Nintendo Wii: A Closer Look
It’s a wild craze, the Wii console, in which friends group together in front of the television batting balls, climbing walls, or racing cars. Perhaps, one of the most popular games for Wii is tennis. People have become completely engrossed in this virtual sport, striking aces like Roddick and angling shots like Federer. I was watching two of my friends play each other in the game, and in doing so, one of them hit the other when going for a forehand. Besides trying to stop myself from laughing, I realized how involved everyone gets into this game, just as they had done during the Nintendo 64 or the PS2/PS3 phases.
Waving the remote around is fun, yet being engineers we have to wonder what happens behind the scenes. The main parts to this system include a console, a sensor bar, a remote, a nunchuk, a sports disc, a console stand, an AC adaptor, and an AV cable. Additional parts, such as extra controllers, remotes, or Nunchuks, are sold separately, but are probably necessary if you wish to play with friends.
The console is a sleek white design that is about the size of three DVD cases stacked together. It’s compatible with any of the games offered to the Gamecube and can connect to the Internet on a wireless provider or through a LAN adaptor. Like most game console devices, the Wii allows for four controllers to be attached. The PowerPC CPU is the soul to this fun-filled masterpiece of design, made with a 90nm SOI CMOS and jointly produced with IBM.
Assisting the console, is the famous controller, a shape uncommon to the avid video-gamer but still possessing many of the same features. The remote is your tennis racket, your weapon, or your steering wheel because unlike past remotes, this one is equipped with motion- sensing technology. It also serves as a speaker and a rumble feature as well as outfitted with ports for expansion devices such as the Nunchuk. Within the Nunchuk is an analog stick that allows for gamers to control character movement while still handling the remote with the other hand to hit a ball or dodge an enemy.
All such motion-sensing processes are carried through the sensor bar that operates via Bluetooth technology. It can register actions from up to thirty feet away and as for specific pointing actions, it will acknowledge them from up to fifteen feet away. These revolutionary parts enlist gamers to reach their potential as the best pilots, athletes, or adventure-seeking-soldiers in a manner quite different from the past sit-down games.
Now inside the innovative CPU are newly reformed semi-conductors that are manufactured into a smaller chip and enforces less power consumption. The new ideal of this game console is thus, “high performance with lower power consumption”- the way it should be! This allows for the console to be on for 24 hours a day, and simultaneously can be connected to the Internet for just as long. Another attribute was the improved ICs (integrated circuits) of this system. Normally, creating such an involved device would produce more heat than a regular console. To compensate for the difference, the design of these ICs is key to allowing such a product make its way into many households across the country. The sensor technology inside the controller is what makes this console one of the most desired, as it is built with a sensor system that detects 200 signal changes per second.
The makers of this pioneering technology concur on the idea that this will welcome a new era of gaming in the industry. The motion-sensing and unique designs of the console and controller allow for everyone to get completely involved, almost losing sense of the real world. Without the ingenious ideas from these inventors, we would still be moving characters with our fingers instead of our minds and bodies. The Wii system is encouraging modifications in standard technologies and focusing this generation toward a finer art of playing video games.
Read More: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/nintendo-revolution.htm
Video Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=p5cPVP_llfo
