N-Philes

Page 3

After Wii:

The first thing I did was hand Pramod the Wii Remote to get his initial impressions. "It's small and easy to hold, not like the other [controllers]. I can hold it in one hand whereas many controllers require two hands, so that is the difference. It has a speaker – or a microphone, I don't know. Something is different." Once the Nunchuk was added to the Remote, Pramod quickly pointed out that both hands are separated. "You have more flexibility [with the Nunchuk] in the sense that your hands can go far or closer whereas before they were a fixed distance."

Once we turned our attention to the Wii itself, he and I browsed the Forecast, News, and Internet Channels. One of the websites where he spent time was for an organization in which he's very active. Pramod was impressed with the functionality of the browser. "I think that is a definite plus for the system: the web browser, weather browser, and news channel." A low number of international news stories on the News Channel left Prmod wanting more. "The News Channel's navigation system was very good but they didn't have enough selection of news sources."

The Photo Channel thoroughly impressed our previous subject, but Pramod wasn't quite sold on the functionality, or lack thereof. "Possibly," he hesitantly replies to whether he would use such a feature. "If I were showing pictures and there were a TV, then most likely. But I wouldn't buy Wii to show the pictures." Then he became excited about where this channel could go. "If it was there and it was somehow integrated with some kind of network storage because pictures take a lot of space. As a result it should be stored in some kind of media that holds a large volume of data. Sometimes [SD card usage] is ok, but for people who take many pictures – people are going to have a lot of digital pictures in the future. Once they start collecting their life's pictures, and they have to go back and forth between months and years and all that, they would have to definitely be integrated with network storage. That is where all the systems, computers, printers, and appliances of a household have to converge – everything has to be networked. Right now things are not that well networked."



Before we could get into the games, Pramod had to create a Mii character. "I think that would be good for a group of people," he says, reflecting on the significance of the Miis. "It can give a certain level of personality and everybody identifies by that so you don't have to be familiar with different characters all the time. I have a definite identity and I always use that identity which is easier for me to know if its my turn or not. With billiards, for example, when it is my turn, the same ball has my face. When it is your turn, the same ball has your face. Then you don't need 1, 2, 3, 4 player numbers." His Mii name, Bua, is a Nepalese word that children use for "father."

Pramod enjoyed his time with Wii Sports. "It's the first time that I felt alright playing a game. If I have to play in a crowd, no problem. Otherwise all these thumbs going up and down and A B C D pressing and all of that, of course its not a big deal – it's not a big deal to learn typing, but I never bothered." He started playing Tennis and Boxing by sitting on the sofa, but by the time Bowling and the Fitness Test came along, he was standing up and really getting into it. At one point guests were over, and he was enthusiastic about teaching them how to play. "[The sports] are very well developed."

The two of us played through the Wii Play, spending more time with Fishing and Tanks than the other games. "It's good," he says on the package as a whole, "but it could be better." Pramod didn't think that Wii Play held up as its own game, but definitely saw the value it presented. "Some games can be amazingly complex, [but here] you have multiple games, but simple ones. Monkey Ball is one of those great games, from coordination and balance, how fast you have to respond, etc. [Wii Play hasn't] gone through the same level of development. They must have been just introducing the features: different remote, whether it's held in the horizontal position, vertical, swinging... all different uses of the remote have been properly introduced. I see that game's value in that greater than anything else.



"The motions are better understood here than in Wii Sports. Similarly for game developers, I think it opens up new concepts, which weren't covered in Wii Sports. It's targeting game developers on how, where, what kinds of movements they can utilize to develop their games. I think that's one of the primary intentions behind it. But that is my speculation. Actually the interesting thing, in some of the games like [Find Mii], aren't about hand-eye coordination, it's purely visual, memory. That part wasn't well captured in Wii Sports. People can now capture that dimension."

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