Wii thoughts

I got my Nintendo Wii this Xmas. Just before Xmas to be precise. A week after its launch.
My initial idea was to write something on the social impact the machine has made in my home.
But that'd be boring. Instead, I will simply list my thoughts on the experience, good or bad.

Here goes:

• The appearance of the console and controllers seems to borrow from the initial i-pod designs. A lot! White plastic covered in clear polycarbonate. Very sleek. Also, clean and discrete. It takes up very little space, too.
• You'll need a lot more space in the living room, around the TV, in order to play. Especially multiplayer, as in Wii sports tennis doubles.
• Other than sports, most other games can be comfortably played sitting down.
• I'd like to see the LED light up more often!!!
• How come no-one thought of the pointer before? Still, it makes sense that such a fresh idea was introduced by Nintendo first. On the downside, pointer movemend becomes erratic when you play from a distance. But thats not an issue in my (admittedly spatious) living room)
• Depending on the implementation, motion sensing controls are either fantastic, of plain broken. Tennis, bowling, batting, golf detect motion almost flawlessly. Boxing and pitching in baseball are crap. When it does work, the level of immersion is remarcable, as close to the real thing as possible. Therefore...
• ...as far as I'm concerned, the controller is a success! Now its up to the softare designers and developers.
• Mii channel isn't particularly fun on its own, but seing recognisable faces in games is fantastic!

• It makes me wish my camera used SD cards, then maybe i'd use the photo channel every once in a while. When i did test it, it ran smoothly, loading photographs on the fly and without delays.
• If only I could use my wiimote and nunchuck to play gamecube games...*sigh*
• I want to be able to use my keyboard, flash memory, card readers and external hard drives on the USB ports!!! And for the photo channel and messageboard to support them!
• I want a music channel exclusively for playing mp3s...how easy would it be to implement?
• My parents often join in for a competitive session of Wii Sports!
• My sister got paranoid about beating me in tennis...
• ...and so did my mum.
• I came home one day to find my dad playing 4-player bowling...by himself!

• I can't wait to connect it to the internet with Wi-fi. I want to have my Miis mingling, to watch a Mii parade and send messages to friends over the messageboard.
• The internet channel! I'm curious how it will display at these low resolutions. I'll be playing flash games, accessing my e-mail, watching videos on Google video and youtube.
• It will let me stream all kinds of content from my PC hard disk, over the internet, using Orb! Photographs, music, video. Yes, it does become a big deal when you can view your digital photos on the 42" plasma screen in the living room. With friends.

Thats it for now.