Remember how much fun games were when you put in a cart/disc and played them and didn't have to install or set up anything. Games worked and you didn't need to download patches.

I miss those days.

You mean like the Wii?

Mostly but even on Wii I had to change all my network settings to make it compatible with the Wii.  I have to download updates to play some games and there have been patches...

...but the Wii is not as bad as the others.

Yeah, when I buy a brand new game for a console (biting my nails on the car ride home), the last thing I want to do is sit through anything before some gameplay or at least a cinematic.

That is why I liked consoles over PCs for many years, and why now all I have is a Wii and a PC.

You don't need network settings to play offline games, which is all you could do on those older systems ;)

Downloading updates to play Wii games? Not that I know of, in fact the game discs themselves contain the firmware updates, which are launched automatically when you pop-in the disc for the first time (if needed).

Patches for the Wii? Really? What games were patched?

There were patches in system updates.  Like the "Twilight Hack" patch which patches a specific game that a Wii owner may or may not own.  There were other patches for SSBB, Red Steel, and Madden 08.  I very specifically remember being forced to update before I could play (not the initial play session) when I had my Wii connected to my network.

I don't like the hassle.  I like to play games, and I have a very limited amount of time to do it.  Whether it's 3 minutes or an hour I would rather be playing the game.

But like I said I own a Wii.  Usually I don't have it networked.  Which is one of the reasons why I still own it and don't own a PS3 or 360 any more.

When I buy a console or console game it should work.  I shouldn't get dicked around.

That's news to me, I had never heard about these patches.

I agree with your main point though. Console gaming should be kept as simple as possible. Mandatory installs are a definite "no", although optional ones are welcome. The Wii is doing the best job out of the three at keeping it close to its principles.

I own a Wii, decent gaming PC and an Xbox 360. When you pop a 360 game into the drive and it says that there's an update available for it, it never takes more than a few seconds to download. It takes 5-15 seconds and you're up and running, and that's not an exaggeration.

It's not like PC games don't have patches released for them and often they can be a couple of hundred megabytes or more. One advantage with the 360 and PS3 is you're alerted to the fact that there's an update straight away, so you're always up to date. With PC games sometimes I don't know which patch is the newest and I'm often not aware that a new patch has been released for a particular game I own.

As for the Wii, the inability to patch games is not a good thing. No patches have been released for SSBB, Red Steel or Madden 08 BTW, because no patches have been released for any disc based Wii game. The Twilight Hack is not a patch. It's a modified game save that allows you to exploit a flaw in Zelda so you can run code from an SD card.

This is just a dumb idea... Kids for example will not buy stuff online..