Update on the Nintendo Wii situation. We had promised Jessica and Alex that we would buy a Wii shortly after Christmas. My parents and sisters had sent us some money that could go towards it. Of course, at the time you couldn't get one for love nor money and the time since has been spent searching the web for anyone who had the basic £180 model which comes with just Wii Sports (rather than more expensive ones with loads of gubbins you don't actually want or need - and even they were hard to come by).

Well, after much searching I finally found one at Amazon and it was delivered this week!

First impressions? The Wii is an incredible piece of kit. We bought the version which has just the game Wii Sports with it, which is effectively the demonstration game for the console. The contrast with the traditional video game couldn't be more pronounced. The motion sensitivity makes the whole thing completely different. The tennis game is just like playing tennis, for instance. I expected the movement to be really 'blunt', ie it would not be very sensitive to small movements. In fact, it is amazingly subtle allowing for a really fine grained control. This allows you, for instance, to put spin on the ball in tennis or bowling. Or angle the direction of your shot in baseball.

I think the engineers at Nintendo have really shown a stroke of genius in the design. Instead of trying to outgun Microsoft and Sony, they've really invented something which has broken the mold of home gaming. What's more, it can really get you active. After ten minutes of tennis, your heart is really pumping. It's truly refreshing to see something which hasn't just pushed the boundaries of hardware construction to produce games which are boring to play, and actually concentrated on producing a good games console, something that's enjoyable to play.

This touches on a regular theme of mine, particularly since I bought an ipod last year. There's a real difference between something that's just been produced with a degree of contempt for the consumer (not thinking of any large companies based in Redmond!) and something that's been 'designed'. The ipod is a good example of something that feels designed. It feels natural and easy to use. And to some extent the Wii feels similar in use. It's been built with real regard to how people will use it, and to making the experience fun. I think the 'fun' aspect is something the other companies have lost sight of in the pursuit of ever more realistic gameplay. It doesn't matter how good the grass looks if the game is boring to play.

I think that's probably enough for the time being. I'll should post some more once we've another game to see how it stands up then.

In the meantime, I've been spending some time this evening on the Byzantine Studies pagewhich you might want to check out if you're interested in Byzantium, particularly for the online sources.