Nintendo Wii

The Nintendo Wii is the latest game console on offer from the company. It is one of the most innovative consoles to come on to the market. This has made it a somewhat controversial product on which opinions are very divided. It is pretty clear that the Wii was intended to attract new people into the gaming market.

Nintendo have always been one of the real innovators when it comes to gaming consoles. Really they were the ones who saved the industry in the eighties when the released their first console. Up until that time the home gaming market was dying because the consoles couldn't compete with the graphics that were offered by the games at the arcades. Nintendo were the first to offer a console that allowed for games of arcade quality to be played at home. They also replaced the joy stick and replaced it with a touch pad which was another important innovation.

In 2005 Nintendo introduced their fifth version of a gaming console with the Wii which has proved to be as innovative as any other product they have ever produced. The great innovation with the Wii is the control, it uses infrared tracking and motion sensors to allow you to control the game with a movement similar to what you would use in the game. For example if you were playing baseball you would hit the ball by making the motion of swinging the bat. This is very different than the way that games have been played up until this time.

One of the main goals of the Wii was to attract a new market of non-gamers by offering games that are played in a different way. In large part this has been successful but it has also turned off a lot of experienced gamers. Part of the problem is that the controller which works great on games that were designed specifically with it in mind does not work all that well with games that were not. The other problem is that except for the controller the Wii is inferior to the Xbox and Playstation in almost every way.

The areas where the Wii lags behind its competitors the most is that the games are not offered in high definition so there is no use of your HD TV. An additional problem is that the online gaming is nowhere near as good. The console also can't play DVD's or CD's. Another issue is that the games that some of the more popular games are not being made available for the Wii because developers can't figure out how to design them to use the new controller.

While there is a lot to dislike about the Nintendo Wii it is also important to keep in mind what the goal of the designers was. It is as low cost console that offers fun games for people who are not primarily serious gamers, in this respect it has been very successful.