I don’t own a Wii, but a small number of people have been reporting that the strap has been breaking and that their controller flew across the room, damaging paintings and TVs. Just a friendly warning to my fellow gamers. A few examples of the damage:
I was thinking last night that the controller needs a bit of a sweat-absorbing case wrap. Leather or something (not that annoying rubber iSkinz sort of thing).
I saw this earlier today and I really think that TV one is bogus. Either that or someone was baked/drunk when they did it.
How in the world do you let go of the controller in the first place? When I played Wii at E3, I used the strap and I have no idea how that thing would ever leave my hand… just like every other game controller I’ve ever used.
I’d been wondering about that. The straight edged sides seem pretty straight and slick for some of the more powerfull motions, without a good grip. I didn’t even realize it had a wrist strap, which seems like a must due to the “TV remote” shape; pity that they’re apparently too weak to be of use.
They should have gone with some sort of pistol grip. It’d be much less likely to fly our of your hand, and would be more comfortable to use too.
I downloaded that entire video hoping to see some cool blooper of a wiimote flying out of a gamer’s hand and smashing something, and instead I get a talking head explaining what he witnessed happen.
Fascinating, this age of internet video games journalism is really blowing me away.
Video of Matt recounting his magic bullet theory or not, the bottom line is the girl let go of the controller for some reason. That’s just plain old carelessness and dopic behavior that could happen with any controller at any time. She probably leans left and right flying the controller on the couch while playing regular old airplane games on the other consoles too.
The funniest story I’ve seen so far was a girl who posted that she and her boyfriend are both gamers. He is a microsoft zealot, and she loves Nintendo. When her strap broke the controller smacked into his Xbox 360—HARD.
Apparently his console still works fine, but I’m sure that gave him another reason to hate Nintendo. The Wii is actively trying to assassinate his 360.
Yeah, but the point here is that other controllers aren’t intended to be whipped around like the Wiimote is. If I lose my grip on my 360 controller it falls into my lap or onto the floor. If I lose control of my Wiimote during some frantic motion game it could take somebody’s eye out.
Er… how? What other controller, besides this one, would you ever have reason to swing around? I mean, sure, you might drop a PS2 controller or something, but I think flying across the room is going to be a phenomenon limited to the Wii controller. And sure, the solution is to be careful with it. I think the IGN guy was just trying let people know that they shouldn’t put too much faith in the sturdiness of that strap.
I don’t buy it Dave. If you’re doing something that involves frantic or exaggerated motion, people make mistakes and drop things – especially when they’re made of slick plastic that gets sweaty after use.
I’ve seen people in fencing matches drop their sword on (albiet rare) occasion, and there you have a glove to absorb sweat, a pistol grip, and a wire connecting it to your body. Decent fencers too, and clearly not just being careless.
The simple fact is that people make mistakes, you’re supposed to swing the wiimote around by design, and the wrist strap apparently won’t reliably save you. Clearly Nintendo thinks this could be an issue as well, else why even have a strap, and recommend that people use it?
I’m simply saying that it’s the people at fault, not the game system or the controller or some kind of “faulty wrist strap” which is where this all seems to be heading.
Right, and we’re simply disagreeing with you. The wrist strap shouldn’t snap, because none of the motions are that forcefull. You should be able to whirl it around as fast as you can, and not worry about it.
As it stands, if/when when I get a Wii I now know I’ll need to get an improved strap, as otherwise I can’t let my kids play with the wiimote. I mean come on, did you see how feeble the strap was that broke in the ign video? It looked like two pieces of string! A shoelace would do a better job.
Uh, the wrist strap broke, Dave, on both occasions. The wrist strap that is supposed to stop the controller from leaving your hand if it tends to slip out. It’s faulty because it doesn’t do what it’s intended to do. Maybe in a perfect world people will never, ever drop things when flailing them around wildly. But it’s not a perfect world, ergo, we have wrist straps.
They’re playing it the way Nintendo is TELLING THEM TO PLAY IT in their TV commercials and in every single piece of Wii marketing and promotion ever. If I’m not supposed to play Wii Tennis by swinging the Wiimote like a tennis racket, how AM I supposed to play it?
