Wii

A few weeks ago my wife spent ten days out in California visiting family while I held down the fort and sundry dogs here. As usual we had daily phone calls while she was out of town.

In one of these calls my wife informed me that she had fallen in love with the Wii and that we had to get a Wii. Now, I have never owned a game console of any kind and have never been tempted to buy one. No particular aversion—I think I’ve mentioned that I’m an avid player of Witcher on the PC, for example. I’d just never had any interest in a game console.

By the time my wife returned home our Wii and Wii Sport had arrived. Since then my wife and I have been exercising faithfully with it. We’re doing the yoga, strength exercises, aerobic activities, and balance games that come with Wii sport. I find the order and discipline the system imposes helpful. My wife has become quite skilled at some of the balance games. I’m fairly solid with most of the yoga poses as one might expect with my martial arts background. I also purchased Resident Evil 4 and have played it a little. I’ve found it mildly entertaining.

I think Nintendo has made a shrewd move. Rather than continuing the arms race with Sony and Microsoft with a bigger, faster, more capable, more powerful console, converging ever farther towards a general purpose computer, they’ve differentiated their product with a distinctive user interface.

It seems to have paid off. In the U. S. market at least the Wii is the fastest-selling game console.

From my small experience with it I think the approach the Wii has taken has some real application. For example, I can see real potential in it for certain kinds of training, particularly sports training. Golf, tennis, and kendo come to mind. With its approach the unit has the potential of monitoring your form, important in all three of these activities.

We’ll probably invest in Wii Resort fairly soon. That’s an add-on that adds a new controller and provides some additional sports activities.