I have a Wii now.
It's the third gaming system I've ever bought on launch. My first was a Sega Saturn. It came with a copy of Virtua Fighter and a Panzer Dragoon. Say what you want about the Saturn's small life cycle, but I had a blast with it. You couldn't play Guardian Heroes on a PSX, or Panzer Dragoon, or Nights, and I enjoyed a game of any of those far more than any number of hours playing Tekken or Gran Turismo. Sadly, the Saturn didn't have enough effort put into it by developers (it's not casuality that the Saturn remains the only unemulated console of its generation, since it was a very complex and powerful machine).
The second system I got on launch (actually imported it 6 months before it hit Euro stores) was a PSP. At the time I didn't have any portable storage medium or MP3 player, and at 249.99, with a copy of Lumines packed in, it was a bargain. Remember, the PSP came out at exactly that prize with no games. The fact that even paying customs taxes you can get japanese hardware cheaper than the european one is the reason why the Wii is still region coded, don't believe anything else they tell you. Nowadays, with a DS Lite in the house (also an import, also cheaper than retail), the PSP is my media player with an occassional game of Lumines or Tekken when I'm bored away from home or traveling, since airports can get very boring.
The Wii is number three on the list. I've never been a Nintendo guy, but I like the big N much better since it's become a small revolutionary company instead of the bullying industry leader it once was. Today, Sony and Microsoft are busy repeating the mistakes of the past while Nintendo is fighting for survival by going beyond the old dynamics. That's a good thing, even more for me than for most gamers. Being a former MSX and Genesis player I have a moral right to feel better than anybody from the PSX generation, but I'm also very bored of videogame genre conventions, bad storytelling and the same thing with better graphics.
So is Wii the Revolution? More or less. It's new, and it's all that you need to have a great time playing games. It's also full of potential way beyond what the launch lineup has done with it.
People have been wondering how big of an impact will the graphics be for the Wii's life cycle (I'm looking at you, mr. Kassavin), and it's a legitimate concern. You see, there are two paths the Wii can take in the next year. One is the N64 path, the same the Gamecube took. The other is the GBA/NDS path. The first makes it a side note, a cheap alternative that is, at best, harmless and full of first party games for the faithful. The other is a state of mystical isolation from time, in which the system itself is a value. The Game Boy brand is like the iPod. It's the same things others are doing better, just more expensive, but also sexy, well designed and a synonim for its whole industry.
Obviously, the Wii is the first system that tries to bring that aura to the domestic consoles. It has the look, the innovation and the broad instant appeal of the GB. In my mind, what proved to Nintendo that this move is possible is the PSP. Back when the GB ate the Game Gear alive everybody blamed short battery life for the demise of the better system. Now, in the DS v PSP fight, with powerful batteries making the difference less relevant, Nintendo has seen that simplicity and mass appeal still works, even if the rival is doing things pretty much right. If the PSP isn't more attractive than the DS, and the GG wasn't more attractive than the GB, why should the Wii have a shorter life than the oldest "alive" system on the market today?
Next time I'll talk about Wii graphics and why PS3 and 360 graphics are ugly as hell. Also, why do Xboxes and Genesis work so well in the US and so bad in the rest of the planet and just how important is that?
