Playtesters say 'Wii' to console war question

What we liked
“It’s so much fun,” Jackie Schultz, 30, declared while test-driving the boxing game on the Wii (and while in the midst of pummeling fellow guest gamer Stefan Schachtell, 33, straight into the mat.)

Unlike the PS3, the Wii doesn’t want to be the focus of your home entertainment system. It doesn’t want to be your DVD player or your digital media storage device. It wants to be your game machine. Period. And it wants the games it plays to be fun for everyone.

And that’s why Schultz declared the Wii the must-have machine for her.

A lifelong gamer, she said she gave up playing video games as the games got increasingly complex and difficult to engage in.

“It became too much of a time commitment,” she said, pointing to the Wii and adding, “I like this type of gaming where you can just hop on and go.”

The Wii’s innovative new controls — the Wii Remote and attachable Nunchuk — were a large part of what seemed to put the fun factor into the gaming experience for our guest players.

The Wii Remote looks and feels like a small TV remote. The attachable Nunchuk is shaped like small hand grip. Both have three-axis motion sensitivity which means that when you play a game like “Excite Truck,” you hold the controller like a steering wheel and turn it as if you were actually driving the truck on screen.

“I like that it hums in your hand,” said Steve Eisner, 35, of the Wii Remote, which offers a rumble feature and a speaker for sound feedback.

'It's kind of like a magic wand'
His daughter, Sophia Waters, 7, seemed to find the controller intuitive for even her small hands to use. She jumped right into the “Wii Sports” bowling game, swinging the controller like she would swing her arm if she had a real bowling ball in her hand.

“It’s kind of like a magic wand,” she said.

But it isn’t just kids and casual gamers who were impressed.

MORE CONSOLE WAR COVERAGE Sony says PS3 shipments on target With consoles, it's all about the games Nintendo's U.S. Wii sales top PS3 Vote: Which console looks like the winner?

“I’m definitely more excited about picking up a Wii,” said Eisner, a serious gamer. He liked the fact that he could not only play the Wii with his daughter but that, as our play test proved, the Wii quickly turned game time into party time.

With the PS3 and the Wii each hooked up in neighboring rooms, we found the PS3 sitting all alone at several points during the evening  (hooked up to a giant high definition TV no less) while all the gamers gathered around the Wii and played together.

Schachtell, a longtime hardcore gamer, envisioned having people over to his house for a party and watching them jump onto the Wii as part of the social experience.

“It looks so different, right off the bat people are going to want to play it,” he said after running through several rounds of “Wii Sports” tennis with three of his fellow guest gamers. “This is active. And there’s more of a conversation around these games.”

Indeed, as the four players lobbed the ball back and forth to each other – Wii controllers swinging every direction – the room turned into a rollicking, smack-talking playground.

MORE FROM CONSOLE WARS

Console Wars Section Front

Nintendo plans to boost Wii production PlayStation 3 faces stiff competition in Europe And the winner of the console wars is ... PlayStation 3 likely missed sales target Thieves steal car — and coveted PS3 With consoles, it's all about the games Nintendo to replace 3.2M Wii straps Sony says PS3 shipments on target Nintendo Wii sales top Sony's PS3 Murder charge rescinded in PS3 shooting Console Wars Section Front   Add Console Wars headlines to your news reader: