Yeah it never get old.
THE question can now be asked: Does it make sense to buy a Nintendo Wii anymore?
For four years, there has been no question. No product has been more important than the Wii in leading video games’ return to the cultural mainstream. Since its debut in 2006, the Wii has reshaped living room entertainment by making simple, intuitive games accessible to millions of people who never felt comfortable with a typical two-handed game controller covered with buttons and sticks.
For all their sophistication and power, the competing consoles — the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 — have remained largely the province of serious gamers. Neither brand offered the sorts of controls that could truly appeal to a mass audience, and particularly to families that want to have fun together at home.
Until now. Nintendo should feel some heat at the moment, because Microsoft and Sony, which outstrip Nintendo in sheer technical resources, have finally caught up with the Wii’s lead in engineering and its ingenious human interface. Put another way, for almost four years, the Wii offered a unique home entertainment experience. But now, after the introductions this fall of the Move system from Sony for the PS3 and the brilliant Kinect from Microsoft for the Xbox 360, the Wii no longer does anything important that the PS3 or Xbox 360 cannot do even better.
On the one hand (so to speak), the Move basically copies the Wii’s wandlike controller, although it feels slightly more accurate. As with the Wii, you wave the Move’s controller around and swing and twist it in space to bowl or throw or evoke some other action on the screen.
The difference is that the Wii’s graphics, while cute, are of low resolution and inferior detail. The PS3 is a high-definition powerhouse. When you compare golf on the Wii to golf on the PS3 with Move, you realize that there really is no competition. On the Wii, golf looks like a video game. On the PS3, golf looks like a golf course. I cannot wait to see how Sony incorporates the Move into its Major League Baseball series next year. Done properly, it should be as close to standing in the batter’s box and trying to hit a professional curveball as most of us will ever come.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/technology/personaltech/03KINECT.html
