Are Wii Having Fun Yet?

This is a great article about the rise of the Nintendo Wii, the Greatest Thing to happen to video games since, well, the last Greatest Thing.

I am struck by the fact that I could now go to Best Buy and pick up a PS3, no problem (if you consider laying down $700 'no problem'), whereas you still have to do the whole 'wait outside the store Sunday morning' thing to get a Wii in most places. Sony certainly won the pre-release hype battle, but Nintendo dominated the post-release, 'wow this is pretty damn fun' war.

Which is something I have been saying for a while; better graphics is enough, for a while. But eventually, you have to actually make an entertaining experience. This holds true in movies as well as video games; it is a long time past that I would consider a well-done series of special effects sufficiently interesting for me to call a movie good on that basis alone. Call it the 'Jurassic Park' effect. The first time you saw that damn brontosaurus, I know it sent shivers down your spine. By the time J.P.3 rolled around, it was all 'yawn okay, it's a dinosaur, blah blah blah, if you want me to be interested you better start busting out some boobs soon.'

So Sony and Microsoft miscalculated in thinking that, just by making the graphics better and the games bigger, they could make them more fun. Nintendo has always figured out how to do things that were new and cool and interesting (remember, the thumbpad was an amazing development to those of us born and raised on Atari joysticks). Especially if it keeps the consoles down under $300, I say 'rock on, Nintendo.'

Completely incidentally, 'The Mii Lebowski' is pretty damn funny.