If you have been following the console wars you are surly aware of Nintendo’s success with the uniquely named, and marketed Wii. Although I don’t own one yet, my son and I stop at our local GameStop every chance we get to play.

Before we started doing these freeloading recreational excursions, my son had never played a video game. He immediately picked up the Wii, and was able to play games without instruction or frustration.

This got me thinking about how the Wii was different from other gaming systems. By making the game controls a natural extension of the user, Nintendo has tapped into a very powerful control mechanism: the human body.

Although my son had not yet mastered a mouse, keyboard, or complicated button combinations, he had already mastered his body, and therefore the Wii.

Here is a video of my four year old playing a racing game on the Wii:

Tags: Cool, Fun, Games, Movies, usability

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 11:41 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.