the 360 dashboard did a great job of doing...but again this is a small complaint.

The real interesting meat of this console I'd say are the channel features, which I'm going to get into right now...

Built-in Wireless - Wii Channels

I was a bit doubtful when I heard of Wii channels and thought that if Nintendo was planning to make its own “console content” it would have a lot on its hands. But in reality, the stuff they’ve included, simplistic as it is, is a lot of fun. The Mii Channel for one is a big hit among most families, and making Miis of all your friends is a task in itself that will appeal to even non-gamers. Making a Mii is basically like Mr. Potatohead on a virtual scale. You select a gender and then start adjusting a face, by changing attributes and when you’re done you have a mini digital replica of a person that kind of just wanders around a virtual stage with other Miis.

Unfortunately the downside to making Miis is mainly the lack of facial attributes offered (you really have to work at some of them to get a good similarity to a real person) but creative uses of the rotate, expand and shrink should allow most folks to get a fairly decent looking representative of themselves.

Once finished, Miis have their ways to make into certain games, like Wii Sports and Warioware, where your Mii will appear as a representative of the person competing. This is done to involve the gamer more, and give them a kind of avatar that they feel like they are controlling.

The two other channels that are by default included are the Weather channel and the News Channel. I was very doubtful these would be useful compared to a computer, but I found out quickly enough that I actually enjoy them quite a lot and in fact prefer using my Wii to check weather over weather.com even. The reason why this is so, is that the interface does not require the cumbersome mouse / keyboard, rather using the remote, you just select the region of the world you want by flicking your wrist and virtually scrolling around the globe and then selecting an area for its daily weather and 5-day forecast. This is extremely useful for those who have relatives in different parts of the region and it’s also nice to be able to see what kind of weather you might be flying into when visiting New York and so on. Very handy, but too bad the virtual globe does not have actual cloud/storm patterns.

The News Channel while it does not feature the most exciting headlines, has a decent variety of national, global, sports, and so on news particular to specific regions. It even includes photos that you can zoom in on by simply clicking. This is one of the coolest ways to read news, because using the virtual globe you can find all the articles relevant to a region. Text visibility, which was a huge concern of mine, is made a non-issue because of the excellent zoom in and out features that allow you to zoom text large enough to a scale that’s comfortable to read. Browsing is even better because rather than using keys or a mouse to scroll with you simply can hold the B trigger on the Wii-mote and tilt it slightly down. Save a lot of clicking and dragging, and is completely effortless.

A recent channel just released on V-day has been the Voting channel. I have not had a chance to play with this yet, but it’s apparently a regular poll that just collects information on a nationwide aggregate of Wii-users, and is updated every so often with results and new polls.

Wii also has an Internet channel in the works, but so far the Beta Opera-based browser does a poor job displaying websites. They appear too fuzzy and load far too slow for it to be useful yet. The lack of keyboard support at the moment also makes it a ways off.

Finally there is the Wii store, which releases old games from former Nintendo consoles for about $8-9 each. Even though most of us savvy PC gamers will prefer emulation over the Wii, is still a nice way of expanding the Wii library drastically and including the great games that has made Nintendo successful (Link to the Past, Super Mario Kart, etc.). Some games are a bit pricey, but still not a bad idea.

Game Library

Game production has kind of slowed down since the Wii launch, but there are a few exciting titles around the corner and most certainly enough launch titles to entertain until then. The big obvious player is Zelda: Twilight Princess. Great party games include, Warioware: Smooth Moves, Rayman: Raving Rabbits and the soon to be released Mario Party 8.

For unusual uses of the Wiimote controller, there’s Elebits, and Trauma Center 2, sequel to the DS game where you pretend to do mock surgeries.

I’m not going to go over each title in great detail as that would make this review far too long, but in comparison to 360 and PS3; Wii is easily a dominant force. 360 having been out for a year already has the larger game selection, but game experience-wise it has nothing that even resembles the diversity of the Wii The 360 has a great selection of Xbox Live multiplayer shooter/console games but the action emphasis detaches it from more family orientated play. PS3…well we don’t need to say much about that, it’s still in an infantile stage with virtually no games except for Resistance which is still questionably good.

Future prospects look good for Wii in terms of EA Games signing on to make more sports games and the yet to be released Super Smash Bros. as well as hopefully a future Wii Mario Kart. These games will easily keep the Wii going for years to come.

Wii Sports

Wii comes bundled with a 5 in 1 sports collection which compromises of boxing, tennis, golf, baseball and bowling. The free inclusion to the console is a nice added value on Nintendo's part. However, don't expect full blown games with AI and depth. All the games are very simplistic, which indicates that they might have originally been tech demos, but despite their simplicity, still provide plenty of entertainment. Wii Sports is especially critical in initiating people unfamiliar with the console and its unique interface. Watching someone play virtual Tennis is a great way to get people interested. Even my dad who never plays video games ever, found himself willing to indulge one round of Wii boxing (mainly because he loves boxing) and excelled rather well at it, indicating that some level of boxing skill can carry over into the virtual game.

The unfortunate thing about the Wii Sports is that as a single player game it definitely does not have much value. While it has a kind of exercise mode where you can kind of "burn" calories and has an RPG element where you gain "skill points" for playing more (1000 needed for pro level), there does not seem to be much variation in the game and the AI is far too easy to read. The important thing is really just having good reflexes and good timing which don't take too long to figure out. Also, another thing that kind of hurts it long term play is simply you'll start to learn what movements the Wii actually recognizes, and soon realize that in Tennis the best serve is a flick of the wrist and not a full out actual swing. Things like this kind of take away from the fun but in some sense are inevitable if you are looking to nail a perfect score in bowling or something.

Conclusion - Forecast

I honestly did not see myself as a Wii fan but having taken the dive, I enjoy it more than any of my other consoles. However, there is one big catch in this though. I mainly play my Wii only in a family/group context, and find very little appeal to play it by myself. It’s a strange thing I know, but when it comes down to solo games I prefer Crackdown on 360 or even Warcraft on my PC though why I can’t really say. When playing games with friends though, I easily turn to Wii, whether to get through a dungeon in Zelda or just whack a few balls around in Wii Tennis. The experience of playing games in a living room setup is far enhanced with the Wii-mote and the ability to watch people interact with the Wii in fact creates a unique experience all on its own.

That is why many have said that the Wii is hardly a console meant to compete with the PS3 or the 360 even. The experience it offers is so vastly different from the controller wielding video game stereotype, I honestly have to say Nintendo has done it.

However, there is one more caveat to it all. I really think the hardware will catch up to the Wii rather sooner than we all think. Before you Nintendo fanboys rage against me, I am merely pointing out that the load time for even loading the main Wii channel state kind of makes me wonder and so far plenty of folks have pointed out that the 3d shooters look a tad bit too blocky (Call of Duty 3). It’s too bad that Nintendo didn’t shove the same hardware as 360 or PS3 and throw in the Wii-mote because if they had, it would be a total knock out. Also, another thing I have not really seen too much of yet are an abundance of multi-Wiimote / online play games, which I feel are essential to the Wii becoming a success. One good example is Warioware: Smooth Moves. On the Gamecube, people could connect all four controllers and play the minigames in a kind of split screen fashion. In the recent Wii release, multiplayer involved passing the control around, which took a huge deal of fun out of the game as it reduced the competitive frenzy that was part of the GC one.

For me, the success of the Wii depends mainly on how well they will continue to implement multi-player games as well as tie in online Wii gaming because without these elements, I will admit, after Zelda, Smash Bros, and a few other hits start to get old, I’ll be soon back to my 360.