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The Wii's biggest selling point now is it's unique controller and the potential it has. The games are still mostly made for kids, but that is Nintendo's point of view. They will not make games for the adults. That is up to third party companies and they are now, thankfully, starting to make games for the Wii.

The wand allows you to do things you couldn't do easily with a standard controller. The cursor moves at your own speed now as you point the Wii at the screen, not a preset speed (that may be too slow or too fast). Instead of hitting button combinations you now may only have to hit one button and make a quick flick of the wrist in a direction. You tilt the wand to represent speed. You twist the wand to turn.

This was all done with buttons in the past, and I must say that using the wand is simply more fun.
There is much more that can be done, though, and Nintendo has said that they weren't going to be the ones to develop it. It's up to the third party companies to design the games that can make the Wii a truly ingenious system that's as much fun for the casual gamer as it is for the die-hard gamers.
Imagine playing Star Wars through an on-line server on your Wii. A sword fight using your Wii with anyone in the world. Imagine a game of baseball on-line that needs 18 people. If you've played The Bigs then you've seen a glimpse of what baseball can be like, and imagine the challenge of batting against nine real people on a virtual field.

There are already games out there that simply couldn't happen before the DS or Wii came into being. Big Brain Academy is one. Cooking Mama is another. On the DS, the stylus allows you to write in real time for Big Brain Academy and allows you to slice, dice, fry, and boil in Cooking Mama. You could not do either of these with a standard controller.
Another area of potential lies in the ability of both the DS and the Wii to communicate via WiFi. There are already games for the DS that use WiFi, but what if you could use your DS to access the ability of Wii to go on-line. You could then use your DS to surg the web, access the vote channel, edit your Mii's, and (if Nintendo set it up) possibly even purchase points to download old GB and GBA games on your DS.
The DS currently cannot do all of these things, but in the future, it could be a possibility.

One thing has to happen, though, before the Wii can truly take off. Nintendo must set up a system where players can go on-line to play. You cannot have a system nowadays that can't do this. Nintendo does have a few games lined up for this ability, but many more need to be added in order to make it a viable system to everyone.

And, a tip from someone that has yet to lose a Wii controller due to it flying across a room: hang onto it while you are playing. The only game that requires you to let go of it (that I've seen) is Marioware: Smooth Moves, and that's only to drop it, not to fling it across the room.
Many of the games do require full range of motion, but I haven't seen any that suggest or require you to let go of the controller itself in the process. If you don't use the rechargable batteries, use a skin (the only way it will slip out of your hand is if you intentionally throw it). If you use the rechargable battery, grip with your bottom three fingers (the battery cover has a rubber backing and is quite good at allowing you to keep your grip on the wand).
The wrist strap is a last ditch safety function. One look at it tells you it isn't going to stop a remote at full speed. It's up to you keep your grip on the wand.

Learn more about this author, Bill Todd.
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