Wii (Whee!)

I’m a pretty avid video gamer. I find them fascinating and would rather be playing games than most other leisure activities. Therefore, I don’t think spending a few hundred dollars on a console, or driving around at 12:00 AM on a Sunday is excessive. My wife, on the other hand, thinks games are un-interesting and total waste of money at time. Or, I should say, thought.
Before I got the Wii, it was just another relative large expenditure by the techie husband. Now that we have one, she loves it. Along with pretty much anybody else who visited our house over Thanksgiving weekend. Nintendo wanted the Wii’s appeal to extend outside gamer-dom and they hit that nail exactly on the head. Not one person that played the Wii thought it was anything less than fun. This includes gamers, non-games, tykes and parents.
Wii Sports is a blast, especially in a room full of people. Seeing the avatars respond to your moves is a very neat feeling. Most of the non-gamers were thrilled that they could actually accomplish something in a game, without having to invest time in a complicated control scheme. Anybody could just jump in and start playing.
Nintendo definitely took care of the non-gamers and the party gamers, but what about us introverted folks who enjoy complex story driven single player games. For us, Nintendo created The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. For the first 10 hours, the game has been just incredible. I haven’t enjoyed a game this much since The Ocarina of Time. The only complaint so far is the sword motion is a little counter-intuitive after decades of button mashing.
However, this last point is exactly why Wii has so much appeal. While Sony and Microsoft are off innovating on technologies (cell processors, next-gen dvd, hd, etc.), Nintendo focused on the interface. Sure the PS3 and Xbox 360 look more real, but playing the Nintendo is more natural. I know which one I’d rather have.