Wiiiiiiii!

So as I’m sure most of you have heard by now, a whole slew of Nintendo Wii news hit the tubes of the interweb today. Let’s break down some of the bigger points:

• The system will launch on November 19th, with an MSRP of $250. It’ll come packaged with Wii Sports, which has the tennis game shown at E3, bowling, baseball, golf, and boxing. A pretty good strategy for getting people used to the Wii-mote.
• There will be 25 titles at launch, the biggest of course being Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. First party games retail for $50.
• The Wii will have the Opera browser (Flash enabled) for browsing on the console, although I can’t ever see myself using it. There is quite a bit of speculation that the browser will be free for a limited time.
• The Virtual Console will work on a “WiiPoints” system, where you purchase in multiples of 2000 points for $20 a pop. They can be spent on any of the NES, SNES, and N64 games that will be available. 30 games will be up for grabs at launch, with 60 on the way before the end of the year. The prices break down as such: NES Games: $5. SNES Games: $8. N64 Games: $10.
• Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. Damn near everyone’s favorite characters are back, including Jill, Chris, and Leon. No official release date, although they did push Metroid Prime 3 back until 2007.
• ALL first-party games will be widescreen.
• There will be no online titles at launch, none scheduled until Pokemon on December 2nd.
• The Wii will be region-free. Play Japanese imports to your heart’s content.

Sad that the Gamecube version of Zelda won’t be out until Christmas, but who am I kidding, I’ll have a Wii on launch day. And, for the twelfth time, I will re-purchase all of my old favorite NES games because I must have them in every available format. It’s a disease, and you can’t blame me for having a disease, you insensetive pricks.