Personally, I'm pretty excited about the Wii. I guess with me being 27, everything that could be considered 'innovation' for the past 20 odd years of my life has only ever been 'better graphics'.
When I was really little, although I didn't realize what the hype, it was pretty easy to see that the NES looked a lot more like the games I played in the cabs at the store where my mom worked (Double Dragon mostly). But even a cursory look retrospectivly shows that one of the main selling points in the earliest of console wars was "arcade realism", which basically translates into better graphics and sound, since no console I'm aware of has a coin slot.
As the consoles slowly moved towards the late 80's and 90's, the gauge for game consoles on the school yard was 'bits' - "Dude, atari was like 2-bits, Nintendo is 8-bits and Genesis is 16-bits". 16-bit consoles were exciting, in many ways I hold them as the height of gaming (story for another time) and the amazing promise of the 64-bit Jaguar pretty much propelled that console. Just by it's supposed bit count. Bits were really important.
And as we matriculated over into the 3D realm, polys became important. Intially it was a simple numbers race for polygons. Soon enough people realized how deceptive this really was since all console manufacturers would release would be "8 Million Polygon" bench marks that were just millions of triangles. No textures, lights, sound, AI or even controls. Nothing approaching a game.
The raw poly power war is slowly loosing steam, having passed along graphical buzzfeatures such as "HDRI Lighting", "BumpMapping" and "Volumetric Lighting". With a heavy 3D modeling background, trust me when I say, all of these (whille cool) translate in the geek-to-english matrix as "more pretty".
Here were are, gamers are saavier then ever, now they sell us the console almost exclusively using the more complex - but, ironically, simpler - statistics of raw processor power, RAM and drive speed. While these numbers always circled in the gamer tech circles, only now are they all common enough knowledge to be selling points.
Which brings us to why I'm pretty excited for the Wii. Honestly? I don't care about the graphics anymore. The parts of me that analyze the graphics are now totally subjugated by the parts of me that just wants a fun video game. I've been through all of the 'graphic' evolutions. I remember when Full Motion Video was the future. And while the graphics have made the games a lot cooler they haven't made them a ton more fun.
So here's the Wii. Absconding graphical superiority and innovating in the most basic of game device, control. I haven't played it yet, but I have it pre-ordered and all but paid off at my local game store. I have no proof that it won't flop, but I sometimes daydream about the games they could make. I can't justify it, but I'm excited.
For the past decade or so, I think I've only ever been 'interested' in new consoles. That's probably part of the reason why I'd get some of them later in the life span after certain titles came out (my own personal revenge for them never releasing the Robotech game, which was a main reason I bought a Nintendo 64). I've been interested. I don't think I've been excited since the SNES. Since the days I tried desperately to get one for Christmas, sneaking into my parents room and trying to subconciously implant the idea by whispering 'you will buy Blaine a Super Nintendo...' over and over again.
I'm genuinely excited again for a console, for the Wii. I've had a lot of the better games over the course of my life. Better games are cool. But I'm looking forward to new games. Different games. Unique games.
I wanna fall in love with games, again.
I want a Wii.
You?
