Wii Hardware Gallery
Wii Sports Gallery
The release of all of the “next generation” systems created a huge buzz in the past few months, while Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are going head to head for the graphics and performance market, Nintendo has gone for a different approach with the Wii. Nintendo’s goal was to be fun for gamers of all ages and get people who normally don’t game to not only play but to actually enjoy playing. This review will look into the entire Wii including Wii Sports, Red Steel and a brief look at what’s to come.

I was fortunate to have a wife that surprised me and camped out in front of Best Buy all night to buy my Wii. How many people are that lucky? Though the supply of Wii at launch was vastly superior to that of the Playstation 3 there still was not enough units to meet the overwhelming demand for the console. Many people were turned away the day of the launch as there just were no more units to purchase. I was lucky to get a hold of one so soon. The morning of I immediately unpacked the new system. It came in a precisely packed box with what seemed to be just enough room to hold everything. Every component had a tightly cut out location in the packaging and the system itself was very easy to put together.

One immediate draw back was it only had RCA connectors. HDMI and even S-Video were not an option, which immediately told me the Wii is not capable of any kind of High Definition display. This was very disappointing to me. With HD becoming the standard it is a strange move for Nintendo to not incorporate it into the system. This issue is to be resolved in the months to come. Nintendo wanted to launch with a mass market price and so decided to cut DVD and HD capabilities out of the initial launch. They have officially announced that a DVD and HD capable Wii is coming out sometime in 2007. This is great news but bad news for all the people who have already shelled their money out for the launch system. I am not sure how well this will play out for the Wii in the long run. The setup of the Wii was painless. There are three things to connect to the console. The power, the audio/video plug and the sensor bar (for using the wii motes). In about 5 minutes I was up and going. The first thing I did was to utilize the built in wifi card and get hooked up to the Internet at my house. Once connected to the Internet the Wii immediately began updating itself. I am not exactly sure what came down in the update but it was interesting to find out that the Wii will update itself whether it is on or off to patch games or update its internal software and firmware. This is a great way to make sure you are always up to date, but also a pitfall if you don’t necessarily like the effects an update may have ala Microsoft. If this is not a feature you want you can turn it off in the menu options.