Ten Gripes About The Nintendo Wii

1Up.com has posted a blog entry highlighting the 10 complaints their staff has had about the new Nintendo Wii game console. I have some comments to supplement that article.


1) Getting Online – yes, this sucks for those of us without wireless routers, but 1up acts like we’re doomed for all time. If you’re really impatient and want to get online now, you can buy the DS wireless communicator, but that requires WinXP, and requires your computer to be turned on. If you can hold off for another month, Nintendo will be releasing an adapter that will allow you to plug your ethernet cable into the USB ports on the back to get online.

2) Classic Controller – yes, I was a little upset about the fact that I have to buy Gamecube controllers to play Gamecube games, but it’s not that big of a deal. From what I’ve heard, I can now use the Gamecube games to play all of the VC games, so it was a good investment. That means I don’t have to buy the classic controller if I don’t want it, and it means that I don’t have to worry about my battery life as a result.

3) 20 hour battery life – Again, they’re acting like this is the end of the world for us. Not the case. Nintendo will be releasing multiple charging stations for these things. One of the ones I’ve seen is simply a charging station for the Wii-mote. Another one I’ve seen is actually a stand that holds your Wii, the Wii-motes (while charging them), your games and the Nunchuck controllers.

4) No pack-in component cables – Maybe I’ve been out of the loop for too long, but, as far as I know, no one packages multiple sets of cables with their consoles. If you can’t use the one you got with the console, well then, you have to go out and buy a different one. So, it sucks that they didn’t get the one they wanted. I got the one I wanted. RCA jacks are basically all I’ve got (well, I have S-video on one of my TV’s, but I’m using that for my DC currently), so I was happy with having the RCA plug cables with my Wii. You can’t please all of the people all of the time.

5) Short sensor bar cord – Wow. They must have a very different idea of what “short” means than I do. I believe the cord that came on the sensor bar is 10 feet long. That should be long enough to get to just about any gaming set up. Yes, it means you can’t set the sensor bar on the opposite side of the room from your Wii, but I don’t know of any televisions that are going to require more wire than that. What did they want Nintendo to do? Include a 50 foot cable on the sensor bar, and have everyone else complain about all of the extra wire lying around behind their TV’s?

6) Weak Wrist-Strap – Come on. We’ve had this discussion already in these boards, but the strap really is not all that weak. When I was playing monkey darts on Monkey Ball, I actually threw the controller (before I saw all the warnings about the breaking wrist straps), and didn’t have any problems. If you are not swinging the thing around like a freaking idiot, you’ll be fine. Despite the look of those straps, they are actually very strong. If you are swinging the thing around like a freaking idiot, then you deserve whatever happens to you or your Wii-mote as a result. Did anyone complain about how weak controllers were on their other systems, because they broke into pieces when you got pissed off at Madden football and threw the controller?

Other than that, I can pretty much agree with them.

I especially agree about the side-note they made about Nintendo nickel-and-diming us to death. It really annoyed me to find out that there are games that “require” the nunchuck controller, but I have to pay an extra $20 for that (if you can find it – when they first came out, they were really difficult to find), so it ends up costing you $60 for an extra set of working controllers.

For those of you interested, they also posted a list of 10 complaints about the Sony PS3, but being that I don’t have a PS3, nor do I have any desire to get one, I can’t really comment on that article much, except to say it made me even more happy that I don’t have a PS3.