Read this before you buy a Wii this Christmas.

Dec 11, 2008 at 3:39 PM
5 comments

It's Christmas. Yet again, a crapload of people are going to buy a Nintendo Wii. Unfortunately, for about 60% of these people (by my estimates) the Wii is the absolute wrong choice, and is a product sold on hype and general public groupthink.

Read the rest of this post, and if you still want a Wii, I wish you luck finding one.

The graphics on Wii, regardless of game, are universally very cartoony. You will see a lot of aliasing. Now, if this sort of thing doesn't bother you, don't worry about it. But if you are an eye candy person, the Wii's graphics will make your eyes want to claw out of your head and hide under the couch. To me, half of the games look like 3D renderings of flash games you can play on a website. If you do get a Wii, please hook it up to the cheapest, smallest, lowest-tech television you have in the house. When hooked up to a pure 1080p LCD, you'll see all of those jaggy blur-textured blobs in all of their underwhelming glory.
The Wii is basically built on circa 2002 technology. The bells and whistles you are expecting from a console won't be on the Wii. Want to play DVDs? Sorry. Want downloadable content for your game? Sorry. Want to download more WiiWare? Sorry, out of memory and not expandable. The list goes on and on. Half of the things on this list were actually available on consoles in 2002.
Every multiplatform game, if it comes to the Wii, will be by FAR the worst version available. Most games released for Xbox 360/PS3/PC/LeapFrog/MyFirstConsole/Speak n' Spell won't even be released on the Wii, as it's so underpowered that there's no point making a half-assed version of the game for the Wii. If they do bother to port it, it will suck complete and total ass. I didn't realize how bad it was until I had the intense displeasure of purchasing and playing Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii. The graphics looked like something my iPhone would render on a bad day (and on my iPhone, the screen isn't as big as a television). And all of the extra songs you can download? Nope, sorry, no downloadble songs. Even if they had that feature (and subsequent games have attempted to add it) Wii game data can only exist on the Wii's system memory, not the SD card slot, which means you wouldn't have room for that stuff anyway.
The Nintendo first-party games are good, but since all other games suck you had better REALLY like Nintendo games. We're talking the Mario/Link/Pikachu/Some other cartoon character franchises and the like. If you do not like these sorts of games, there are maybe about a half-dozen games for the Wii worth buying. TOTAL.
It's not the cheapest console anymore. That honor goes to the supremely more fun and useful Xbox 360 Arcade.
Don't be fooled into thinking that it's inexpensive. You get one Wiimote with the console. Eventually you will get three more Wiimotes as well as four nunchucks. And when it's finally in stock, another $90 for Wii Fit (which is worth it, but still, you're getting the point here).
Nintendo intentionally (and stop claiming it's a supply chain problem Nintendo, because if it is, you are the most incompetent manufacturing outfit in the history of business) makes or releases way fewer of everything than there is demand for. This means that even if you want a Wii or a hot game/accessory, you will be searching for it. The console has been this way for almost three years running. Wii Fit is still not in stock anywhere. Mario Kart Wii was even hard to find for a few months. I assume they are doing this to build hype, but it's just ridiculous.
The control system is not revolutionary in any way. For most games, the Wiimote is not even measuring what you are doing, it's merely sensing your movement as a button push that requires more effort. For an example of this compare Wii Sports Bowling and Tennis. The bowling game actually tracks the accelerometer and gyro data to influence the game. The tennis game just treats your motion as a button press (press A for forehand, press B for backhand would work exactly the same way). The latter method of Wiimote usage is what most games for the Wii support. To replicate this, you could just use a normal game controller and make an exaggerated motion with your arm in the air before pushing A or B.

Still want a Wii? Congratulations, you are their target market (and I'm not saying anything is wrong with that, I just had to drive off all of the hardcore gamers before they made a mistake). Now go find one!

www.nowinstock.net is your friend.

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excellent post, yod. can't emphasize the main point enough:

Wii is NOT for gamers.
REPEAT
Wii is NOT for gamers.
Wii is fine for most everyone else.

my $0.02 worth: Wii is particularly suited for multi-generational family fun. even more fun when grandma beats teenage grandson at bowling.

But you can download games to your wii... like, we have lots of oldschool games on ours... Honestely, I don't use the wii very much, I use our 360 most often, but it keeps #($&#($*&#(*)*$*&($&@()$&#@)(*& dying on us, because they are useless. We get a replacement refurbed console on our warranty, and then that just has red ring of death too! If I didn't use it so often i wouldn't give a shit so much!!

The problem with the Wii downloadable games is that there isn't much onboard storage on the Wii, and you can't expand it, even using the memory card slot. The old school games are pretty small, but the new WiiWare games take up a lot more room and a bunch of my friends that have downloaded them have basically run out of room.

And yeah, my 360 died once already too. They'll sort it out someday, hopefully before the 3 year red ring warranty runs out.