3pointD On A Wii — And So Much More
It’s no Snakes on a Plane, but it’ll do. Since I can’t be bothered with pre-ordering things, I suffered through the holidays with an Xbox360, but I’m feeling more and more like I need a Nintendo Wii. Not because I’m such a hot gamer (I suck at Gears of War worse than Matt Mihaly), but because of the possibilities presented by the Wii’s Web browsing capability, which people are already starting to make use of. Besides the invaluable ability to read 3pointD (thanks to Glitchy for the pic), Slashdot reports on a tabbed browsing interface that’s been developed, “which makes browsing on the Wii more efficient until the fully realized Opera build hits later next year,” and also revives the robot Roomba trend we (at the Second Life Herald) reported on from South by Southwest last year. The WiiRoomba “is entirely controlled by the Wii remote accelerometers,” and looks totally DIY-able. That’s the best thing about the new generation of game consoles; they’re not just all about the games anymore.
Feeds
So, why are the Wii’s browsing capabilities a big thing? Do you really want to do a lot of browsing on your Wii? I’m honestly baffled by interest in browsers on consoles.
Beware of consoles who claim they aren’t all about games too. That’s what they claimed in the last generation as well (particularly MS). I’ll grant that we’re going to see people using the 360 and PS3 as DVD players but beyond that, something like the WiiRoomba is so impossibly niche that my guess is everyone who will ever hook their Wii up to a Roomba has already read the Slashdot article on it.
–matt
They’re not *just* about games, is what I like about them. The WiiRoomba is not an example of a useful function that everyone will want; it’s an example of the flexibility of the console to become something other than it apparently is. My sense is not that consoles have acheived some kind of apotheosis that has slingshotted (slungshot?) them into some new realm, but only that they’re making tangible progress down that road. The vision I have in my head is 5+ years away and is of someone sitting in front of their TV playing Gears of War, then poking around in their friends / enemies list on a Live-like social software service, then clicking through that to a Web profile of the person, browsing over to a jpeg in another tab or maybe an mp3 file, emailing it along to a fragmate and sitting back to check out the episode of Lost they missed while engaged in said fragging but which has been Tivo’d into the console, watching that, writing some emails during the commercials, etc., all from the same device. No reason to think that won’t happen, whether it’s on a console, a PC, or some device we haven’t seen yet that’s betwixt and between the two.
I put my Wii in IRC and spent some time talking to myself in Second Life a few nights ago..
Check it..
http://www.babasucks.com/2006/133/wii-secondlife/
suhweet!