Wii
Ok so I picked up a Wii in Hong Kong before Christmas and it along with a bunch of other things has made me slack. Anyway here are my thoughts:
Premise
Revolutionise the video games industry by giving it a neat new way to play.
Wii Remote
As we all know the main feature of the Wii is the Remote. This motion sensing beauty is used to point, pitch, shake, turn, push, pull and a whole host of other things me and other designers probably haven’t thought of yet (well maybe except Nintendo). The Remote sits really nicely in your hand and is a joy to use. My only current complaint is that pointing can sometimes be tricky because when you are pointing off screen there is no way of knowing how far off you are and so you can easily over shoot.
Sports
The Wii comes with Wii Sports and man is it cool. My other half is not a massive games player and normally gets bored of anything which is too fussy on the controls (yes you Gears of War and your stupid tutorial and controls, no co-op with significant other for me :(). But Wii Sports how he loves that! It is so simple to pickup and has a lot of complexity underneath. Sure some of the games are a bit shallow (I’m looking at you Baseball) but for the most part you really feel as if you are playing the sport and that you can definitely get better just by practising.
Mii
Customisable avatars, every game seems to have them at the moment but who would have thought about integrating them into the core of the console? This along with the Controller is a genius move. As a games designer it allows us to create games which make use of avatars and allow the player to customise their look without having to try to sell a graphical style that he/she might not buy into. Instead we can use the Mii functionality and expand it for our game (swords, shields, guns, hats you name it). This means that 1) more potential people will play our game (who doesn’t love their Mii) and 2) means we can focus on making a good game rather than worrying about the style of our avatars.
Channels
The channels are also a nice idea for families who may not be familiar with games consoles. Having games you have downloaded, news, weather, internet and Miis to be right at a users finger tips is a brilliant stroke and makes the machine so much simpler to use. The whole front-end to the machine makes for a brilliant introduction to how to use the controller.
Virtual Console
Love it! Only Nintendo can so shamelessly get you to buy stuff you probably own already, Mario 64, Zelda, Gunstar Heroes so many great games for veterans and new comers to buy. Can’t afford a new game with your pocket money this month then hop onto the VC and download an old one for pennies.
Conclusion
The Wii is as innovative as it sets out to be. I have enjoyed every minute of it so far and long may it continue. I do have some complaints, the pointer as mentioned above is a bit difficult to use when you point off screen (how they would combat that i have no idea) and there is only really two killer apps at the moment: Zelda and Sports. As long as they can keep new, fresh feeling games coming then it has a very strong future ahead of it.
-Nic