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:

Over the weekend, I did a couple of things with big enterprisey companies which have big enterprisey applications for consumers to, er, use. I purchased a computer from the online Dell outlet, sought support from Microsoft, slogged through insurance forms on State Farm’s site, and, oh right–paid my iPhone bill. Warning: I rarely sound so whiny as when I’m criticizing the interfaces of companies who should know better. (more…)