@ Impulsivity
"For 250 dollars Nintendo is basically selling a PS2 with slightly updated software that has very poor support for anything beyond playing games that were current in 2002."
That is why the difference between the wii and ps2 is about the same technically to that of the wii and hd consoles? Also what games were current in 2002 that the wii has?

     Find me a single Wii game that looks significantly better then Final Fantasy X or God of War.  The Wii is competing with the original Xbox for which system is the most powerful, its exponentially lower then the current HD consoles.  I'm not saying the Wii has the EXACT games from 2002, its the quality of the games in graphics and performance.  They put out very old PC hardware and charged a premium for it because the two competitors perhaps overreached (went too far towards cutting edge leaving them vulnearable on price).  It may be a good seller but its still a bad value.  If you don't agree I know a friend with a 1.2 Ghz Pentium 4 Dell from 7 years ago he wants to sell for just slightly less then a brand new core 2 duo 3.06 Ghz system, interested?  It still runs Windows 98 (and can't even handle XP) but that should be OK, since feature set doesn't matter.

     Find me a single Wii game that looks significantly better then Final Fantasy X or God of War.  The Wii is competing with the original Xbox for which system is the most powerful, its exponentially lower then the current HD consoles.  I'm not saying the Wii has the EXACT games from 2002, its the quality of the games in graphics and performance.  They put out very old PC hardware and charged a premium for it because the two competitors perhaps overreached (went too far towards cutting edge leaving them vulnearable on price).  It may be a good seller but its still a bad value.  If you don't agree I know a friend with a 1.2 Ghz Pentium 4 Dell from 7 years ago he wants to sell for just slightly less then a brand new core 2 duo 3.06 Ghz system, interested?  It still runs Windows 98 (and can't even handle XP) but that should be OK, since feature set doesn't matter.

A different controller is a short term advantage, most likely MS and Sony will release motion controllers too soon enough (Really Sony already had motion type stuff first if you ever played the eye toy games) and the disparity in hardware will still be there.  Do you buy a computer thats a bad value because it comes with a better mouse?

so they want to be more like the "niche device"?

LOL, expensive? Niche Device? If you can't beat em, trash em.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aClqhxdVor6g&refer=home

"I've played a Nintendo Wii,'' Stringer said last week at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. "I don't see it as a competitor. It's more of an expensive niche game device. We're selling a lot of PlayStation 3s now and it's still the best way to buy a Blu-ray player.''

    The Niche part is not the controller, its the strong limitation on the power of the Wii hardware and the use of the Wii for anything but playing games with poor graphics.  It's like comparing two computers where one has great hardware, software and an older mouse and the other has 8 year old hardware and software but a great new high tech mouse, say a touch screen interface or something.  It's a lot easier to give the new great computer a different mouse then the old style inadequite computer a new....everything else.

   Also try playing a lot of the popular Wii games with the Wiimote, it SUCKS (especially smash bros, its almost unplayable with the Wiimote compared with the gamecube controller or the classic controller).  The remote is a lot like the eyetoy, its great for a limited subset of games, but in a lot of cases a normal controller is just flat out better still.  I'd rather have the option to use both depending on the game which is what I'll probably end up with as the PS3 matures.