Machineares, there are mostly fanboys on this board and that's fine. Were you expecting something different? If you take the time to look, though, you'll see that there are Nintendo fans (in a big way, I might add) who aren't entirely thrilled with the launch package. IMO, they should ditch Wii Sports, bundle in a second Wii-mote-Nunchuk set, and include a Wii Points card worth either 5,000 or 10,000 points. Not only would that be a better alternative in the minds of most gamers (since you could get at least 10 classic games and play with another person), but it would make for great exposure for the VC. It would have been nice if they had left DVD playback in the final specs. The launch date does make sense after some careful thought, and the price is acceptable. Tomp814, usually when Nintendo comes out with a revolutionary controller (and they're the only ones that do at this point in time), they usually don't regress in terms of design and functionality. Case in point, when the SNES controller was released as the first controller to have six face buttons, they never decreased the number of buttons. When the N64 controller came out as the first controller with analog control, and accommodated a later-developed force feedback attachment, they didn't drop it when the GCN controller was released. They built in the rumble feature and ADDED a second analog stick. So yeah, it's a fairly safe bet that all future Nintendo consoles will have this functionality in the future.

EvanO_O, don't use WoW nerd-speak, such as "teh innovation has teh failed." You sound and look like a retard No one with any sense uses that outside of WoW! Anyway. No, the innovation has not failed. It's just not as cheap as we thought. Listen, I understand that you want all-new content for the Wii and you'll get it. Everything, though, is not a dumbed-down port. They're adding functionality to SC DA, and Far Cry and Red Steel are new games. Actually conduct some research before you type this blather.

$499-599. When you spend this much money on a console, you expect to get 4 games with it. Sony keeps screwin' up. It's simply an attempt to compensate for having the least powerful console this past go-round, and to push their new movie technology. It's good to know that the other two companies out there are trying to bring things to consumers that we actually want. The difference in picture quality between HD-DVD and Blu-ray will not be mind blowing. Microsoft can say anything right now, but in two years, every 360 that rolls off of the assembly line will have an HD-DVD drive. And it's good to see that Nintendo is wising up and giving the Wii some form of DVD playback, and is the only console that is truly backward-compatible. The Wii does not have to have any convulted internal set-up (PS3), nor do you need to download emulator codes (360), to play games from this console generation. With the Wii, all you have to do is pop the disc in the system and hit the power button. Idiot-proof.