Can the Wii Win in a Hardware War?

In today's complex entertainment industry a very large player
in the game is the issue of home video game systems. Since
the first Atari, kids and young adult from all over the globe
have been fascinated by the nicest graphics and the best user
experience that each individual system is capable of offering.
Consumers are constantly pushing the demand for more and
more complex and graphically impressive games. What is not
typically understood is the fact that despite what software
trickery game designers use, they will always been limited by
the software capability of the equipment in which they need
the game to play on. While the hardware isn't the end all to
the video game system war, it makes for the most intelligent
place to start an investigation at. For the purpose of this
article, we are going to look at the Wii.

Nintendo Wii

The Nintendo Wii continues Nintendo's long quest to dominate
the home video game market. While successful in the late
1980's with the Nintendo Entertainment System, and further
more in the early 1990's with the Super Nintendo
Entertainment System the mid 1990's and early 2000's were a
rough period of time for Nintendo. Nintendo released the Wii
in the fall of 2006. They had banked their hopes on the idea
that the Wii's control scheme would render past controller
schemes obsolete. Will it hasn't done that, it has sold
extremely well. The games are enjoyable, but unfortunately
due to the hardware limitation of the Wii, it is unable to
produce the graphical excellence of its two competitors the
Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.

The Wii Features

- A custom built IBM CPU "Broadway"
- A Custom built ATI "Hollywood" GPU
- It's capable of 480p resolution (standard definition)
- It's disc's are capable of hold between 4.7 to 8.5 GB
- Offers both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

As you can see, the Nintendo Wii doesn't offer many "Thrills"
and its CPU/GPU specs have been hidden by Nintendo for
some time. Its inability to produce hi-resolution images has
significantly hindered its appeal to older audiences; while it's
built in wireless system for the controllers has continued to
fascinate millions. On the upside, it is shelf space friendly
being much smaller than its competitors. Nintendo has
continued to release several of its well known Nintendo only
lines such as the famous Zelda series, as well as a slew of
Mario based games.

What has continued to help the Nintendo Wii survive among
its much more muscled up competition is that fact that
Nintendo has focused on one critical factor. FUN! This has all
but made it a smash hit with younger gamers and parents
alike as most of the Wii's titles are perfectly acceptable for
younger audiences. The Nintendo Wii also tried to capture the
imagination of the health and fit based audience with the
release of the Wii Fit. Unfortuantely, while the concept is great
and the sales pitch for the device is amazing, the results are
much less so. Many critics of the
Nintendo Wii note that it's does little to nothing to facilitate
any meaningful or beneficial exercise, thus it will not create a
"Fit" individual.

Despite the hardware drawback however, The Nintendo Wii
remains to be an excellent example of how sometimes
hardware superiority doesn't matter as much as the critical
aspect for gaming systems which is simply entertainment. The
Wii excel's in terms of entertainment value. For that reason,
and almost that reason alone, Nintendo has managed to hit a
low cost homerun with the Nintendo Wii. One the upside, you
can even backup the Game Disc's in the event of damage or
an accidental Microwaving as my 8 year old found out recently.


If you would like to make backup copies of your games, be sure to visit Copy Computer Game Software & Copy DVD Games. They were great lessons for me!