Saturday, November 25, 2006

Wii me

On Wed on my way out of the office I passed by someone's office and they had a Wii in there. I finally got a chance to sit down and play with it. I played around with the UI a bit, created a "Mii", and they played Wii sports to calculate my "fitness age" (it's like brain-age, but with sports, get it?)

Here's my quick 2c worth:

1) It's fun. You'll have fun. With friends over on a friday night you'll have fun. Kids will have a blast.

2) If my 'fitness age' were my real age, I'd not only not be writing this, I'd be dead. I was hands-down the worst of the group of people at the office. Now, mind you, I did not rtfm, so my first few rounds were getting used to the controls. Next time I'll do better.

3) The "lobby" for multiple 'Mii's on one system is well done. This really seems like the console was design with "multiplayer" in mind, where multiplayer means same-box, same room.

4) The controller works better than I thought, but I'm curious whether there's any calibration involved, and what that does to it. In particular, I'm wondering about screen sizes *significantly* different than the remote receiver widget. E.g. My console setup is a 7' screen with a projector. Is that going to be an issue?

As for whether I'll buy one... well... I haven't seen the killer app for me yet.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have tried it with a 14" TV and a 5' projector... Not really an issue unless you want to "aim" like a lightgun. Most people will just use it as a mouse and quickly adapt their wrist motion to what they see the cursor do on screen.

Anonymous said...

The experience is seriously lacking on larger screens. On my 8' diagonal screen, the cursor jumps all over the place. I've got to aim at the floor to hit the bottom of the screen. I've got to do all sorts of unnatural motions just to use the system properly. I ditched my Wii after these difficulties. It's simply no fun on a projector, not to mention having to string the sensor bar cable directly across the middle of my living room floor (it's only about 135 inches long).

KimPallister said...

Anon,

Funny enough, the day after I posted this, I went over to a friends place, tried it on his home theater, and it worked great.

He was on a projector, projecting onto a 16:9, ~6 foot screen. He had the receiver-doodad located just below the screen and I was surprised it all just worked.

Not sure why the difference from your experience. Thanks for the insight though.