Worried about the Wii...

I'm worried about the Wii. Yesterday, I bought "stylus click-pens" for Jessica and myself. For the first time in weeks (months?), I turned on my DS to see if these pens were better than the dinky stick stylus. The immediate consensus is yes.

Then I got to thinking. How much did this "touch screen" mechanic do for gaming? Nothing really; it just proved useful and slightly entertaining for some portable gaming. In the end, it wasn't amazing enough to leave me taking my DS everywhere, keeping up on new releases, and or even wanting to play it.

Now consider that same information with the Wii and the Wii remote as a direct substitute for DS and touch-screen respectively. Will the motion control be fun at first? I fully expect so. But will it last? Will it be something you want to do every day, or once in a great while when friends are around? That I'm unsure of.

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The point I am trying to make is we're all happy to embarrass ourselves on special occasions, doing silly things [...] but can Nintendo really convince us to do it on a day to day basis [...]? I have my concerns.

The above quote came from bit-tech.net's hand-on impressions of the Wii. The quote was well said (except the naked part LOL). This quote complimented my DS-induced revelation in all its brevity. While my manly half stomps into the foreground and shouts loud gibberish involving something to the effect of "wielding a Wii-mote is girly", the little kid half will giggle and say, "Play," in a creepy reverberated female child-anime voice.

On that last link, it could be a bit concerning that the Wii is supposed to "attract chicks". What about the times when you don't want to attract chicks. You know, those times when you want to entertain yourself. Is that what the 360 and PS3 are for? While the games will undoubtedly be Nintendo-fun in that strange glossed-over-eyes way, will the controls leave us yearning for "the old ways" for our day-to-day gaming grind?

The report of awkward Splinter Cell controls should also provide a hint to the answer. Multiplatform games are multiplatform because they are games more than one specific console group enjoys. If the Wii remote ostracizes Wii owners from the rest of the gaming crowd, I cannot imagine that being a good thing. At that point, not only will the Wii have to solely rely on original IP from 1st and 3rd parties, but they will need to be triple A titles to hold the console's economy in non-forgotten plains.

Robert Summa made an interesting comment on Kotaku:

I don't know how many times I have to explain to people that the Wii isn't what you think it is. I think a lot of gamers are going to be in a state of shock when they find out the Wii doesn't control as well as they thought it would.

I believe he's alluding to a potential fact that the Wii remote isn't everything it is cracked up to be. It may not be that magical wonderous wand that all the kiddies are hoping for. Will this potentially flawed control fail to revolutionize anything except the ability to destroy hopes and dreams? Oh wait, that's Sony's business plan.