ResearchNintendo Wii - What will it be?
As of this writing, the world is breathlessly awaiting the release of the seventh-generation Nintendo Wii home gaming console. But we have had previews unveiled, prototypes pictured, and playfully cryptic pre-announcements made, and in all it's a fair subject for this "pre-review".
The last Nintendo offering, the GameCube, showed a lack of imagination in it's design. Nintendo has burst forth with the Wii's design in an apparent determination to re-think the shape of Nintendo home entertainment devices once and for all. The unit itself is slim, stands on edge or lies flat, and looks like you could slide it right into your bookshelf between your gaming guides and manga collection and not know the difference.
A startling innovation is the controller. They threw away the two-fisted button-and-trigger shape, canonical of home game controllers for nearly a decade, and have emerged with something like a remote control for your TV or stereo. At first, you're thinking sore thumbs, until you learn that this controller, which is wireless, will sense it's alignment in 3D space, and thus you could move it around like a wand or a plane to control the system.
This is one reason that I think Nintendo is onto something, but to understand why, you have to see the (very good) science fiction movie "Minority Report" to see why. In the movie, Tom Cruise is a futuristic detective of sorts, who receives video evidence which he must sort through on a screen to investigate. The film has him standing in front of a room-wrapping screen and wearing fingerless gloves with sensors on them. He manipulates the data by making various hand gestures, at times signaling the screen like a baseball player and others making sweeping arm movements like a conductor. Each gesture he makes makes perfect sense when you see how the pictures stack and rotate and zoom on the screen. What I notice is that I've never yet heard the computer user who hasn't expressed desire to be able to use an interface like that on seeing this scene. Virtual-reality simulators have attempted to give the user a "being there" feeling with ground sensors to step on or gloves to wear. Nintendo's device, called the "Wii-mote", might just be the next logical step up, and if it works the way I'm thinking it will work, it will be wildly popular.
The "Wii-mote" also can be rotated 90-degrees and used like the old controllers, through clever layout of the buttons. In addition, the controller also has a built-in speaker and a force-feedback rumbler. To be fair, Nintendo is taking a gamble with this device, and users may balk at the strangeness of it. It will need a sensor bar which plugs into the console and lies under your TV screen. It will, however, allow multiple game play of up to four users and will work up to ten feet away.
The Wii will also have Internet connectivity, like all modern console devices. However, unlike some competitors, Nintendo is keeping a cool head about extra features. They apparently understand that people buy a gaming console to play games on. The networking capabilities will be mostly for multi-player game features, though it will also connect to an online service, called "virtual console", which will be a repository of more games which can be downloaded, including classic titles from past systems.