That’s right, folks. As of midnight, the Nintendo Wii hit both Australia’s and New Zealand’s shelves. Countless gamers were lining up at their local retailers late last night, to pick up their preorders or to try to get in quick enough to snatch a console from the shelf.
If you weren’t one of those people, and you have been planning on getting yourself a Wii as soon as possible, you’d best get off your rear and get moving! Nintendo seems to believe that stocks will be running out fast.
Are you one of those who purchased your Wii already? Let us know what you think!
Has anyone flung their wii-motes into their 40" screens yet? ^^
Haha almost :) We were playing it here at work today during lunch, one of the remotes flew from one of the guys hands.
Fortunately I hear that the Wii-motes are built tough.
..those 40" screens, however.. ;)
How responsive are those controllers? Is there any delay you can notice at all?
No delay, a little jittery if your on the sidelines or too far back from the tv, but nothing that hinder game play. very sweet. Lots a fun!
"We are investigating [the Wii Remote strap issue]. Some people are getting a lot more excited than we'd expected. We need to better communicate to people how to deal with Wii as a new form of entertainment." - Satoru Iwata
the wii is top knotch, wii play n sports r great, zelda is f*cking fantastic. Good fun system.
I noticed that if you do huge swinging movements with your sword in zelda, there is a tiny delay. If you use small wrist motions instead, it's fine. And it is AWESOME :D
Is anyone experiencing fatigue at all? How about RSI?
Awesome, now back to Zelda!
I've got Wii sports, Zelda and Wii Play and honestly, I've spent maybe 10(percent) of my time on Zelda, the rest on Wii Sports. It's that friggen good. Bowling is amazing, haven't had this much gaming fun in a long time!!
Wii Sports gets massive use at my house - mainly by non-gamers. The golf and bowling games are great (love going a full 9-holes of golf). Played a few hours of Zelda as well, its a fantastic game. Can't wait to play some more. My GF kicks my butt in bowling though... :P
Hey, just writing this using my wii! It's much easier than I thought it would be. I've been using the browser to watch you tube and play wii arcade, and it's been great!
Interesting no-one has mentioned the glitches and lockups the controller does. Mine is quite frequently doing it (seems like a gimbal type lock thing). While its fun.. it wears off pretty quick - I personally am pretty bored with Sports now, and Zelda.. hrm.. yeah.. I like the fishing the most ;) Its very feels similar to eye-toy.. and other similar interactive games.. Im waiting to see what more serious games are like on it.. Red Steel is a horror.. Id like to see something like RE4 on it.. that would kick ass.
Id also like to point out, that I have had many non-gamers play it with quite alot of frustration. Which puzzles the hell outta me, since everyone says all their non-gamer friends kick their ass on Sports... its definitely not what I'm seeing with kids and adults alike? Maybe the 'non-gamers' these ppl talk about are actually gamers.. dunno.. is a little perplexing though, maybe my controller is broken or something. Or maybe my family and friends hove motor control problems :)
Playing Zelda the other day I found I was having some controler issues. It's been working perfectly up until now. Seemed to be locking up some times and i needed to swing it about a bit until it finds itself. Might just be the angle i'm holding it on (I may have shifted on the counch and ended up not pointing it righ at the TV). More experiments are needed.
Personally I think Zelda is a brilliant game, though now that i've finished it i want to try something else on the Wii. The controller has really revitalised console gaming for me. Even if Zelda is just an 'old game in a new way', I have really enjoyed using a new and different controller. Quite refreshing. And I would not want to go back to aiming with a joystick (though swinging the sword is not as easy as just hitting the button, and isn't made any more fun or intuitive through the way this particular game uses the remote to do so, I don't think).
My family loved Wii sports. My very much non-gaming mother even beat by gaming brother in Wii tennis on their first go!
That could just be your batteries dying. I've found that towards the end of the battery life on my WiiMote (an hour or two before I have to change them, normally), the controller will glitch or respond more slowly, and it can become very frustrating indeed.
#14... your sensor bar isn't positioned near any blinking lights, is it? There were some Christmas day shenanigans at a friend's house with their blinking Christmas tree lights playing havoc with their WiiMote controls. (Then we read the warnings manual, and it all made sense).
The thing I like best about the WiiMote is that after a while you're not even paying attention to what you're doing anymore, especially in some of the WiiPlay games and others like Rayman. The controller really does start to feel like an extension of your arm. Sure, it's early yet, and it could turn out to be a short-lived gimmick, but people said that about the DS, too. It has my vote of confidence so far.
The DS is a gimmick still. No one goes on about the second touch screen and stylus any more - as that was what the hype was initially all about. These days it is all about the games themselves not the method you interact with them - like Brainage and Nintendogs, which appeal to the traditional non-gamers. The DS didn't actually start selling well until the lite version was released, and they changed the "look" and therefore appeal to gamers - via marketing.
You guys go on about the Wii, but it is still early days my friends ;)
But those games are popular because of the interaction and easy of use afforded by DS interface, I do not believe those games would have been nearly as popular - particularly with non-gamers, had they used face buttons.
You are right in saying the touch screen and microphone are not being hyped like the were at launch any more. It truly is the games that are the new focus, however their use of the unique features of the DS are a critical part of their design, success and appeal.
I think this is a function of there being no games to hype at launch. They have to hype the interface: "imagine what this COULD do", now that there are games for it though, they can say convincingly "look at what there IS", which is a far more compelling reason to buy a system than say, "raw potential".
This is what we are seeing with the Wii, a focus on the potential. It's partly what everyone is "going on about". Give it a year and everyone will be talking about the games, just like the DS. That is, provided they capitalize on that potential. Though judging from Nintendo's track record since the DS launch (or perhaps shortly after), and the proof-of-concept success of some of the Wii launch titles, I'd be inclined to say it would be very unlikely for Nintendo to screw this up.
I don't know if you could call something along the lines of the DS's runaway success a gimmick. Sure, maybe if they sold a lot of consoles in a short time period then everyone stopped buying them it could be classified as a fad, but the sales have been both high and consistent for quite a while now. And does anyone think that those sales are going to drop off in the near future? If anything, the DS seems to be experiencing a snowball effect, with more and more sales as more and more developers create exclusives for the system as they become convinced that it isn't a mere gimmick. It's easy to imagine the Wii experiencing a similar product lifecycle.
Also, if you're going to go on about people hyping the features as evidence of a gimmick, then doesn't that make Sony's bluray or Microsoft's high def gaming gimmicky as well? Livewire is correct - during launch, it's not the games people are talking about, it's the system. The game talk comes after everybody has finished talking about the system.
I guess we've reached the 'wait and see' period now, so everything said on the topic of a console's success is pure conjecture, especially if you read about all the various 'experts' whose findings consistently conflict with each other. The market is always full of surprises - we can make educated guesses, but that's about it. Even though it is great fun to speculate.
That being said, I love my Nintendo Wii so far, and will try and convince anyone I meet to buy one. :)