I bet Nintendo is one happy camper nowadays. The Wii is still a sought after item, even after being released for nearly two years. I own all three systems, and I’ll confess, my Wii doesn’t get as much playtime as the other two, but then again to be fair, I don’t think I’m the typical American consumer. People want Wiis so badly, that it’s inspired other companies to make knockoffs. I’m sure we’ve all seen some, but in case you haven’t, check it out:

The Vii
The Vii2

Cheap Wii knockoffs. And although Microsoft and Sony initially laughed off the Wii competition to their consoles, it inspired Sony to make a last-minute addition of motion-sensing to their console’s controller (and stupidly getting rid of rumble). Now it looks like Microsoft feels the need to directly compete with the Wii-wand as they filed a patent for a remote that looks remarkably like a Wii-remote (I say Wii-remote, because someone else copyrighted the term Wii-mote. Genius I say!).

I believe that the idea behind this move is so that 3rd party developers can directly port (and perhaps upgrade?) their games from the Wii to the 360. Not too bad of an idea in my opinion, except (as has been the case with almost all Nintendo systems) there are not that many good games that haven’t been developed directly by Nintendo, or at least are a Nintendo-exclusive franchise (Metroid Prime 3 — developed by Retro Studios, owned by Nintendo).

This is all via MTV news, but apparently it’s been in development since summer. Pretty neat. I wonder if 360 owners would bother with a peripheral like that. They’d have to make it cheap, ’cause you could either buy a Microsoft-Wand for your 360, or buy a Wii for $250. If the wand is like $70 bones, then I dunno. I guess it’s a non-issue for me since I’m an impulse buyer and own all three systems…

Via [MTV News]
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