Though Nintendo sidestepped the graphics arms race, the Wii is an impressive piece of technology that just might win.
The Controllers
First and foremost, it's all about the controllers. The Wii Remote (or Wii-mote, as it's referred to colloquially) is one of the most impressive pieces of technology I've ever encountered. If you haven't caught this month's article in Popular Science about the Wii-mote, go get it, as it exposes all of the Wii-mote's magic. At its heart are six accelerometers, which measure all six degrees of freedom in three dimensions. The Sensor Bar sits atop the television and provides two infrared beacons that, along with the infrared beam from the front of the Wii-mote, allows the Wii to triangulate the aim of the Wii-mote. The controller's signals are then transmitted to the console using the Bluetooth wireless networking protocol. It includes a built-in speaker as well, permitting sound effects to be triggered for just one player, and a rumble device, to give tactile feedback to the player.
The Wii-mote has a few buttons as well. The 'A' button on top and the 'B' trigger on the bottom do most of the work. There are '1' and '2' buttons for additional functions, and tiny plus and minus buttons for more options. The last two buttons, Home and Power, are recessed to prevent accidental triggering, as these are a bit more disruptive. Home opens the Wii control menu, letting you exit to the Wii operating system, reset the game to its boot state, or tweak Wii-mote settings. From here you can adjust the Wii-mote speaker volume, activate or deactivate rumble, and reinitialize the Bluetooth connections. It also provides a handy battery power graph for each Wii-mote detected. The Power button will put the console in sleep mode when pressed and held, a nice touch.
Much ado has been made of the wrist strap, whether or not it's necessary, and how strong it is. The Wii-mote has a fair amount of weight to it, and it is totally possible to lose a grip on it -- something that happened to me while playing Wii Sports, in fact. And yes, the original straps were held on by a very thin string. Whether or not the weight of the Wii-mote can really break it is open to debate. I tend to dismiss the reports of Wii-motes skewering plasma TVs as not about the straps themselves, and more about idiots not wearing them and then saying "the strap broke!" to save face when they lose grip and do damage. However, I did snap off a strap while playing Wii Sports baseball when the strap crept down my forearm, then gripped when I pitched forward, overextending and breaking the strap in the process. I dutifully requested a replacement through the Nintendo web site, and it arrived within 2-3 days. The accompanying Nunchuk controller plugs into the base of the Wii-mote, using it as its transmitter, and adds another array of accelerometers, as well as a traditional analog joystick and a couple of buttons. The Nunchuk has a plastic bracket that Nintendo wants you to thread the strap through when you use it, but I never do. The socket on the Wii-mote has a lock on it, and you have to squeeze both sides of the plug to unplug it from the Wii-mote, and that is more than strong enough to keep the Nunchuk anchored.
The console
The Wii is the smallest game console I've ever seen. Scarcely larger than a computer's external CD-ROM drive, the Wii's tiny white box will fit just about anywhere. There is a single motorized slot in front for feeding it games, a hatch covering an SD flash memory card slot, power, reset, and eject buttons. Pressing the power button once puts the console in sleep mode, where the video is off but it can still receive data. Holding it for 5 seconds powers the console off completely, other than a red pilot light.
On the top are hatches covering the Wii's backward compatible GameCube features, including two memory card slots and four GameCube controller ports. Unfortunately, with a memory card in, the door over the slots won't close flat, so you'll need to remove GameCube memory cards when not in use to maintain that sleek, minimalist appearance.
On the back are plugs for the Sensor Bar, the video cable, and the power cable. The cable on the Sensor Bar is extremely thin and feels quite fragile, so you won't want to mess around with it much. All of the plugs connect firmly and are pretty much a set-and-forget affair. The power supply is the lump in the middle type, making it power-strip friendly.
The console includes the aforementioned Bluetooth networking for communicating with the controllers, as well as for communicating with their handheld game device, the DS. Nintendo has pushed this as a selling point. The upcoming Pokemon title suggests the possibilities -- training creatures on the DS and fighting them on the Wii -- and there's a lot of potential for novel gameplay possibilities (and DS sales, not coincidentally). Also integrated is WiFi 802.11b and g for wireless connectivity to the Internet. I recommend getting your Wii on the Internet if at all possible, since you'll want access to OS updates, and it's required for the Shop, Everybody Votes, and Internet Channels. The WiFi signal is vulnerable to interference, and technical support articles on the Nintendo web site strongly recommend using the less-used WiFi channels 1 or 11 to minimize adverse effects. Where I am, there appears to be significant interference, and that does affect the Wii's network performance. Even so, a full system update only took 15 minutes to download (2-5 minutes is more typical with a clear signal and a broadband Internet connection) so even with interference, the Wii's network performance is tolerable. Also promised, but not yet delivered by any shipping titles, is on-line multi-player functionality. As Nintendo was the only platform to lack on-line play in the last generation, and the next-gen competition both have it, Nintendo needs to treat this as a must-have.
The Wii comes with a console stand for holding the console vertically. This works well for the most part, except that if the Wii is to the left of your TV you'll find yourself putting game disks in with the label away from you. It takes some getting used to.
The Multimedia
The Wii has endured a lot of criticism for its non-competitive technical specifications outside of the controllers. To some extent, that criticism is justified. Its video performance is nowhere near its competition, the Microsoft XBox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3. To be fair, the graphics are way more than "a pair of GameCubes duct taped together" (as one infamous game developer ranted at GDC '07). The graphics are also far better than the Playstation 2, and a tad better than the original XBox, which is probably the fairest direct comparison. The Wii still sports the best graphics of any standard resolution video game console yet released and deserves at least a score of 8.
Still, when the specs are laid out before you, you can't help but raise your eyebrows. In an age where a gigabyte of memory for a PC costs less than $50, the scant 64 MB in the Wii is surprising, as is the 28 MB of video RAM. It would have been nothing but a benefit for Nintendo to double or triple that with little, if any, increase in cost. More of a pleasant surprise is the CPU, a cousin of the Motorola/IBM PowerPC CPU that, until very recently, dwelled within Apple Power Macintoshes. The 750MHz of the CPU is deceptive, because PowerPC CPUs are designed with a totally different philosophy than Intel Pentiums or AMDs, so that speed number is not that unreasonable.
For the most part, the graphics shortcoming haven't been visible in the games I own, except for in Elebits, where frame rate issues crop up in the higher levels with lots of things moving around. It's moments like this when gamers will ask themselves why Nintendo didn't put more oomph in the system.
I have a similar complaint about the system's secondary storage, a bare 512MB of flash RAM compared to the multi-gigabyte hard drives built into the competition. But this is where the price mitigates the shortcoming, since a hard drive would have greatly increased the Wii's $250 retail price and would have likely doubled its form factor. And with the SD card slot, you can expand the storage yourself, though the Wii doesn't yet have the ability to read from the SD card directly.
I have no complaints about the audio. Supporting everything up to 7 channel SurroundSound, the Wii console itself meets all expectations. Every game I've tried sounds fantastic. The speaker in the Wii-mote is a different story. It's a great idea, but it's of very low quality, distinctively fuzzy and full of distortion, barely on par with the one in your telephone handset. How much more would it cost to get something higher quality in there? Only this tinny embarassment keeps the Wii from scoring a perfect 10 in this category.
When you consider that the Wii sells for $100 cheaper than the XBox 360, and about half the price of the PS3, the tradeoffs make a lot more sense. Developers will need to make more effort and be more creative to make games on the Wii look as good as they play.
The Gameplay
So how well does it all work? My experience has been that it will work about as well as the amount of effort made by the game publisher to do so. Nintendo-published titles were totally responsive, with both precision and accuracy. Third party titles are more of a spotty affair. Some work fine with only specific moments of ineffectiveness, such as in Madden NFL 07 and the notorious kicking game controls. Other publishers haven't gotten the knack of the controls at all, or simply haven't tried very hard.
I found the Wii-mote to be quite sensitive to motion, and using its targeting mode aimed at the TV screen was exquisitely so, almost to a fault. The feel of its accuracy is dependent somewhat on exactly where the Sensor Bar is positioned. I liked it best immediately above the TV, less so below the TV, and just not right at all further above the TV on the VCR. Unfortunately, the Wii OS does not have much of a facility to tweak the aim to your liking, something that would be a great basis for a system update. No games I've bought (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess being the sole exception) have their own Wii-mote aiming tweaks.
The Nunchuk gave me the vague impression of being somewhat less responsive to motion sensing than the Wii-mote, but that may not be an accurate perception, since only Wii Sports boxing and Madden NFL 07 have made use of the Nunchuk's motion sensing at all.
I've only noticed a couple of distracting things about the controllers. One is that the cord from Wii-mote to Nunchuk can sometimes get in your way, especially with games like Madden NFL 07 where you do a fair amount of moving around with both controllers in use. Nothing like getting whacked in the chin by cabling while trying to catch a pass.
The other is that it eats batteries like there's no tomorrow. Bluetooth, rumble, and the on-board speaker all take up battery power. Don't expect to get more than a few days -- one week max -- out of a pair of batteries with regular use. Fortunately, battery exchange is fast and doesn't require the controllers to be resynced to the console. I didn't notice a significant difference between standard heavy-duty batteries and alkalines like Duracell or Energizer, though I haven't tried lithium batteries in it (but their expense discourages me from doing so), so save your money and go with the brick of Eveready Golds or Ray-O-Vac classics and be done with it.
The sole first-party Wii-specific add-on so far is the Classic Controller, which is required for many Virtual Console games. It has more in common with the Super NES controller than the 64 controller, so in quite a few games, most notably Super Mario 64, you have to relearn a new button layout. It is plenty sensitive itself, though and can also control the Wii Channels.
Like the motion controls, game graphics depended largely on how hard the developers worked, or conversely how lazy they were. Nintendo's titles -- particularly Wii Sports, Excite Truck, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess -- look fabulous, as you would expect them to. Not that you can't find polygon edges, but they don't detract from the game experience. If you have a standard tube television, the Wii looks just fine. EA, especially with their sports titles, have seemingly placed most of their effort in getting the motion controls right and spent less time on the graphics, a fair compromise under the circumstances, though reviews on GameSpot haven't let them off the hook, pasting them for the skimpy backgrounds and low-res textures, especially in Tiger Woods PGA Tour '07. Other publishers have been unpredictable. Ubisoft, for example, have produced both one of the best looking (Rayman Raving Rabbids) and worst looking (too many to mention) Wii games to date.
Nintendo placed unusually high priority on backwards compatibility, a trend begun by Microsoft's XBox 360. To that effect, the Wii will directly accept and play GameCube titles, and it also bears hardware ports for GameCube memory cards and controllers, as mentioned previously. More intriguing is its Virtual Console, which permits the Wii to emulate classic games from 8- and 16-bit consoles. Though the Nintendo 64 titles are the most obvious benefits, there are enough older titles to warrant some attention.
Motion controlling is something that's never been tried before -- and the shaky implementation by some publishers underscores this -- but I think it will revolutionize gaming. Gameplay gets a 9 score.
The operating system
Since the Wii is the first console I've owned that had its own operating system, this has been a pleasant surprise. Wii Channels is the console's OS and the jumping off point for all of the Wii's functionality. The Disc Channel occupies the top of left of a grid of 12 channels. Two more pages of channels are available by clicking on the plus icon, for a total of 36 channels.
Many channels are hardcoded with the system. The Mii Channel lets you create abstract avatars, and while they're not as detailed as, say, The Sims, you can make a reasonable doppelganger with a little effort. You can have up to 100 Mii's, and they can be assigned to controllers for when you go to other Wii owner's houses to play. The Shop Channel is where you buy Wii points and spend them on Virtual Console games and additional channels.
Also built-in are the Weather Channel and the News Channel. The Weather Channel uses data from a company called WeatherNews and is best described as a poor-man's version of the cable TV Weather Channel "local on the 8's" segments, but with the added benefit of interactivity. There are a fair number of locations to choose from, and there's also a globe view that lets you browse weather from around the world, including the South Pole. The only drawback is that it is updated infrequently, only every 6 hours. I'd like to see that shortened to hourly updates. Of all the additional Wii Channels, the Weather Channel is the most practical.
I'm not fond of the News Channel, not because of lack of news, but because it's not customizable to include just the news I'm interested in. A control scheme similar to the My Yahoo portal on the web would be a welcome addition.
Available for free download are the Everybody Votes Channel and the Internet Channel. The Everybody Votes Channel is a fluffy bit where you can participate in polls. As a free download, it's good practice, but the questions change very slowly, there are only four active at any given time, and they generally only have two options. You use your Miis to vote, you can suggest questions, and you can view the results of past surveys, as well as the percent of the time your answers agreed with the global masses. But it's not something you would look at more than once a day for only a few minutes.
The Internet Channel lets you surf the web, assuming your Wii has Internet connectivity. As my previous, savage review of the Opera for Wii web browser indicated, it leaves plenty to be desired, but it's better than nothing. A new version of Opera for Wii is due out this month, so I'm highly interested in how improved it might be.
There is a simple messaging system via the button at lower right on the Wii Channel display, which I haven't played with much but apparently will allow you to register the consoles of other players on the Internet, as well as exchange e-mail with Internet users at large. Typing messages on the Wii is a tedious affair involving an on-screen keyboard and lots of aiming and clicking. The rumble effects while navigating the keyboard help a lot, as does an auto-complete box containing the most likely endings to the words you're typing. The main drawback to the messaging system, other than the typing, is that the Wii Channels view only shows how many messages are present for the current date, not the total or even the number of new messages. Also included is a primitive calendaring tool, which I've not messed with much but doesn't look terribly useful.
The bottom left button takes you to the system settings, which are fairly detailed and contain complete options for Internet network configuration, Sensor Bar tweaking (not that it's much), and system updates. There is also a facility for managing the flash memory, both internal and external SD cards, which lets you back up important game files and downloaded Channels. It's limited but functional.
The Virtual Console
By far the most important long-term development for Nintendo and the Wii is the Virtual Console, which provides ample opportunity for re-releasing old titles. Games from five vintage consoles are available: Nintendo 64, Super NES, and the original NES; and the Sega Genesis and NEC TurboGrafx-16 game systems.
The most impressive games have been the $10 N64 releases, especially Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, the love-it-or-hate-it Mario Cart 64, and most recently, Star Fox 64. Games for the other consoles have been a spotty affair. Most of the NES titles are quite primitive by modern standards, but are also the cheapest at only $5. Genesis and TurboGrafx titles are $6 and Super NES titles are $8. Although it's a great way to be nostalgic over games you used to love to play, really only the N64 and very last Super NES titles (e.g. Donkey Kong Country, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past) are really worth buying for the first time.
Many of the VC games appear to have been released more because they were easy to sign off on the emulation, not necessarily because they were good games, as evidenced by the streak of real stinkers that have been released lately, especially the NES titles. And sadly, game industry politics will probably prevent many perfect candidates for re-release from appearing on the VC, such as Diddy Kong Racing, which was developed by and contains characters owned by estranged and now Microsoft-owned developer Rare.
What would be really intriguing would be investigating the possibility of emulating other highly regarded but neglected consoles, such as the Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar, or even 16-bit PC platforms like the Amiga. To say nothing of truly classic consoles like the Atari 5200, Colecovision, or Intellivision (though let's draw the line at the Atari 2600, whose signal to noise ratio by the end approached infinity). Saturn titles could be a real possibility, given Sega's current close relationship with Nintendo. Atari titles, currently owned by the company formerly known as Infogrames, are probably a bit more of a stretch, but who knows? It fires the imagination.
Be aware that VC games are attached to specific Wii consoles, to prevent piracy. This isn't a problem unless you have to return your console or have it repaired, in which case it's totally necessary to contact Nintendo to make arrangements to keep your Shop Channel stuff from getting lost. I wish there was a better way to handle this, but with piracy being what it is in the modern gaming world, you can't really blame them for making it tough to move stuff around.
The support
I haven't had very many issues with my Wii so far. Most issues can be addressed by the excellent printed manuals bundled with the console. Getting it on the Internet was a struggle because of the WiFi interference issues. The Nintendo web site has quite a bit of helpful support basics, but there's a distinct limit to its depth beyond ID-10T errors. The support forums are a rich, albeit unofficial, source of assistance (just watch out for their privacy policy, which bans all expressions of personal information). I found it easy to find the form for replacing my Wii-mote straps, but very difficult to find any method of contacting the company directly.
Ever since CD-ROMs and DVDs became the norm for game titles, damage has been a much greater issue than with the older ROM-cartridge-based systems. To their credit, Nintendo does have a system for replacing damaged game disks, and I'm about to try it out with our worse-for-wear copy of Wii Sports. It can't be done on-line though, only via phone, again most likely to prevent attempts at piracy. Non-Nintendo titles are beyond their purview, though, and must be taken up with their respective publishers, and I've not heard if it's possible or how tough it is to do so.
The value
As the most affordable next-gen console, the Nintendo Wii has a huge built-in advantage. Coupled with the significant amount of free material that can be downloaded, that in itself would make the Wii a great value. Then Nintendo returned to what used to be a common practice: bundle a game with it.
Wii Sports is the perfect bundled title. Part tech demo and part mini-game collection, it totally sells the console to its buyer. Although understandably limited in scope, Wii Sports perfectly introduces motion controlling, the Miis, and the operating system. Rumors have Nintendo unbundling Wii Sports in the future, but I think that would be a grave mistake. From the beginning, video game consoles have included one game, and I'm not sure when that practice ended. But it's a heartily welcome gesture on Nintendo's part.
Between the Wii Channels, Wii Sports, the adequate support, and the promise (though not yet delivery) of on-line gaming and DS integration, as well as its $250 asking price, the Wii gets 10 out of 10 on value.
The Future
The Wii has the buzz, it has the controller technology, and it's selling so fast nobody can keep them in stock and Nintendo can't keep up with demand. Whether or not this continues to be the case depends on some very important questions.
Is motion sensing controls a fad or a permanent part of the gaming landscape? Will gamers lose interest and return to their button-encrusted joystick controllers? Clearly, this is the biggest gamble Nintendo took with the Wii, and so far it's paid off. Will it continue to do so? Only if publishers take the time to implement them well. So far, no games have totally copped out and just used the buttons, or the classic controller, or demand a GameCube controller (though the upcoming Mortal Kombat: Armageddon is the first title to not rely on motion controlling exclusively), but lots of games have been victimized by crummy motion sensing. EA, and NIntendo themselves, have demonstrated that motion controls can work well, be intuitive, and most importantly, extend the gaming experience. Will other publishers get the hang of it?
How much will the Wii's lack of graphics power limit the console's acceptance? You have to admit, the in-store Playstation 3 demo of that moto-truck racing game takes your breath away, and the XBox 360 has a one-year head start and a lot of established publisher support, especially in the sports game realm. The Wii can't go toe to toe with the PS3 or XBox 360 since it lacks high definition video, but neither should the Wii's specs be an excuse for poor graphics. Eventually, publishers like EA who went for nailing down the control schemes first will have to backtrack and deliver the visual goods. Otherwise, Nintendo will not be able to give the Wii more than a 2 or 3 year life cycle without a graphics and CPU power update. Eventually developers will figure out the PS3, as they already have the XBox 360, and their prices will come down a bit, and then the honeymoon will be over.
Will the Virtual Console be a boon or a crutch? There are already twice as many VC titles released as native Wii titles, and most require no effort to re-release. In order to avoid becoming a glorified nostalgia machine, Nintendo needs to emphasize high-quality native Wii development. It needs to get on the cases of publishers who have so far given the Wii short shrift (such as Take Two/2K Games) and make them believe the Wii is a platform worth investing in. They also need to take publishers like Ubisoft to task for clogging the sales channel with poor titles.
And ultimately, where is all this going? Nintendo needs to give its customers a clear roadmap forward. We know that Sony will hang with the PS3 come hell or high water (it's so big that an embarrassing market exit ala Sega or Atari isn't likely to happen) and Microsoft, being used to PC market cycles, will have the XBox 360's successor ready for market within a couple of years. Unless the Wii has hidden untapped talents, the control scheme won't be enough to carry the Wii for long without delivering more eye candy.
The verdict
But for the time being, the Wii deserves its unexpected market leader position. The $250 retail price certainly helps, and Nintendo will eventually get its arms around the supply shortage, to the point where total unit sales should catch up and pass the XBox 360 before Christmas. From bizarre dark horse to surprise champion, the Wii is, for the moment, the single most compelling game console on the market, and a bold declaration by Nintendo that it's not ceding the video game market to anyone. Simply put, the Wii is an unqualified hit, and an immense amount of fun! 10 out of 10 for tilt, and a well-deserved 9.3 score. While the match is still pending, Nintendo definitely wins game and set.
porphyrous
David V