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U.S. Safety Commision 'Keeping an Eye' on the Wii
In the wake of this past week's offer from Nintendo to replace our Wiimote straps, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says they'll be keeping an eye on the situation in the future. For the time being they are satisfied with Nintendo's handling of the problem. Just the same, Kotaku reports that the organization wants to make sure there aren't a lot of subsequent 'flying Wiimote' incidents. From the article: "Because Nintendo self-reported the issue, the commission will not do its own investigation unless new issues crop up with the new strap. 'If the problem continues with the new strap that's where we might step in," she said. "We also would have to decide if it's a safety issue.' Vallese added that that means that if remotes were, for instance, smashing into a television hard enough to cause the tube to explode or somehow stop working in a dangerous way, it could also be deemed a safety issue."
I think people are _really_ going overboard with this entire things now. It's not as if the controllers are launching themselves. As nice/good as it is of Nintendo to replace the straps. This is just settings the bar lower for common sense. If your hand is sweaty, please dry it off for the sake of people around you. I'm curious as to how much tension the straps takes before breaking myself, and also how the replacement straps fair in that metric. But really, the controllers aren't supposed to be flying (or are games somehow requiring this?). Has anyone been able to actually damage the remote itself? It seems as if it is near indistructable.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
People get whacked in the head with golf clubs, tennis clubs, all sorts of stuff all the time. Safety Commision pays no heed.
People have thrown cellphones and remotes across the room in frusturation before. Safety Commision pays no heed.
Nintendo implements tool to keep device from being thrown across room. Nintendo then upgrades tool and offers replacement of 'inferior' version to try and keep accidents down. And now the Safety Commision is a bit concerned? For. Fucks. Sake.
Drop the American market. It's just a matter of time before some idiot uses a real bat on a controller, spreading plastic splinters all over his mates. "How would I supposed to know that a real bat would destroy the wiimote? Nintendo should make it impossible to throw the wiimote. They should pay me a gadzjillion dollars!" If Nintendo drops the american market, we here in Europe could get some ;)
Insert `fortune -o` here
I've had a Wii since launch. I've dropped the remote once or twice while playing (I think both times were while boxing. I'm terrible at the game, so I pretty much do the equivalent of button mashing, which is waving it around wildly). The strap held up just fine.
;-)
A more serious incident was when I was playing Baseball with my girlfriend's 5 year old daughter. She was pitching, and I was batting. She was standing almost directly in front of the TV as usual, and I was standing further back, near the wall so that I was out of reach of her. What happened was she pitched the ball, and then stepped back for some reason. I was taking a swing at the ball, and I was fairly focused on the TV. I heard a very satisfying CRACK! as the remote hit her head, and the bat hit the ball. I got a home run. She got a hurt head. And learned an important lesson about Wii safety. She hasn't done that again.
(Yeah, I know that I'm a bastard. But surprisingly, she wasn't that hurt, despite me whacking her in the back of the head nearly as hard as I could. (The battery cover flew off of the remote, but it was otherwise undamaged, and the battery cover didn't break))
I've seen video of one guy breaking the straps on a Wiimote.
Be was pitching in baseball and threw the fucking controller.
You do not throw the fucking controller.
Aparrantly people seem to thing you have to put the same force behind your movements as if you were actually pitching or hitting or bowling or swinging a golf club. I'm starting to thing WiiSports was a really bad title to include with the console, maybe they should have gone with WiiPlay, I'm sure far fewer dickweeds would fling thier controller with enough force to break thier TV then.
It's not the strap that's broken, the strap is only meant to stop you from accidentally dropping it, it's the retards putting way too much force behind thier movements. Maybe if they used it without the strap they'd be more careful.
...I got nothing.
This Wii issue is the best advertising money can buy. What's wrong with the product... it's so fun people of all ages (particularly adults, one of their target demographics) are actually breaking the strapp while playing. This doesn't affect the actual functionality of product... you have to be careful... but the games still play and the Wii itself doesn't break. So they'll send out some replacement straps, while the news media covers this story for days demonstrating how to use the Wii, how young and old are using it and having a great time. How you should excercise some restraint while you have all of that fun.
This is awsome press coverage for Nintendo that they don't even have to pay for. "Oooh look, Nintendo is dangerous! The Governement is keeping their eye on them." It's almost always good to play the bad-boy card in the U.S. market. Consumers eat it up. :) Anyone who wasn't thinking about buying a Wii might think that they should check to see what all the fuss is about... and if it makes another sale, cha-ching!