Due to my internet being down I spent most of the weekend trekking around my neighbourhood with a laptop trying to find an unsecured wireless signal. However, when I wasn’t standing on a street corner looking very suspicious, I also had a chance to have a break from Xbox Live and sink some time into my one week old Wii.
What can I say? After getting some extended time with the little, box, this Nintendo fanboy learned one thing:
Nintendo made some stupid design choices.
First of all, let me start by saying that I know all these issues have been discussed and discussed and discussed to death, but my internet is down at the moment, so I’m going to carry on anyway. I mean, you can never have too many opinions out there, right? Left? Forwards? Diagonally North East?
The Wii has been out for a while, but even from launch it was clear that there were problems. Let me start with the Wii’s menu. Nintendo’s decision to use channels for each individual Virtual Console or Wii Ware game is completely ridiculous. It’s like having a blade for each Arcade game on the 360 or an XMB icon for each PSN game. It’s not just a mistake; it goes completely goes against common sense.
Then there are the channels that aren’t VC or WW games. I don’t mind having a disc channel, or a Mii channel, but it starts getting plain stupid when the Mii Contest channel isn’t integrated into the Mii channel. I can just imagine the conversation between the execs that made this decision:
Mr Faceless Exec 1: ‘Ok, we want to expand the Mii’s functionality. We know they haven’t been used much so far, but all this is about to change with the new Mii Contest channel. Basically people can vote on other users’ Miis, and the best ones are displayed in a special section. Also, we’re going to set regular challenges to make Mii lookalikes of famous people, and the best one wins – as voted by the community.’
Mr Faceless Exec 2: ‘That’s sounds good Mr Faceless Exec 1, where should we position the channel?’
Mr Faceless Exec 1: ‘Well, it’s a Mii related thing, so naturally it should be far away from the already existing Mii Channel. How about giving it its own channel on the main menu?’
Mr Faceless Exec 2: Genius! Why didn’t I think of that? We should also think about moving the Shop channel into the Wii’s Data Management menu
Janitor who, for some unknown reason, is at this meeting and is considering going into antiquity auctioning. He has a moustache and occasionally yells ‘MAINTENANCE!’ as he patrols down Nintendo HQ’s corridors: ‘Sorry to interrupt, but surely it would make more sense to put the Mii Contest channel in the Mii Channel. That way all the Mii related stuff is in one place’
Mr Faceless Exec 1: ‘SILENCE! Why are you even here?’
Janitor who, for some unknown reason, is at this meeting and is considering going into antiquity auctioning. He has a moustache and occasionally yells ‘MAINTENANCE!’ as he patrols down Nintendo HQ’s corridors: ‘Dunno’
Mr Faceless Exec 1: ‘Well get out then.’
Janitor who, for some unknown reason, is at this meeting and is considering going into antiquity auctioning. He has a moustache and occasionally yells ‘MAINTENANCE!’ as he patrols down Nintendo HQ’s corridors: ‘Sure thing Mr E.’
*Cartwheels out room yelling ‘MAINTENANCE’.*
Mr Faceless Exec 2: What the hell did he do that for?
Mr Faceless Exec 1: I don’t quite know…anyway, about moving the Shop channel…
Ok this could go on for hours. My point is: why didn’t Nintendo do what Microsoft did? They should have a media channel for photos, keep the shop channel, put the Mii channels and the Everybody Votes channel in a Community Channel and dump the News, Forecast and Nintendo Channel in some sort of collaborative News channel. Finally, and most importantly, they should have a game channel for Virtual Console and Wii Ware games. Even if they didn’t do the other stuff, they should do this. Scrolling through pages of channels looking for a game is just plain stupid.
Anyway, enough of that for now.
Right about now you’ll be thinking I’m some sort of satanic Nintendo hater or worse, a fanboy. However I assure you, the only thing I’m a fanboy of is good video games and so I praise the great bits and criticise the bad bits of all the consoles. Let’s focus on some of the Wii’s good points for a bit. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t think the Wii’s motion sensing is a gimmick. I’ll happily admit that most games don’t use the motion sensing to its full potential, or try to use it too much (like making you spin the controller in the air on your head in order to open a door), but I enjoy shaking the controller to attack or reeling in a fish with the nunchaku. I don’t see how you could call motion sensing a gimmick as it doesn’t really get boring; it just doesn’t add a whole lot to most games.
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Its true.. the Channels lay out is just a poor poor decision. The fact that those useless default channels are tethered to the thing like a mental invalid pisses me off too. I barely muster the desire to turn on my Wii to play Nintendo games, I sure as hell don’t do it to check the weather or news in Japan.
The fact that apparently using Nintendo brand Component Cables has a high likelihood of messing up your Wii’s video card (as happened to me), also a poor decision.
You do make a great point that similarly-related channels should be grouped together. Other than that the channel layout doesn’t really bother me that much. I just drag n drop (A+B) the channels I don’t use very often to the 2-4 screens.
What really bothers me, however, is how it displays virtual console games. It does a really annoying thing where it will flash between the game’s title screen for 5 seconds and then the system it was on for 5 seconds. This is stupid for a couple reasons:
1. I have several Virtual Console titles on my main page and having all of those icons constantly switching screens is extremely annoying and distracting.
2. I bought the game from the Virtual Console shop so I obviously know what system it was originally for. I don’t need a screen every 5 seconds reminding me of that.
3. It’s annoying finding the game I want to play because I have to sit there and wait for it to change from the system screen to the title screen.
What I’d really like to see is what you talked about: channel consolidation. There’s no reason why they couldn’t make it so that there are Virtual Console System Channels i.e. an NES Channel, SNES Channel, N64 Channel etc. where if you clicked on it, it would open a sub-menu with all of the games you’ve bought for that system listed.
A think a Virtual Console Channel would suffice in its own right. As would a WiiWare Channel. The channel can split into separate lists inside the channel itself.
The fewer channels on the main menu the better. I think that may be polar opposite thinking from Nintendo’s though. They like the shelves to be full. They like the walls covered from floor to ceiling.
This may actually be a cultural difference. Have you seen pictures of stores in Japan? My God! Its like a tornado ransacked the place!
Amen brother! I agree absolutly about everything, especially about the online profile. If people are so afraid about having their children exposed online, DON’T CONNECT THE CONSOLE TO THE INTERNET!!!(and if you want to download virtual console games and updates/channels, just have an option to disable online play. Duh!)
I’ve got a Wii and Smash Bros is fine, but when we played online with my friend(3 on our console and 1 on his) it was laggy, and he lives just a few miles down the road. Nintendo has delayed the European version much longer than the other two, and they haven’t even fixed the laggy online! What makes it worse is Mario Kart Wii has excellent online, and that works. But I digress.
Coming back to Mario Kart Wii online, that service was excellent. So why don’t they just let you use your Mii’s(maybe more than one allowed for those who share) to be used as an online friend system with possibly just 1 friend code for all. I’ve got a Wii friend code, a Mario Kart friend code and a Brawl friend code. That’s 3 codes for one system. Why not just one friend code and that’s it?
Nintendo have really messed it up, and I hope they read this and take note. Plus the majority of people DO want more memory space, particularly with the option for save films, pictures and stages taking up room for Brawl. Please sort it out Nintendo!
As far as friends codes go, not all games use them. Also you will see a similar situation on PS3., sign into PSN with one name but if you want to play MGO time to break out that other screen name. Same stuff different console. Most of this really just comes down to personal preference. I play most of my games on the PC, yet I have not owned a mic until recently. Even though I own one now I never use it.Out of WoW,EQ,SWG,Team Fortress 2 and COD4, I’ve rarely used it. If faced with the decision of not having VC at all or having to mute someone every time they show their ass I will take no VC at all any time. I would however like to see better balance the features of games coming out. According to Harmonix, you cant do DLC on Wii, however Activision is doing it. Some have said that you cannot use DLC from an SD card, however even a Nintendo made game manages to do this.
I know and understand that Nintendo just got back most of the 3rd party dev’s they have working for them now, but that is no reason to let them make sloppy PS2 ports then blame Nintendo for its lack of features.
it’s a slight annoyance, but nintendo has at least acknowledged that the list of names in your system friends list should be used to send more friend codes and code requests to others. that’s how the last few online games have worked for the wii for me.