Nintendo Wii review

Released on Dec 8th in the UK, and sold out out straight away, it has taken me until the middle of Feburary to get hold of a Wii. In fact, it is nearly 3 months since it was released, and all retailers still sell out as soon as they get their hands on a few units.

Bundled with Wii Sports, a 5 sport game, it retails at £179, which is a bargain as far as I'm concerned. Nintendo decided to go for mass market rather than high end graphics, and it looks like that has paid off for them. Sales figures for January show that the Wii sold 436,000 in the US, compared to 294,000 XBox 360's and 244,000 PS3's. In Japan, the Wii outsold the PS3 by 3 to 1 in January. No fgures are avilable for the UK.

Everything about the Wii package smacks of Nintendo. The Mii Channel, where you create mini lookalikes is great fun, and classic Nintendo. My kids think this is the best thing about it, and like going to the Mii parade to watch everyone mill about (we created Mii's for everyone in the family). The warnings to take a break during Wii Sports are a bit annoying, but again, that is a very nintendo thing to do.

The fact that Wii Sports uses the Mii's you have created in the games is the icing on the cake. Although to me the Mii's don't look like any of us, the kids seem to think they do and think it is hilarious watching 'themselves' swing a golf club or tennis racquet on the TV!

Wii Sports itself is fairly simplistic, and is a good demo of what fun can be had with the motion sensing controller. None of the games have any great depth, but they are all good fun (OK, except for Baseball, but that's Baseball I suppose). There is no great depth in the graphics, indeed some of the design strikes you as being a bit odd - none of the spectators in Tennis have any arms or legs, in fact the players don't appear to have any arms either, with a the racquet swinging around in mid air! Similarly in Boxing, the boxers don't have any arms, just a set of gloves swinging around in mid air as well. While this seems odd at first, it seems to suit the 'caricature' nature of the gaming, with your Mii being used as the player.

The Golf is quite difficult, as it seems to be quite hard to get any repeatability in the swinging action, but you do eventually get there. You need to underhit rather than go for power. There is a fair bit of aliasing in the trees and rough in the golf, but you get the feeling that the whole lack of detail in Wii Sports is more down to the rush to get it out there to show people what it can do, rather than the hardware's capabilities. It will take a while before we truly see how far the console can be pushed graphics wise.

All in all the Wii is great fun, and Nintendo have been successful in making the thing appeal to a wide audience, far beyond what a normal console generally has. Even the Wife has got up and had a go with Wii Sports, and believe me, that is some feat.