The Nintendo Wii - Should you get it for your family?

I first saw the Nintendo Wii before it came out at a conference in November 2006. The presenter had taken a grainy video of someone playing the Wii and my jaw dropped.

Now, I am NOT a gamer. I have too much of an addictive personality to play games BUT this thing grabbed my attention. We were asked to think about how the Wii controller would revolutionize the way humans would one day interact with computers. I was excited. I told all my friends. I sent them links to YouTube. Then I forgot about it.

Two weeks ago, the day before I was to leave for this year's conference, my husband decided to purchase one. For research & development purposes of course! We went to Walmart at 11:45 am. We stood in a short line in front of the electronics department. I could not believe we were doing this. Crazy American consumerism.

At midnight they set the Wiis free. There were 4 of them. We got the last one.

Why I think the Wii is cool

• It prompted me to get up off the couch and actually move!
• It made my husband and me play a game for the first time in our years of marriage
• After playing it I wanted to go out and actually play the real sports (tennis, bowling, golf etc - not sure about base ball - the pitching interaction needs some work. Nintendo - please take note)

• It gets your heart rate up (not sure if you can actually lose weight but for a person who does not exercise this was quite a new feeling! I felt energized! Like I could tackle the dirty dishes in the sink and fold laundry even at 11:30 pm!)
• We took it to a party and far from being an isolating experience, everyone got into it - including some 60 something year olds who initially scoffed at this ‘video game'. Everyone was trying to see the ‘fitness age' of each other.

• It's interaction - it's really nicely designed. The feedback the controller gives you, the sound effects, the interface (even though the graphics can't compare with others) is well thought out. - The possibility that the controller may change the way we interact with computes in the future - just the way the mouse did.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and our non-gamer, non-techy friends have begged us to please bring the Wii. I am debating taking it - some celebrations are meant to be sacred. But then again I suppose we'll need something to work off all that turkey and sweet potato sticks!