Territorial Bloggings

The initial returns show that the Wii is a runaway success, here at Schloß TB.

This isn’t really all that much of a shocker, mind you, as I expected that it would be popular; however, I am actually quite surprised by just how slick it really is. I’ve never been a console gamer — the Wii is the first gaming console that I’ve ever owned, aside from a Playstation that I had for about an hour back around ‘97, before I returned it & got a 3dfx Voodoo board for my PC. I’ve always been a PC gamer, feeling that the configurability & depth of PC games were superior to any of the advantages (mainly in ease of use and/or robustness) of console. The type of games that I’ve always preferred (Civ, SimCity, EA’s NHL, & HighHeat Baseball) were always more feature rich, configurable, and/or cheaper on PCs. There just wasn’t anything compelling enough about console gaming to get me to make the switch, even with XBox360 & PS3.

The Wii, and in particular the Wii-mote, changed that. Big time.

Nintendo made a conscious decision to go for ease of use (and away from pure horsepower-driven realism, with all it’s complexities) and increased “immersiveness” in an effort to make gaming fun for the non-gamer. And they’ve succeeded with the Wii, as the 3.2 million units sold worldwide since the 11/19 launch easily shows — that’s almost half of the 7+ million XBox360s that Microsoft has sold in the past year. In 1.5 months!

One of the big successful choices that Nintendo made was to bundle a suite of games with the Wii. Wii Sports (baseball, bowling, boxing, golf, & tennis) are great demonstrations of just how easy the Wii is to pick up, use, and have fun with. All of the games make fabulous use of the unique Wii-mote motion sensitive/driven controller. While they aren’t necessarily the deepest games, they are both undeniably fun, and outstanding proofs-of-concept. They show the game designers just how to go about best utilizing the new controllers in an organic and fun fashion.

A somewhat unanticipated side benefit is the fact that the Wii’s immersiveness gets you up off your butt & engaged in playing your games. While most of the motions can be made by merely flicking your wrist, you’ll find that you really do get into moving around while you play — e.g., when bowling, you do the whole walk-up & follow-through, when playing tennis, you swing, hop, & lunge, and in baseball & golf, you swing just like in the “real” games. I can only imagine that it’s only a matter of time before some actual “fitness” titles come out for the Wii — and they might be enough to actually get me exercising more!
Thus far, bowling has proven to be the most popular game for all four of us to play together. We have had several family bowling “tournaments” thus far, and I can see that this will be a source of good fun for quite a while. Golf is quite popular for me & the kids to play, or for the kids to play together. Tennis & baseball have been good 2-person pursuits. And all of the games can be very enjoyably played alone and/or against a computer opponent.

While the Wii Sports games are not “real” (or as I once heard John Perry Barlow put it, in “meatspace“, and are certainly not an exclusive substitute for “meatspace” games & activities, games like bowling are fun, convenient, & “real” enough to, IMO, make the Wii a justifiable & cost-effective purchase.

The Wii, in short, rawks!
-ghp