Pixel Thread

So I finally succumbed and bought a Wii. You have to understand it’s not for me, it’s for the family! Well that’s how I justified it anyway.

My five year old boy is a big fan of miniclip (a big flash games site) and rather than him spending time there on his own, mouse clicking away, I thought it would be good to have a more social way of playing games.

I love the fact that playing a game on the Wii tends to mean you’re moving about, stretching, reaching and swinging arms. This is good for a boy I think.

The Wii fit closed the deal. Now the Wii wouldn’t just be for the kids, myself and Mrs could hop on board! And then I discovered that there’s a Wii specific version of iPlayer, so we could have iPlayer in our living room. Want became need.

Ease of use

So far so good. We’re still discovering it really, but one thing that’s particularly struck me is the ease of use and the overall experience of using the console. I’ve never owned a games console before, so it was great using an operating system that wasn’t designed by Microsoft!

Screens are simple and intuitive. Buttons are big and there are few of them. Choices are usually kept down to two or three. This simplicity is the key to the Wii’s success. My boy has quickly got to grips with it.

Hand Controller

The hand controller which works as a pointer on the screen give a satisfying judder when you ‘mouseover’ a button or clickable item. It even has a small speaker which contributes to making the experience as immersive as possible.

Sounds

Much thought has gone into the sounds which are a key component of the Wii experience. For example the Wii fit board gives a little mouse-type squeak when you step on it - cue much five year old hilarity! When browsing the web, zooming in on a page gives a satisfying swoosh, zooming out reverses the sound. Cue much zooming!

iPlayer

Using the Wii for iPlayer is easy once you know how. You have to install a version of Opera browser and navigate to the iPlayer site on the BBC. You can then zoom in to view full screen and hide the browser furniture. Quality isn’t fantastic as it’s using version 7 of Flash for various reasons, but it’s perfectly watchable.

Usability

Despite the amount of thought that’s clearly gone into the Wii, there are a couple of very obvious usability issues which I’d have though user testing would have caught immediately:

• When you’re playing a game and you want to return to the game homepage, the options presented are ‘Continue Playing’ or ‘Reset’. To me, reset means clear all data and start again rather than return to game home.

• In the web browser there’s no obvious way of saving to favourites. We discovered that you have to press the favourites button twice. And there are a few other small issues.

Just like coka-cola

But overall after a weekend of testing with our inlaws and their boy, Wii’re loving it!