All the Wiis are Gone...

And the sky is grey.

Man, it's tough to try to write about the Wii without making some lame pun-filled title.

I'm mainly writing to say that I was very shocked at how difficult it was to find a Wii on launch day. Given how many machines were actually shipped in America, I thought there would be some chance of walking into a store and getting one. But maybe the area I live in is too far populated, but as Derek predicted for me, I was unable to obtain one. In fact, Derek is probably mocking that I am so shocked, considering he warned me long ago. At the Best Buy I checked, the employee stated that they had 102 Wiis and there were enough people in line by midnight to purchase them all. At the CostCo, they had 42 consoles and were sold out in 15 minutes. After checking about 4 different places, I could see the writing on the wall. The only way for me to get a Wii was to find a store farther out from where I live. So I gave up the chase, knowing full well I'd be okay not getting one right away. I did get a copy of Twilight Princess, but no console to play it on.

And once again, I performed my eBay check for the Wii this time, only just for curiosity. I swear it is like staring at a car wreck on the freeway, seeing just how far the re-selling madness has gone. At one point today, there were almost 30,000 results when looking for Wii Consoles and clicking on "Systems." The PlayStation 3 had reached similar numbers. But of course, it is noteworthy to mention that while the numbers are similar, obviously a larger percentage of people buying the PlayStation 3 had the intention of reselling it. So it makes me happy to see that a larger percentage of Wiis purchased were actually purchased by people who intended to play and enjoy the system. But regardless of percentages or whatever, even having 28,000 results come back from an eBay search is insane. It's complete madness. I just have to wonder to myself: if eBay had never come into existence, would as many people go and buy these things just to flip for profit? I mean, would they even have an avenue available to them to sell these things?

Regardless of how many are selling on eBay, though, I can pretty much guarantee you I'll wait it out until I can just buy the console myself personally from a store. Zelda is the only game, right now, that I really want to play, and I've got plenty of games to keep me busy in the mean time (like Final Fantasies XII, V, and III for starters, none of which I've actually started yet). So I'm not particularly eager to begin a game that reportedly takes 100 hours to beat.

Anyhow, I'll be continually on the lookout for an opprtunity to get myself a Wii. In the meantime, I'll have to make do with being at least very happy to hear the console doing so well.

- James

What a World...

It's midnight here in California. The PlayStation 3 is now officially released across the States. Just for shits and giggles, I decided to stop by eBay and type in "PlayStation 3" into the search bar. Do you know how many results came up?

3,853. Already.

The highest one has a Buy It Now price of $49,999.

Seriously, what has happened to gaming? We can't even buy video game consoles normally anymore, let alone games.

I just have to say this much: being a hard-core video game fan in this day and age really, to put it bluntly, sucks. Consoles can't be purchased normally without overnight lines and inflated eBay prices, games that are even remotely "hot" can only be bought if pre-ordered, and even trying to buy a new TV is a pain if you are worried about lag when using your older gaming systems (a pain two of my friends are currently going through).

(Side note: if anyone has any recommendations on a good TV that can play old systems with no lag, please inform me right away so I can pass it on to my friends.)

What happened to the days of buying a SNES, plugging it in, and playing Super Mario World right out of the box with no hassles? Isn't technology supposed to make life easier?

(Edit to add: It's actually a fun little mini-game to keep refreshing the search results and watch the number continue to climb with each refresh.)

- James

P.S. This is my first of super short posts which I hope I can write more frequently. I prefer writing more, but I figured many short posts is better than no posts at all. ^_^

Speculation: WiiConnect24 Possibilities

Yes, I am still alive... but barely.

Work has been killing me of late, so I can't promise many updates in the upcoming weeks... even though I have a bunch of things I'd love to talk about. But I did want to show people I'm still around and I do plan on continuing the blog. So I figured I'd at least update the blog with a casual post regarding a random speculation I had a few weeks ago.

I was thinking about the Nintendo Wii, particularly about "WiiConnect24." For those of you who aren't aware of what that is, in Nintendo's own words, it is where "The Wii console can communicate with the Internet even when the power is turned off. The WiiConnect24 service delivers a new surprise or game update, even if the system is idle." In other words, it never really turns off and actually just goes into a standby mode.


And it got me thinking. If the Wii can receive information 24 hours a day -- updates for games, messages from other Wii users, etc. -- why can't it send information 24 hours a day? That way, you can access your Wii via its IP Address or something from work through your typical browser or a special application you install on your computer or...

The DS?

And that's when the lightbulb went off in my head. Think about how cool this could be. The Wii has the ability to store things like messages, photos, e-mails, etc. in your memory card. What if they release special software on the DS that allows you to connect to your Wii to download these messages and photos and such for portable viewing? Hell, what if the Opera Browser they are releasing already has this special functionality built into it, and they haven't told us yet? And then I thought to myself -- maybe the best part yet -- what if... just what if...

We could also download the Virtual Console games into the DS temporarily?

Ohhhhh, the possibilities. Buy your your favorite NES games or SNES games or Genesis games for the Wii and then download them onto your DS. If you've got a broadband connection, the download shouldn't be that long. And you wouldn't ever need a memory card or anything for the DS. Whichever game you have on your Wii, you could just grab it at any time on the go. And with the DS's ability to sleep, you could download it once and have quick access to it up until you actually turn the DS off.

And what if developers starting creating DS-specific mini-games included with actual Wii games? Download these mini-games from the disc to your Virtual Console and then access them via the DS. Let's say for an RPG released on the Wii, the developers could create a mini-game where you can do some grinding to earn experience points or money that you could download and play on the DS. All you'd need is wireless internet access.

I don't know, somehow I can only imagine Nintendo already has this in mind, and this may actually be their final trump card they've been waiting to pull out on the public. Technically, any system could do it, but it'd only be practical if the system is on 24 hours a day. That's the key thing right there. You could easily accomplish the same thing with the PSP and the PS3, but I've heard the PS3 requires twice as much power to run as the 360. No one will be leaving that machine on when away from home.

Anyhow, it's food for thought. If actually implemented, though, it would be really cool.

Sorry again for the lack of updates, and thanks for still reading and checking up.

- James