It took me a while but I finally managed to get hold of one of two Wii's delivered to an HMV store in Windsor a few weeks ago. The guy behind me was quite upset as many office workers caught wind of the delivery and rushed to the high street, I only just made it!
So how did the Wii console measure up? Well let's put it this way, I am a die hard Playstation fan and while I have played Xbox games and love them some of the games on the Xbox I have always enjoyed the variety and the ability to play your old PS1 games on the PS2 as well. So quite naturally this Christmas that has just passed I wanted to get a PS3, but as anyone who had been waiting for it can testify it just didn't happen and it launched in the US and Japan only ruling out the lucrative European market because of a lack of supply. So off course not to be out done on a new toy for Christmas my attention like so many others was diverted to the Wii. What was this controller that looked like a remote control? You point it at the TV and then you shoot? And you can tilt it from side to side....wow that's kind of cool actually and how much does it cost? £179? The Xbox at the time was going for about £299 as a bundled deal and had been out long before any of the next generation consoles but the Wii had this new feature that no other console seemed to have tried. It was a new kind of cool and better yet and more important, it was actually fun and really simple to play games! So simple that even your granny could get the hang of it and was thinking of getting hold of one by time she was heading home.
Nintendo in my mind did something amazing they looked at the market and thought about how to make gaming more fun and more easy it seemed as though they thought "What about those people out there that just can't get the 6 button combo roll option to work on normal consoles?", there must be loads? Then they put some pretty standard parts together already available so production issues weren't as bad as the other consoles and then added their magic control devices to the mix. The result was a console that didn't have the great graphics and features of the other games consoles out there but it was fun and the majority of people were not going to notice if they weren't getting a high resolution game play because the majority of people still don't have TV's capable of this kind of display (well I don't anyway!).
I must say I haven't had so much fun on a games console in ages, and out of the 4 games I have I think one of my favourites must be the Tennis game on Wii sports. Playing against an opponent brings hours of fun and exercise! Yes what a clever idea there, mothers not having to worry about their kids getting overweight while playing games! Well I suppose it does depend on what games you are playing and the classic conversation of a child asking to play on a games console, may be met by the mother or father only allowing them to play energetic games. Anyway back to the Tennis, if you're going to be paying on the Wii console quite regularly you're whole living room may need to change to accommodate this. Its pretty easy to get carried away I have discovered, and knock an ornament or going crashing into the coffee table on a back hand in a swing of the remote in tennis. Nintendo have also covered themselves in the games warning you to secure the safety strap on the remote firmly, make sure you have plenty of space around you and to also take regular breaks when playing games.
Interactive The Wii console plugs nicely into your home wireless network without the need to buy any extra special adaptors. It has its own Internet web browser (Opera) which I managed to watch You Tube videos from, although I must admit not all You Tube videos play in the browser, some of them stop half way through for no reason. The other thing I was quite impressed with was I could play my MP3's on the console streamed from my Server upstairs. All I did was install a clever bit of software called Orb, it's a free download and allows you to stream media from your PC via a web browser. The same principle works on the Wii console and the interface also looks great. You can stream music and video files from the interface and even Internet TV channels, the only quibble I have with the interface is there is no way to hide the opera browser bar at the bottom of the screen (maybe in the next release?). The console definitely has a lot of potential to expand on and I like the idea that Nintendo have decided to use standard SD memory cards with the console instead of developing their own proprietary memory cards, SD card are so cheap now a days you can pickup 2gigs for £12. You can even slip SD cards from your digital camera into the console and watch Video's and play slide shows of the photo's you have taken.
All in all I am very happy with my purchase and funnily enough am glad I didn't end up buying the PS3 because I never would have discovered how much fun the Wii console was. When the PS3 gets released over here in the UK I'll wait and see what others have to say about its game play and abilities before buying another console. To be honest if I had my way I would probably have three games consoles sitting in my living room 