Tag » wii

Yet another Wii post

Yet another Wii post

It’s time for another post about the Wii, with some thoughts and links I’ve accumulated over time.


Steven Johson, author of Everything Bad Is Good For You, posts five thoughts on the Nintendo Wii. I particularly liked the following comment:

What strikes you immediately playing Wii Sports — and particularly Tennis — is this feeling of fluidity, the feeling that subtle, organic shifts in your body’s motion will lead to different results onscreen.

I got a chance to play Wii Tennis for the first time this weekend, and Steven is so right. The physical aspect of the games is really satisfying, especially the fact that the controller picks up on subtle things like slices and topspins. As a side note, I strongly recommend reading Steven’s books Mind Wide Open and Emergence.


My friend Noah Brier also posts about the Wii, notably linking to an interesting Time Magazine article. This article provides a good overview of the strategy behind the Wii and some of the opportunities and challenges it raises for game developers. The following quote reinforces Steven’s points:

It’s a remarkable experience. Instead of passively playing the games, with the new controller you physically perform them. You act them out. It’s almost like theater: the fourth wall between game and player dissolves. The sense of immersion — the illusion that you, personally, are projected into the game world — is powerful.

However, one part of the article strikes me as incorrect:

It has now been rechristened the Nintendo Wii, an unreadable, unintelligible (that daunting double-i!) syllable. (For the record, it’s pronounced “we,” and the i’s are supposed to represent the new controller … never mind.)

The name for the console used to be Nintendo Revolution. Initially I had the same reaction as the Time author, but on second thought I believe the rebranding is spot on. I think the name “Revolution” would have sounded too edgy to the non-gamers that the console targets. Furthermore, it sounds a bit pretentious, given that the Wii has less impressive graphics than the competition.

The name “Wii” on the other hand is completely warm and fuzzy, and the spelling makes you want to draw it out in an enthusiastic Wiiiiiiiiiii (see the title of Noah’s post). Ultimately, it’s a much more fun name than the all-too-serious “Revolution”, and that’s why it works.



Noah also links to an entertaining fan-made commercial. I still prefer the official commercials. I love that they spend more time showing people playing the games than the games themselves, truly highlighting what makes the Wii great.


Finally, the picture for this post comes from a NYTimes breakdown of the remote. It doesn’t really have that much information, but I figured I’d link to it anyway while I was at it.