Seriously, people are bitching about the stupidest thing when it comes to Wii. Yeah, I know people always complain about certain aspects of a console right before and right after it hits the market, and yes a lot of the time the criticisms are pretty weak, but this is a little more ridiculous then usual.
-$250 OMG....WTF? That's too expensive LOL! $250 for a console at launch with game isn't much really. Fuck, videocards cost more then that when they first come out (well some of them). When was the last time a console included a game at launch? The SNES? Yeah, sure the console itself maybe should be a bit cheaper because of the level of technology present in it compaired to the others, but lets not forget this isn't a console like previous ones. The technological focus is different. It's not purely about the gpu and cpu, it's about the new motion sensing ability of the console. The fact that it includes a controller, nunchuck thingy, and sensing station has a cost attached to it. Not to mention the fact that you're paying for all the R&D on that. If you think $250 is too much for a piece of hardware you know has a lifespan of 4-5 years you have two options; 1. ) do without it or 2.) wait for the inevitable price drop. $250 isn't much period...deal with it.
-NO DVD PLAYER?!?! Seriously, you care about this? Fuck, in my house alone, not including drives in pcs, laptops, and consoles there are 4 dvd players. Actually, wait....5...one of them is portable. There's also a tiny one a roomate brought back from japan that isn't even hooked up to anything. If you wanted to count the other dvd players there's probably a double digit number of dvd players in my house considering there's two ps2s, one xbox, I have two in my pc, and each one of my roomates has one in their pc, and a couple have dvd burners in their laptops. Sure, I live in a house with 5 other people, but come on...these things cost fucking nothing now. They basically give them away in ceral boxes. People actually complain about no dvd playback.
-No Hd. I'm on the fence about this one. It seems like a waste to release a new console without HD support. I mean, there definitly is a market for it now, and over the next five years more and more people are going to be out buying hdtvs or monitors with composite connections. It makes the games look nicer with a pretty small hit to the hardware, so it seems like an all around good idea. At the same time, I can see where nintendo is coming from. They want to keep the costs down, and with a console that is completely marketable as a machine that doesn't sell on graphics (for the first time in console history possibly) it seems like a good thing to cut out. An option would be nice, but that doesn't seem like the kind of thing you could add on with a hardware peripheral for any price that would make it worthwhile.
-No Hard Drive. I'm one of the first people to say that they best thing about the xbox was the inclusion of a hard drive. Even though it was a technology that wasn't fully utilized (we should have seen more games that actually took advantage of it from a gameplay perspective....like nintendo tried to do with the 64DD), it has it's uses. But again, with something like the wii I'd rather the lower price then the harddrive. It still has enough flash memory for game saves, patches, and roms, and it has expandable memory through sd cards, so that works as well.
-Nintendo includes composite instead of component cables. You have to buy component seperately. Fuck, if you're the kind of person that has a tv that accepts component and you're picky enough to need it to enjoy a game, you can afford the $20-30 it'll probably cost for it. Most people, however, use composite. It's a non-issue.
