Dear Nintendo,

It is with deep regret that I am contacting you today. I have never been more disappointed in one of your products as I am with the Wii. While it may be one of the most innovative gaming systems to date, and at first glance appears to be well thought out, I fear its implementation was not up to par for a Nintendo product, or even for a trinket you'd get out of a bubble gum machine.

After an extensive and time consuming search to find one in stock, I purchased my Wii at the beginning of July 2007, and it has been nothing but disappointment since. The first disappointment was the lack of games that properly take advantage of the (implied) free form controls. Wii sports used it pretty well, but that was it. My "dream game" is one with an open, fully interactive environment, where I get to swing a sword and lop the heads off zombies or other walking meat until my arms fall off. With the Jedi game on hold indefinitely (supposedly it offers this type of interaction, but nobody outside Lucas Arts has played it), the runner up is Red Steel. This game uses scripted movements of the Wii controller to trigger a limited set of movements, and really, buttons are more appropriate for that type of interaction. I've rented many games for this console, ranging from tired re-makes of the Mario series to driving games, to RPGs. None of them are the mind-blowing new spin on gaming your marketing campaign described.

My next disappointment was the pay-to-play online experience. Put simply, other systems don't charge, and there isn't anything you can do on the Wii that you can't do better on a desktop/workstation for free. I really don't care what other peoples Miis look like, and that's about the only free thing you can do online with the Wii.

Now on to hardware, the colossal failure that motivated me to write this letter. First, the Wii controller (IR section) only works within 5ft of my TV, even with the aftermerket "high power" sensor bar (and really, why call it a sensor bar when the sensors are in the controller?). Within two months of purchasing the Wii, I was getting disc read errors approximately 30% of the time I tried to load a game, and after more than a year of bi-weekly/monthly cleanings (standard cleaning disc), that has increased to 60% or more. My console experiences very light usage patterns. I use it for maybe one hour a week, the girlfriend perhaps 2-3 hours a week, and the dog has difficulty using the controller (no thumbs) so she doesn't play at all. Unfortunately the days of blowing in the cartridges for your 8bit consoles are long gone.

Having given up on the Wii as a gaming platform, I purchased Wii Fit approximately one month ago, with hopes of using it as a fitness/well-being aid. Immediately upon using it for the first time, it was quite apparent that the balance board was designed for a tribe of pygmies in South America. I am in decent shape/health, 6'2" tall at ~210lbs, which is slightly larger than average, but hardly gargantuan. This dimension discrepancy renders half of the Wii Fit activities effectively useless. Even considering this, I have endured, participating in activities that don't involve push-ups with your hands in the middle of your chest. After less than one month of this, the balance board has decided to implement physics that don't apply to the real world. When doing the body test and balance games the board works as expected. However when it comes to something like the stepping exercise in the aerobic category, it somehow fails to recognize when a 200+lb person steps onto it with one foot, and neglects to register steps with the game. Oddly enough, this only happens on the left side. The right side of the board sees me just fine.

Given all these issues, it is quite easy to point to user error. I work in the tech industry, and that is quite possibly my favorite diagnosis (it means nothing under my watch is broken). I have owned nearly every game console since Pong, with the exception of the XBox line of products (I refuse to support Micro$oft in any way). By trade I am heavily involved with technology, ranging from application development, network engineering, information security, systems administration, embedded device development, and component level electronics design/implementation. The truth of the matter is, I probably know more about the inner workings of this console than 90% of your tech-support staff, and it still continues to fail me on a regular basis.

With the exception of one Wii controller, which I will keep to use as a remote control for my PC, I'm left with no other choice but to sell the remaining Wii components to the first minigame loving sucker who comes along with a decent offer. You have failed me Nintendo, and after a quick Google session, it's apparent there are numerous others who feel the same way.

Regards,
-Former Nintendo Customer