Wiimote has unused 'voice translator'

Vid: Check out Trauma Center. great game that looks good too. Elebits is a nice game too, shows wii physics in action nicely, though the framerate suffers slightly in later levels.

Since I got my 360, my Wii has been collecting some dust as well. But I know there are great games on the horizon, so I don't feel "cheated" or "manipulated". I still haven't beat trauma center. Its a game thats actually hard.

@97

That's opinion. For some people the difference is enough. Plus, the 360 provides a much better online environment. I'm not just talking about online gaming either. There's also things like downloadable demos and voice chats. A lot more is going into that price difference than just graphics.

And, no, the Wii will never be able to match the 360, even with the 360 running in SD. Haven't you ever watch any Pixar films? Games haven't reach that point, but don't the graphics in their films still look fantastic even at SD? They sure do. That's where your argument falls apart. You keep trying to argue that an 360 running in SD loses all of it's advantages over the Wii, but that's utterly false.

@Crono

I toyed with the idea of buying Trauma Center for a while, but never pulled the trigger. I just couldn't decide if it was a game I'd enjoy. I'd like to point out that this is where demos would really come in handy... it's just too bad the Wii is sort of limited on storage space unless Nintendo decides to allow games to load off SD cards. I've really gotten used to being able to demo games that I'm on the fence about. That's been available on PCs for a while, but now it's become part of console culture as well and it's hard to go back to buying games semi-blindly.

Perhaps its for a super cheap microphone attachment to come in the future?

You guys are giving me a headache with your Fanboyisms...god! STOP ALREADY!!!

Just buy whatever system you believe is going to make you happy and shut up.

I got a PS3 and Wii...and I'm fine and friggin dandy!

I DON'T HAVE A TUMOR!!

"Another point that Jack keeps missing is that Nintendo COULD have made a machine on par with the 360 and the PS3 that also included the Wii Remote. They could have even priced it so that they still would have made a profit on each unit sold."

While true, it still wouldn't have KILLED Nintendo go up the specs on the Wii a bit more. Instead of a 750mhz (or thereabouts) processor, why not spend a LEEEEETTLE extra dough and pump it up to, say, 1.5ghz, for example?

I used to buy into Nintendo's line of thinking that these new consumers wouldn't care about the graphics. But two people I know, one of whom is my MOTHER, asked after seeing Super Swing Golf and Tiger Woods why Wii Sports "graphics" were so bad.

So I'm starting to think that Nintendo's complete abandonment of the graphics/power arms race MIGHT actually hurt them in a few more years.
I do agree fundamentally, though, that the graphics don't matter, so long as they don't hurt the game.

@samfish

Nintendo doubled the speed of the GC to get the Wii's current clock speed. Even if they doubled THAT, it'll still be placed in comparison against the 360 and PS3 and it would still come up short by a long shot. People would still bitch and complain because it is weaker than the competition. Besides, the Wii architecture is a direct enhancement of the GC architecture, whereas the 360 and PS3 are widely different than their predecessors. If we had a 1.3 GHz GC, you would still see the kind of crap that's hitting the system currently because developers wouldn't see the need to add extra "oomph" for a repurposed GameCube.

We aren't going to see any enhancements above the last generation until Nintendo makes the first move with the fall lineup. Come this fall, I'm sure the increase in power over the last generation will become readily apparent.

@ megaStryke

exactly. While keeping the GC architecture allowed the Wii to become extremely cheaper for third parties, the third parties are not compelled to use the new power

If they had built an entirely new architecture, we might not be seeing as many 3rd party titles, but they would probably be better, because CELL is so much different than the Emotion Engine, and Xenon so much different than the XCPU, we consistently see the use of the new power

@ samfish,

m8, i think the ign 729mhz wii wasn't the final version m8. The final one was apparently clocked at 1.1 GHZ and had 1 mb ST- RAM ( i think, but these numbers dnt mean much 2 me, cept 4 clock speed)

@Vidikron
You can't play Dead Rising in SD. :P

@samfish:
Your mom thought SSG looked bad? Personally, I think it's a very beautiful game.
But, perhaps I'm biased, having played the PC PangYa/Albatross18 for quite a bit, than the improvements in details for SSG are much more obvious to me.

I would just like to say that there was a time when graphics mattered and graphical updates would give you 1000x the colors or make the jump from 2-D to 3-D and make actual changes people gave a shit about. That time is gone. All systems have graphics now that are good enough. These graphical arguments are now for the tiniest niche of gamers that they are irrelevant. ::cough cough Jack of no Trades cough::

@Ish

Where did you get those numbers? That sounds like pre-E3 2006 rubbish to me.

And for everone saying as more HDTV are sold the wii will fail. Look at japan.

From what I heard 80% have HDTV's. And have a look a what is on top DS and Wii.

Catprog: I don't have any official data, but my personal experience meeting Japanese people in their homes, I'd say most actually have a really old crappy CRT. I saw one guy with an HDTV the whole time I was there.

Also, I'll say for sure that HD or not, most Japanese don't have very large TVs. At the electronics stores, at least in urban areas, the biggest TVs I saw were maybe 32 inches.

Please don't take this however as some sort of anti-Wii statement. I think even with HD penetration, if the TV has a good scaler chip then widescreen 480p should be good enough for most people. If HD starts to become a threat to Nintendo, I could see them releasing a "Wii HD" which basically just has an upscaler chip built into the Wii. At that time they might also increase the amount of flash memory in the unit as flash memory prices seem to be plummeting daily..

@ Megastryke,

The specs weren't pre e3 2006 rubbish, they came out after E3. It is a '1.1Ghz PowerPC processor.' It has been reported on many sites, but never confirmed, you could dismiss it as hearsay but the 750Mhz specs have never been confirmed either. Also it would explain why some Wii games look really great, they couldn't achieve Galaxy with 750 MHz.
P.S (Most Wii launch window games looked like fried turd, because they were based off Gamecube dev kits and/or were ports.)

Check it out here:

http://spong.com/article/10118

Unused? Is there any other way to play Saria's song than to hum it into the microphone?

Sounds like that Google Audio Spy program....