Category: Games

Sony will rush more PS3’s to US retailers to help with the “shortage”. So now my local WalMart will have four on the shelf instead of two sitting unsold. You have to give Sony points for wishful thinking!

Do I even need to mention the obvious: the Wii outsold every other game console system in January. This despite the “shortages” of PS3 and the actual shortages of the Wii on shelves.

Incidentally, last weekend I discovered the Virtual Console on the Wii. I downloaded Super Mario Brothers and man, that took me back… I need to get Ice Hockey next! (Plus, web browsing on the Wii using the free Opera browser is pretty awesome. I’ll post a screenshot…)

(the silly post title parade continues)

Hardware revisions for the Wii are planned to roll out fairly soon:

The obvious things that Nintendo would do to make the Wii more attractive are add new colors, increase its internal flash memory, include rechargeable batteries for Wii Remotes and component cables. There isn’t much merit to making the console any slimmer or lighter, and high definition support isn’t likely to happen.

The Wii is attaining mass-market appeal, much like the iPod. It may only be a matter of time before Nintendo adopts Apple’s hardware redesign strategy.

Note that DVD support is already confirmed for the end of the present year, though probably at a slight price premium. That will certainly make things more convenient but it’s hardly a must-have feature. Unlike, say, the retro-themed Wii:

yum. The last game console I actually ever owned was in fact the original Nintendo. Alas, the above mod is just fan art, but it’s seriously cool enough that Nintendo better take notice.

Just… awesome. There are no words to contain my envy.

a mod chip for DVD playback on the Wii? I’ll believe it when I see it. Ars is similarly skeptical. Though it does lend itself to yet another childish post title.

BTW the Wii is everything I expected it to be. From my 4 year old (almost 5) to my inlaws, everyone can play games on this thing and have a blast. Even a jaded 15year old PS2 jockey I knew had a blast playing Wii Tennis with me. And you should see the ladies take out their frustrations on their husbands on Wii Boxing! I can’t believe how this simple, clean box has made videogames fun again. And you don’t need thumb extensions and finger grafts to play.

I picked the Wii Play title up from Walmart this morning, and gave it a whirl with the 4yr old this evening. The game is a package of 9 mini games on one disc, plus one extra Wiimote controller, for $50. This means you’re essentially getting a game for $10, and given the simplistic nature of the games on the disc I think it’s a pretty good value (though Ars Technica was not impressed; perhaps the author doesn’t have kids?).

IN any case, Nintendo knows what it’s doing. Shigeru Miyamoto, the inventor of Mario and Donkey Kong, lends some insight into the target audience. In a nutshell – moms: (more…)

I noticed the sunday paper had Wii advertisements in the Target and Toys R Us flyers, so on a hunch I called. Target: sold out within five minutes after opening, sorry sir. Sigh. Toys R Us: Yes sir, we have them in stock. Me: what? really? How many? TRU: Plenty, sir. I leave immediately. When I get there, it’s a ghost town – no cars in the lot, no crowds in the store. I go to the game section and they have a pile there. I restrain myself and just pick up the console unit alone, no extra wiimotes or other fluff; I’m in a kind of daze.

And now I am home and my 4 year old is eying the box. Not gonna be blogging much today 🙂

UPDATE: And just like that, I am dismissed. Guess I have time for blogging after all. I really should pick up another Wiimote later, heh.

I still haven’t found a Wii on the shelves, but the day I see one, I will buy it then and there. So it’s not like I need to justify the decision to buy one. However, rationalizations are another matter entirely 🙂 A few days ago, Shamus pointed to someone using the Wii for weight loss; now comes word that video games improve visual acuity by 20%:

Video games that contain high levels of action can actually improve your vision, claim researchers at the University of Rochester. Their findings, which will appear in the journal Psychological Science, show that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter—a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics.

“Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information,” says Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. “After just 30 hours, players showed a substantial increase in the spatial resolution of their vision, meaning they could see figures like those on an eye chart more clearly, even when other symbols crowded in.”

The paper isn’t on PubMed yet, though I did find some other relevant, entertaining and informative abstracts.

Given that my wife and I both are severely vision-impaired, I am seriously interested in any beneficial effects (however negligible) I can arrange upon my daughter’s vision. Of course, keeping her running around and gesticulating wildly while remaining tethered to a specific part of the house is also a big appeal 🙂

Sunday was supposed to be a big Wii day. Dean got one. I went to two best buys, a target, two walmarts, and two game stops. No wii for mee… sigh.

Ars has a couple of reports from the field. One is your standard “I just showed up on a lark and they shoved it into my hands” blah blah blah. The other I think reflects reality a bit better. I can’t even express the frustration, verging on sour grapes. I’m not going to make any effort anymore.

Incidentally, Circuit City has acted dishonorably indeed. I won’t be buying a Wii from them, or anything else, ever again.