Nintendo dragged its feet in the move to HD and is paying the price.

You're not wrong, but on the other hand not moving to HD made them a fortune in the previous generation.

While the 3DS certainly won't disappear, it will be interesting to watch how well it fares among adult gamers when physical controllers become commonplace in the iPhone accessory aisle.

You're comparing different markets. Smartphones have tons of games that require no investment that can be played for a couple minutes. Portable consoles offer more elaborate games that are played during a commute, in the car, on vacation, etc. Also nice while over at family while the grown-ups are talking.

It's even worse than that. Basic navigation even breaks without JavaScript enabled.

Yesterday I tried visiting the websites of two electronic chain stores (owned by the same parent company) with JavaScript turned off. I couldn't get past their language selection page as the cookie that saves your selection is set by a JavaScript onclick handler!

Trust me, I don't dream of a sprawling rural lifestyle where I need to drive 30 minutes to town to buy food when surprise guests stop by for dinner. Some people *do* want that lifestyle, but I don't see why I should subsidize them.

Because doing otherwise would be discrimination. You'd be punishing people for choosing a rural life style. But I realise that that's in part socialist thinking, which Americans aren't compatible with.

I think the trend is called socialism. It's about how to fuck your neighbour over for scraps.

Please look up what socialism actually is before spewing such bullshit ever again.

For the rest

Dutch language speaker?

Yeah, that's why the pound sterling is so strong right now! ...Wait, it isn't?!

The 51st state is Canada. The UK would be 52nd.

*WHOOSH*

The Wii is a console, not a PC. It does have a concept similar to it, which are the IOS libraries stored as part of the firmware, but it's not the same. I suspect the fact that the Wii MotionPlus attaches to the Wiimote's extension port means it can't be done transparently.

Since you seem to be an expert on this (and not to mention a foul-mouthed individual), you're going to tell me how they could have developed the Wii MotionPlus in a way that would have provided more accurate motion data without needing support from the games. Make sure to insult me a couple times while you're at it.

That is a stupid thing to say, and you are a stupid person for saying it. We're talking about a peripheral that improves the accuracy of a measurement the Wiimote already takes, attitude!

It sounds like you don't know what the Wii MotionPlus is and how it works. The accessory adds a multi-axis gyroscope to the Wiimote. It's by combining data from the sensor bar, the accelerometer and the gyroscope that accuracy is improved. It doesn't magically make the existing data more accurate.

In the previous generation, almost every game supports at least 480p, and in the case of the original Xbox, the system comes with a fantastic scaler for those people who don't already have one in their TV.

Wrong. A minority of PlayStation 2 games supported progressive scan. The situation was much better on the Gamecube, but lots of games still lacked support. Only on the Xbox was progressive scan support a standard that most games supported. Unfortunately, in Europe progressive scan support was almost non-existent as the option was stripped out of 99% of PlayStation 2 and Gamecube games, while the option doesn't even exist on a PAL Xbox.

You say "at least", but only a small fraction of Xbox games had support for 720p, and even fewer for 1080i. Once more the option doesn't exist on a PAL Xbox.

There's this thing called automatic gain control, I hear we've had it for some decades now, and it would be nice if Nintendo discovered it.

Maybe there's a reason it wasn't used? It's not an instant solution, and I can imagine it making the remote consume more power.

The quality of their games has steadily declined to the point where their biggest brand (Sonic) has been so tarnished that it may not recover.

Too late. It has already recovered thanks to a Wii game called Sonic Colours! How apt. Sonic Generations for the PS3 and Xbox 360 was also well received.

There are lots of good games on the Wii. Is there seriously no other game you want to play on it?

Games which didn't use motion controls at all and could have been done on any console, but were gimped and put out on the Wii because of the huge install base.

Good games explicitly designed for the Wii are not gimped because they weren't intended for other consoles.

With motionplus it is not too bad, but because the system is so pathetic games have to explicitly support it, it's not automatic.

Of course it's not automatic. You can't expect the console to reprogram every single game automagically to work with a peripheral.

End result, I am a gamer and my Wii is still just used as a Netflix box.

There are lots of good games on the Wii. I know I keep finding some to play.

And it's not a very good one of those, with its primitive output (480p? What year did that console come out again?)

Oh, great, a HD fanboy. It's a good thing that Nintendo didn't go along with the marketing push to have you buy a new TV. 480p isn't primitive at all; the previous generation didn't even manage to have it as the standard video resolution. In contrast, almost every Wii game supports 480p out of the box.

If only the wiimote weren't pathetically confused by the open windows in my living room, and I didn't have to get up and stand halfway between the couch and the TV to actually launch netflix any time but in the dark of night, I might even say it has a decent remote.

Calibrate it better, then. There are light sensivity settings.

Thank the HD craze which brought with it LCD TVs, which made the superior 'light gun' technology obsolete.

You're just arguing semantics, and no one said anything about "most straightforward and convenient".