Some Wii fans want an improved Nintendo Wii
By John Pospisil
By any measure the Nintendo Wii gaming console has been an amazing success. Its innovative motion-sensing controller and fun games, not to mention affordable cost, has given Nintendo a real chance of being a serious player in the console market once again.
However, that doesn’t mean that Wii fans are satisfied, with Jim Squires over at The Bbps coming up with ten improvements he would like to see Nintendo make to the Wii, including:
- Automatic TV picture re-sizing
- Scrapping the friend codes system
- Providing online games
- Making Virtual Console games playable online
- Providing original downloadable content
- Increasing the scope of the Virtual Console
- Start marketing rechargeable batteries
- Include component cables with every system
- Improve Wiimote reception
- Publish more games
Jim makes some valid points, but it should also be remembered that some of these issues arise out the necessity to keep the Wii at a price point where it’s attractive to the marketplace (ie cheaper than both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3).
Other issues are a function of the Wii being a new gaming console, so, for example, of course it will take time for the games library to grow. It’s widely known that the first generation of games for any gaming platform aren’t the best; that’s because it takes time for developers to learn how to push the hardware.
To make the Wii the outstanding success that it is, the executives at Nintendo have had to make careful technical and commercial decisions so that the console was both affordable AND appealing.
Since Nintendo didn’t have the benefit of hindsight when it designed the Wii, I think the company got it 99% right.
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April 5th, 2007
A very interesting take on our article! Thank you for reading it, and I look forward to reading more from your site!
April 5th, 2007
nice article, and very open. luckily online gaming might be taking more form this year, ive heard a couple of games to possibly have only game features like the Nights sequal. also im not sure if my memory is good, but didnt nintendo have discussions with gamespy to use there online gaming systems for the console?……if so, hopefully it turns out for the better and we see some nice online play. especially by the time Smash bros come out……but either way……good points, compared to the other consoles, the list seems quite small….not sure if that is good or bad.
cheers anyway
April 6th, 2007
Funny, Nintendo has already stated that online game play will launch when Pokemon:Battle Revolution is released in June. There is downloadable Wii Channel content and the Virtual Console scope is increasing. Scrapping the friend code system seems a little unreal at this point, even though it would probably be for the better. And on a final note rechargeable batteries are already in production with game accessory companies.
April 7th, 2007
[...] I won’t say any console is perfect; the Wii has problems or rather “improvements” to be done on it and I think a hard drive for the Wii would be nice. Everything needs a hard drive, it makes things better. The PS3 has problems and the XBOX 360 has problems. The XBOX 360 has the fewest problems of them all and yes, it has a year and some months on the others but it still counts. [...]