Oh man, I cannot wait to see the hate comments on this one, or how many Christopher will have to delete.

Good article, pointed out many obvious things that Nintendo should be doing.

You forgot to mention that you cannot run Virtual Console games from a SD card. Another baffling concept.

Hate comments? Really? from Wii fans or other console fans? I actually adore my Wii almost as much as I love my Sony CyberShot DSC-P200 which I refer to as my family heirloom... Just a Wii fan trying to make sense of Nintendo's baffling oversights.

There a couple more uses for the USB ports (not enough I though I grant you), can be used to charge up USB powered items eg rechargable batteries for the Wiimote but more importantly they can be used for a USB keyboard, as much as I love the Wiimote tapping away at the onscreen keyboard gets a little tiresome in Opera!

Wow, I had no idea it supported a USB keyboard. I assume it would support a USB wireless transmitter for a wireless keyboard then as well? I remember looking that up and I seemed to have found only one specific wireless keybaord that would work with the Wii. Drivers issue and all... Well, if it is corded-only, anyone know of any USB keybaord with 20 foot long cables to reach my sofa? :)

Thanks for the comment!

USB ports that do almost NOTHING!? Wow, I'm sorry.
I had no idea how the Wii was so useless. Not too mention a DVD drive that won't play DVD movies... And Nintendo's too cheap to provide a reasonable amount of memory.

My PS3 plays movies from a 320GB MyBook. Hundreds of movies. Or pictures. Or Music...etc. Your Wii is not a "small computer". It's a toy like that god awful Gamecube was.

Memory constraints and untapped hardware potential are Nintendo Hallmarks. It's how they stay profitable. It doesn't always make sense that they disallow so much but I think it's because they are so incredibly greedy.

p.s. Real controllers aren't actually that difficult to learn.

"But the game play of the Wii is much more different than any other console;"

Uhm, yeah...No.
I haven't seen a single Wii game, which couldn't be played with usual controllers/Lightguns.

FYI, the average N64 game is anywhere between 64 and 256mbit (8-32MB), not 150-300MB. Don't get megabits mixed up with megabytes!

But would that be the developers error not add download content in Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3?
There where not even from Nintendo.
We do see most Nintendo games that are coming now do have the WiFi logo.

But again a drive would be easy and would be bought like sliced bread!

Yeah, the Wii sucks.

>The N64 games run anywhere from 150 megabytes to 350 megabytes, depending upon the game

completely wrong!
n64 games run anywhere from 64 megabits to 512 megabits
8 megabits = 1 megabyte
=> gamesizes are between 8 and 64 megabytes
there are like 3 or 4 512mbit n64 games, most of them are either 256mbit (32mbyte) or 128mbit (16mbyte)


>So, you can hold maybe five N64 games on your Wii
i have more than 5 n64 games on my wii

please correct your article

Your complaints against the Wii are very valid and I agree with them, but some of the facts you used are off.

The usb ports on the Wii can be used with LAN adaptors and usb keyboards. Depending on what types of Wii remote charger you use, you can also recharge your wii remotes via usb (mine are made to recharge this way). They can recharge while the sstem is on and playing games or in standby WiiConnect24 mode where you turn the system off, but it's "no really" off. You can tell if it is in this mode if the Wii's light if orange instead of red.

I don't know much the file size of N64 games have increased with the security features of the VC and decompression of a complete digital file, but normally N64 games are 16, 32, 64, or 128 megabytes in size. The latter of which was only used in a few N64 games with the 64 MB cart being the norm for most N64 games.

Also, you liked th N64, a controller with one analog stick, one d-pad and 10 buttons that admittedly had them arranged and semi awkward way for many people (they worked perfectly for me), but the ergonomically constructed gamecube controller with with 2 analog sticks, one d-pad and 8 buttons would have been too much of a stretch for you? Many of the gamecube games worth playing use the controller greatly and easily. The face buttons are superior to the SNES's and N64's imho, the analog triggers are great and I miss them greatly on the Wii, and the second analog stick, the c-stick was incredibly easy to control and had simple to remember functions or button shortcuts mapped to it. In fact, the controller has the exact same amount of buttons on the SNES control pad, but has them placed imho in a superior fashion and adds two analog sticks to the formula. I'm sorry to say it, but you missed out on some great gaming on the gamecube. You missed out on Pikmin, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Soul Calibur II and dozens of other great titles. You have a Wii now and should go pick up some amazing games that are selling at sub-$10 levels!

I also hate to double post, but I've added my url if you or anyone else would like to talk and I'd like to have nimrod look at both Trauma Center games. They'd play very poorly with analog sticks and regular controllers.

ARG! If any of you writers out there have any doubt that people are reading your articles, make a mistake in one and you will see that everyone is reading it! LOL.

Yes, thank you for pointing out the mistake within the article (JoH particularly). The N64 games are not as large as I wrote. My mistake. (Never-the-less, with such limited storage space on the Wii, at some point, you WILL have to start deleteing some older downloads.) I have set to have that portion removed. Thanks again JoH!

I know the Wii has limitations, is poorly designed, and does not compare with the bigger gaming machines, but I love it! :)

Gurg, the Wii is a small computer. Sorry, but my 11 years as an I.T. manager leads me to beleive that a system with a board, memory, processor, storage, external controls, the ability to process information, video, sound, text, etc. (not to mention the ability to surf the web) is a small computer. In fact, (And this is another article altogether) you can technically consider a modern washing machine a computer. Discuss...

Gametaku, thanks for the useful info, and your comments on the controller.

PS3 and XBox-only gamers commenting on how the Wii sucks is the equivalent of Macintosh users commenting on how crappy Windows is... :)

Just because there is a Wi-Fi logo on the box does not mean much. I mean, look at SSBB. The online is so sterilizing you don't even know when you are playing humans or a CPU.

Not to mention NWC had major issues keeping up with people trying to play SSBB online, and did the same thing when Wii Ware launched in Japan.

I am guessing that the reason there is no DLC for GH3 or Rock Band is because the infrastructure just is not there for the Wii. Can you imagine the Wii Ware part of the store with hundreds of song packs on it? Also, where are you going to store it? Rock Band music takes up about 2 GB on my hard drive. I would have to check and see how much GH3 songs take up.

Good points, generally speaking. I've made do overall with a 2GB SD card for backing up or offloading rarely used save files and other content, which brings me to another problem I have with the Wii that dates back (at least) to the GameCube: COPY-PROTECTED SAVE FILES. What's the point of this? Why can't I move some of them to another storage medium? This infuriates me, and serves NO positive purpose that I can see.

Some creative folks, through a bit of digital trickery, found a way to "force" the Wii to recognize and play video DVDs. So essentially the functionality is in there, but Nintendo decided to deliberately break it. Why?

I like my Wii most of the time, but this habit of half-doing (internet play, teeny internal storage) or outright crippling features (DVD playback, immovable save games) is getting tiresome and needs addressed.

Thanks for your comment. Yes, many of my Wii brothers have "modded" theirs. IN fact, they convinced me to buy a chip that does something I shan't reveal here but you all know what it does. I have not had it installed and thankfully because I actually had to send my Wii in for warranty repairs. Sitting vertical it could not play games. They fixed it for free :) Had I installed the chip, they would not have.
Though, I would like to mod it so that it plays DVD. The DVD player in the room with the Wii eats DVDs :(