A few weeks ago I got to visit Neoteric and check out the Nintendo Wii that he has been obsessing over... It was immediately obvious to me why Cartman had so much trouble waiting for the Wii to be released that he decided to cryonically freeze himself.

The Wii is simply fun, even in spite of the crude graphics. The act of actually performing the action the game simulates has a huge impact on your emotional reaction to the activity. I bowled almost exactly as poorly as I do in a real bowling alley, and I haven't had more fun playing tennis on a computer since the wheel controllers on the Atari 2600. I immediately decided that I had to have one for Christmas. I told my family. Unfortunately, several million kids across the country had the exact same revelation at the exact same time, and apparently Nintendo only made about 400,000 of them for post release North American sales during the holiday season, so enter the crazy feeding frenzy. I won't be getting a Wii this year.
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[ Well written... I basically agree. I want one of these bad, but i don't expect I'll have much luck until well into 07, after the rush of parents who promised little timmy they'd get him one back in november without knowing what they were getting themselves into. Thankfully, I followed every scrap of information about the system so I both intuited how awesome it'd be and knew they'd never have nearly enough on the shelves, so I haven't really been expecting one. Keeping expectations low has kept me sane.

Nonetheless, the day I walk into a store and see one I can actually just pick up and buy, I absolutely will be doing precisely that. -k]

On Virtual Reality and Next Gen Video Game Systems