Nintendo Wii Review

It’s been a couple months since the launch of Nintendo’s Wii console and since that time the product has been flying off shelves across the US, Japan and Europe. In fact the much celebrated Wiimote controller has been flying out of many people’s hands and doing some damage to TV sets and even people along the way.

The mainstream media has been very quick to declare Nintendo’s Wii console to be the next big thing in gaming and there’s no doubt that the Wiimote is indeed a revolutionary controller that when used to its full effect by developers will give games and the people who play them an all new experience, however, the Wii is almost a schizophrenic product with a mix of both revolutionary ideas and design combined with technology that at times is almost retro (sometimes in a good way and sometimes not). The overall result is a product that in our view does a lot to make video games more acceptable to a mass audience but has features that keeps it tied to consoles of the past. It does have one terrific launch title but the overall game launch line-up for the Wii is also lacking. However that may change as more developers get used to the system.

In terms of size, the Wii is small, far smaller than Sony’s Playstation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (it’s even smaller than the recently released HD-DVD movie add-on drive for the Xbox 360). Nintendo likes to say that the Wii is about the size of three stacked DVD cases and that’s a fair comparison. While the console can be laid down on its side, most people will likely want to use the included gray stand that keeps the Wii in a more space saving vertical position. Overall, the size is a huge plus for the Wii. It also helped that in my time with the console, it’s also runs very quiet. It’s far less noisy than my Xbox 360 which seems to always have a loud buzz even when it is supposed to be idle.

On the front of the console is the slot loading disc drive similar to the PS3 where you simply let the Wii do most of the work of putting game discs in the console (both Wii and GameCube discs are accepted). An eject button is available on the bottom. The front also has the power indicator and the reset button. Once the console is first turned on the Wii stays on in standby mode; there is no way to completely turn the console off short of pulling the console’s power cord off. I wish Nintendo had at least included some sort of switch to turn the Wii off completely as the PS3 has done.

Depending on where you position the Wii , the console has slots for four Gamecube controllers and two Gamecube memory slots on the side or on top of the machine, giving the console full backwards compatibility with all of the games released for Nintendo’s previous console. The Wii doesn’t use a proprietary memory card for its own games which is a plus; it has a standard SD card slot in the front that takes regular SD cards.

On the back are connections for the game’s power cord, TV connections and the Wiimote’s sensor bar (more on that later) along with two USB ports. Those ports don’t really have a specific function for the Wii (unlike the USB ports for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 which are used to charge those console’s wireless controllers). We imagine third party accessory makers will use the ports for various things (one company is already selling a third party USB network cable for the console for people who don’t have a WiFi network at home).

Nintendo has been very protective of revealing what technical specs are inside the Wii console. Officially all they will reveal is that the graphics processor was made by ATI (now part of AMD) and that the main processor is a modified PowerPC chip from IBM codenamed Broadway. Nintendo has never officially revealed items like processor speed or amount of onboard memory for the Wii.

The console also has a built in internal WiFi set up but I wish Nintendo had also included an Ethernet connection as well for people who don’t have or don’t want to use their own WiFi network (again, the USB ports are already being exploited by third parties to allow wired home network connections). The Wii comes with a power brick style power cord (much smaller than the Xbox 360 brick, however) and an A/V cable.

Most people who have an HDTV set up will want to get component cables for the Wii (they were in short supply for the Wii’s launch but seem to have started to pop up more in various retail stores). Even with the component cable support the Wii will only go up to 480p resolution compared to the upper limit of 1080p for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

The Wii was also supposed to play DVD movies out of the box but Nintendo chose to remove that feature a few months before the console’s launch. There are some indications that a future Wii hardware release might offer DVD movie support. Most people won't miss that feature, however and we think that Nintendo removed it as a cost saving measure which of course helps the price to stay low.

Wiimote

The most revolutionary (pun intended) part of the Wii is the unique controller, the Wiimote. Nintendo designed the controller deliberately to look much like a TV remote with a slim rectangular case. The remote feels comfortable when held in the hand and allows the fingers and thumb to have easy access to the Wiimote’s various buttons and triggers. On top, there is a power button for turning the controller on and off which also puts the Wii in standby mode. The small D-pad is next followed down by three small buttons which have – and + signs along with a “home” button icon. A large “A” button is next followed by 1 and 2 buttons. The Wiimote’s B button is actually the controller’s trigger located on the bottom of the remote.

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