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Are you kidding? An overprotective parent would never let their kids to use a Nintendo Wii.Those things are dangerous.

What's the real-life equivalent of the Crowbar from halflife? I always wanted one

A Wiimote maybe?

I've always loved reading through http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/ which is a collection of articles and photos of damage (personal or to TVs/Windows/tables/lights) while playing Wii.

The Wii uses a small fraction of the electricity of the other two consoles. If all Wii sales had been PS3 or XBox360 sales, the environment would be a lot worse off.

Maybe they're factoring in all the injuries and property damage caused by the Wiimote's defective wrist strap.

Is it Wii safe?

http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/show_cat.php?cat=2

And talk about broken wrist strap-induced projectile injuries... instead of Wiimotes merely embedded in TV screens and walls, we'll have Wiiphones embedded in car windshields and the sides of buildings.

So my buddy picked one up a few weeks ago, and we started playing Wii tennis. It's a fun game and we'll play for an hour or two at a stretch. However, we've figured out that you can pretty much 'flick your wrist' instead of moving your entire arm to swing the racket, and be just as successful in the game. In fact, if one of us tries to play as if they were actually playing tennis, 99% of the time they lose.

I'm not saying that you *couldn't* play this game and get some exercise, I'm just saying if you think that 100% of the people that play this will play in the manner that is considered 'exercise' then you are mistaken.

Plus, we've never had an accident whereby the controller flew out of our hands, knocked over a vase, started a fire, killed the dog, broke the TV.. ala http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/

a) You're not going to achieve this without changing the design of the controllers and the sensor bar on top of your TV. The best you will get is force feedback when your invisible cursor falls off the screen. Even then the calibration will rely on how well the sensor bar is centered on top of the television - a factor the developers cannot control.

b and c) Have you not noticed how much trouble some people have with even the basics of Wii control? Also, I personally have zero interest in attaching the remote to _ANY_ of my limbs.

d) Agreed completely. Apparently they won't even be releasing a network play API to 3rd parties for up to a year !! I find this a terrible blunder of launching any system in 2007 and I would be very unhappy with it if I weren't so busy replaying the NES Super Mario Bros.

of course means the primary purpose of such mod chips isn't to allow anything except piracy.

true , but 'killed' will give more clicks than 'dies' .

I actually thought that the Wii killed her . i was thinking about http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/

It's all relative to the Wiimote bar you place near your TV. Everything is relative to that device, so you are never actually pointing accurately at anything on your screen.

You may be surprised, but I completely agree with you here. They may have had fewer throwing incidents if people didn't think there was a strap to keep them from losing complete control of the remote.

Ack, I just posted with this point before I read this comment. I would have put it under here if I had read it here first.

A better other-product analogy to use here rather than footballs and knives would be a railing on a staircase that appeared to be attached but really was not. In this case the appearance of security was there, but not the reality.

Not a bad attempt at an analogy. However, I think this analogy would be best stated like this...

"An attached railing worked for those who grab it with one hand and walked down some stairs, but broke when a 180 pound man tried to sit on it or slid down it."

In this case, railings where designed for people to hold with their hands and even put some body weight on it. Some thick railings (banisters) are capable of holding the weight of an adult to slide down. If one railing would support your weight to slide down, it does not mean all railings can. Even if a railing can support your weight, it does not mean you should slide down one, because it is dangerous to do so; you can fall off and bump your head.

Even so, people and kids will use railings and bannister's to slide down. Some kids will even stupidly try to do it (like myself as a kid) on a railing that cannot support their weight. They will break the railing and maybe even damage something else such as the wall, furniture or themselves. Is it the railing manufacturers fault the kid used the railing in such a way? Or, lets put it this way... How much fault is a railing manufacturer responsible for should they design a product that can be used inappropriately?

Of course, they could have designed the railing to be 'un-slidable', or make it stronger with supports. Yet, I cannot see a vast majority of parents blaming the railing company for the accident, but rather the child's actions. I can see the children turning to their invisible monsters and lair to their parents stating that it was someone else who broke it, to deflect blame.

This would be my case in point, from my previous post. Also, it's been stated that the broken TV phenomenon is over-hyped, and lets run some numbers...

On Nov. 28th, PC World reported that some 600,000 Wii's where sold, with Nintendo estimates to hit 4 million by the end of the year. It's also been reported that the sales numbers are off as much as 20% (less) for that 4 million mark. So, we'll just use the 600,00 Wii number. We'll also use an average of 2 Wii remotes sold per console (everyone will have one, while others can have up to 4). That's 1.2 million remotes out there. Wiihaveaproblem.com is stating that there has been a total number of Wii remote damages of about 40 destroyed objects (including TV's, laptops, PDA's, Walls, Wii's, and more) and they only list 29 broken straps (I guess the other causes of damage where people not even using the strap), but we'll just use 40 as a conservative estimate.

That's an incident rate of 0.0025%. Hardly what I call a problem and should clearly show that these incidences are the exception, rather than the normal and that the cause for these accidents are not the fault of the system, but the user of that system due to the fact that if it was a system design flaw, there would be significantly higher rates. Now, Wiihaveaproblem.com would hardly justify as an accurate site, but even if it is off, it would have to be off by 400 times that amount to reach 1%. Also, the sales number of remotes and systems continues to climb at the same ti

You may be surprised, but I completely agree with you here. They may have had fewer throwing incidents if people didn't think there was a strap to keep them from losing complete control of the remote.

Ack, I just posted with this point before I read this comment. I would have put it under here if I had read it here first.

A better other-product analogy to use here rather than footballs and knives would be a railing on a staircase that appeared to be attached but really was not. In this case the appearance of security was there, but not the reality.

Not a bad attempt at an analogy. However, I think this analogy would be best stated like this...

"An attached railing worked for those who grab it with one hand and walked down some stairs, but broke when a 180 pound man tried to sit on it or slid down it."

In this case, railings where designed for people to hold with their hands and even put some body weight on it. Some thick railings (banisters) are capable of holding the weight of an adult to slide down. If one railing would support your weight to slide down, it does not mean all railings can. Even if a railing can support your weight, it does not mean you should slide down one, because it is dangerous to do so; you can fall off and bump your head.

Even so, people and kids will use railings and bannister's to slide down. Some kids will even stupidly try to do it (like myself as a kid) on a railing that cannot support their weight. They will break the railing and maybe even damage something else such as the wall, furniture or themselves. Is it the railing manufacturers fault the kid used the railing in such a way? Or, lets put it this way... How much fault is a railing manufacturer responsible for should they design a product that can be used inappropriately?

Of course, they could have designed the railing to be 'un-slidable', or make it stronger with supports. Yet, I cannot see a vast majority of parents blaming the railing company for the accident, but rather the child's actions. I can see the children turning to their invisible monsters and lair to their parents stating that it was someone else who broke it, to deflect blame.

This would be my case in point, from my previous post. Also, it's been stated that the broken TV phenomenon is over-hyped, and lets run some numbers...

On Nov. 28th, PC World reported that some 600,000 Wii's where sold, with Nintendo estimates to hit 4 million by the end of the year. It's also been reported that the sales numbers are off as much as 20% (less) for that 4 million mark. So, we'll just use the 600,00 Wii number. We'll also use an average of 2 Wii remotes sold per console (everyone will have one, while others can have up to 4). That's 1.2 million remotes out there. Wiihaveaproblem.com is stating that there has been a total number of Wii remote damages of about 40 destroyed objects (including TV's, laptops, PDA's, Walls, Wii's, and more) and they only list 29 broken straps (I guess the other causes of damage where people not even using the strap), but we'll just use 40 as a conservative estimate.

That's an incident rate of 0.0025%. Hardly what I call a problem and should clearly show that these incidences are the exception, rather than the normal and that the cause for these accidents are not the fault of the system, but the user of that system due to the fact that if it was a system design flaw, there would be significantly higher rates. Now, Wiihaveaproblem.com would hardly justify as an accurate site, but even if it is off, it would have to be off by 400 times that amount to reach 1%. Also, the sales number of remotes and systems continues to climb at the same ti

My girlfriend recently "lost control" of the Wiimote just recently while we were playing WiiBaseball. To her own admission it just slipped out of her hands. Thankfully the older "flimsy" strap did not break; thus saving our TV from an early retirement. Thanks to websites like http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/ you can see that much of the failing of the Wiimote's strap is mainly due to alcohol. Most of the problems that have arisen are mainly due to wii sports mainly because of its overly exaggerated movements. Which don't really need to be overly exaggerated at all. I have to admit though... It is just on a few levels, extremely funny.

Damn ad-heavy split up articles.

1. Lawn Darts
2. Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab
3. Mini-Hammocks from EZ Sales
4. Snacktime Cabbage Patch Dolls
5. Sky Dancers
6. Bat Masterson Derringer Belt Gun
7. Creepy Crawlers
8. Johnny Reb Cannon
9. Battlestar Galactica Missile Launcher
10. Fisher-Price Power Wheels Motorcycle

So it seems they missed the latest threat:

The Nintendo Wii
- http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/

Example injuries from that site:
- Girl Dislocates Knee While Playing with Wii
- Attack on Girlfriend Proves Fatal to Boyfriend's Wii Privileges

Damn ad-heavy split up articles.

1. Lawn Darts
2. Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab
3. Mini-Hammocks from EZ Sales
4. Snacktime Cabbage Patch Dolls
5. Sky Dancers
6. Bat Masterson Derringer Belt Gun
7. Creepy Crawlers
8. Johnny Reb Cannon
9. Battlestar Galactica Missile Launcher
10. Fisher-Price Power Wheels Motorcycle

So it seems they missed the latest threat:

The Nintendo Wii
- http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/

Example injuries from that site:
- Girl Dislocates Knee While Playing with Wii
- Attack on Girlfriend Proves Fatal to Boyfriend's Wii Privileges

Damn ad-heavy split up articles.

1. Lawn Darts
2. Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab
3. Mini-Hammocks from EZ Sales
4. Snacktime Cabbage Patch Dolls
5. Sky Dancers
6. Bat Masterson Derringer Belt Gun
7. Creepy Crawlers
8. Johnny Reb Cannon
9. Battlestar Galactica Missile Launcher
10. Fisher-Price Power Wheels Motorcycle

So it seems they missed the latest threat:

The Nintendo Wii
- http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/

Example injuries from that site:
- Girl Dislocates Knee While Playing with Wii
- Attack on Girlfriend Proves Fatal to Boyfriend's Wii Privileges

http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/ ;)

This is for people too stupid to hold on to something while they swing it.

I don't see a conflict here at all. Don't look behind the curtains.

There you go bringing logic into this! Don't you know that can make a Nintendork's head explode?

That is if they're not busy smashing their TVs to rid themselves of the circa 1995 Sega Saturn graphics the Wii is just barely capable of generating.

This situation is rather simple. There is a problem so Nintendo is addressing it. Don't blame this on the consumers, what else could happen if people make pitching and swinging motions directed toward a television while playing a baseball game on the Wii? So Nintendo puts these straps on the controllers to control them after a slip occurs. It turns out they weren't strong enough. This could be anyones fault, from testing to manufacturing. Websites like this exist for a reason. /end hopelessly obvious and redundant rant.

Just remember to invest in a plexiglass TV protector...

http://wiihaveaproblem.com/