The Public's First Look at Wii

isaacklinger writes "Time Magazine reports how it feels to play with the Wii. Overall it's a very enthusiastic review." From the Gamespot coverage: "Grossman traveled to Nintendo's headquarters in Kyoto, Japan, and was shown the Wii by legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. The reporter was especially impressed with the Wii's controller. 'It's part laser pointer and part motion sensor, so it knows where you're aiming it, when and how fast you move it and how far it is from the TV screen ... There's a strong whiff of voodoo about it.'" Update: 05/08 16:50 GMT by Z : Ran into a registration screen when I tried for the original article, but eldavojohn had more luck than I. The original Time article is available for reading.

Comments

The Article for the Article

[eldavojohn]

I don't really care for coverage of coverage of a device.

For those of you who wish to read the original Time Article I was able to read every page without a log in. Why that wasn't linked in the story, I'm not sure.

Unlike the hollow Gamespot article, this one offers a much more thorough and deeper look into games such as:

Video games are an unusual medium in that they carry a heavy stigma among nongamers. Not everybody likes ballet, but most nonballet fans don't accuse ballet of leading to violent crime and mental backwardness. Video games aren't so lucky. There's a sharp divide between gamers and nongamers, and the result is a market that, while large and devoted--last year video-game software and hardware brought in $27 billion--is also deeply stagnant. Its borders are sharply defined, and they're not expanding.

And:

Of course, hardware is only half the picture. The other half is the games themselves. "We created a task force internally at Nintendo," Iwata says, "whose objective was to come up with games that would attract people who don't play games." Last year they set out to design a game for the elderly. Amazingly, they succeeded. Brain Age is a set of electronic puzzles (including Sudoku) that purports to keep aging minds nimble. It was released for one of Nintendo's portable platforms, the Nintendo DS, last year. So far, it has sold 2 million copies, many of them to people who had never bought a game before.

There's a lot of good original information inside that article that Gamespot doesn't seem to think is interesting.

Frankly, I enjoy the idea of the controller changing. I feel that the industry has been plagued with bad hardware and also the fear to step away from the norm. The name and design of this system both do that ... although it may introduce a risk of failure, it sure is a breath of fresh air.

I feel similarly about the music industry and that's why enjoy bands like the Arcade Fire that introduce instruments like the accordion with straight rock music to escape the guitar + bass + drums = band template. I like to think of myself as open-minded and I'll remain that way until I can experience the Wii first hand.

Furthermore, I'm shocked that Slashdot had the courage to post something that wasn't only making fun of the Wii for it's name! Could it be that we're actually going to get to read about its performance and abilities instead of just griping about its poor name choice? That's outlandish!

Re:Wii will work..

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"1) drop it, causing the car to do something completely unintentional"

To be fair, no controller can escape this fate. Heck, one of my peeves about the PS2 is that the shoulder buttons control which chapter you're on when watching a DVD. More than once, the controller fell, landed on the shoulder buttons, and completely screwed up what I was watching.

"2) shift position (I often change from sitting up/lying down multiple times during a gaming session)"

E3 may tell a different story tomorrow, but from what I've read so far this will not be a problem. Granted, if you're using the remote to point at the screen, that probably will not change. As for positional data, though, it's fairly clear they're using a gestural system (not unlike Opera or FireFox's scheme) to perform movement. A sword swing, for example, wouldn't require that you use an arc of the same distance every time. It's probably just looking at the pitch of the remote to work out if you're swinging or not. To put it a little more simply: I don't think the system is looking at exact spatial distances to work out your movement. You'll probably be able to twirl the remote in between your fingers to get a similar result. (At least this is what reivewers who have tried the controller have stated.)

"3) have trouble initially calibrating it (anyone who's ever played a space combat sim knows about "shopping cart wheel syndrome")"

Mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, I can see this exact problem happening just as you've described it. On the other hand, I cannot imagine it being that big of problem. Let's say you 'calibrate' it by pointing the remote at a cursor on the screen three times. Okay, no prob. From then on, when you point at the screen, you see a cursor indicating where it's aiming. At that point, you're not trying to align the remote, but rather you're gesturing for where the cursor should go. In that sense, you could miscalibrate the controller, but it doesn't seem that likely that it'd be the sort of problem that plagues everybody.

"4) damage it (it may prove to be useless if you can't turn off the motion-sensor)"

Erm, you can damage any controller. Lose one button on the PS2 and you're boned. I'll concede, though, that a replacement controller/sensor will likely cost more than a PS2 controller.

"5) try to play in motion (isn't a big selling point of GB that you can play in the car/on a plane?)"

Huh? GB vs. Wii? I'm genuinely confused by this point. There's no mention of playing this system on a plane or in the car. But, I'll take it at face value: The remote is being measured relative to the sensor. The nunchuck uses an acellerometer that would probably be affected by the car turning, but that should be just about it. (Except for the bumping...) I dunno that I'd want to play this system in a moving vehicle. I'll grant you that.