Sony, Nintendo Announce 'Fixes' For Their Consoles

Gamasutra reports that both Nintendo and Sony still have a few kinks to work out from their newly launched systems. It may seem funny to an onlooker, but the spectacular Wii strap blowouts are being taken very seriously by Nintendo. People are evidently 'even more excited' by playing the little white console than the company anticipated, and they're investigating the possibility that the straps aren't strong enough. Meanwhile, Sony has updated the PS3's firmware to 1.30 in an effort to take care of the much-complained-about resolution scaling issues. Ars Technica (and several other sites) are saying that the fix doesn't really do anything, despite Sony's reassurances. From that article: "The priority of resolutions has been changed, putting 1080i over 720p. So if you prefer 720p as a resolution, be sure to uncheck 1080i as a possible resolution on your television, or else games that support both resolutions will automatically display at 1080i. Of course, if you uncheck 1080i as a resolution, your Blu-ray movies will display at 480p. So you'll have to just manually switch the resolution yourself depending on what you're doing ... If you have a 720p set, not only has Sony not fixed the scaling issues, they've made the process of playing games and watching movies less user friendly. Sony really wants you to upgrade into a 1080p set, and they seem to want to punish you if you don't have one."

If you look...

[Shados]

If you look at a wiimote from the more recent batches (especialy if its one that got sent by nintendo because of a defect or another, as a replacement), and compare the straps, the newer wiimotes have much, much better straps. So its already fixed in the newer batches, as far as I can tell.

Re:Heh...

[Vo0k]

OTOH

Nintendo execs have acknowledged media reports of uncoordinated gamers causing damage to televisions, furniture and even fellow players.

But NOT to the wiimote which goes flying at high speed -every- time this happens and causes the whole damage to hardware and wetware mentioned! Now that's some bulletproof device!

Fix Your Wiimote

[eldavojohn]

If you're honestly worried about the strap breaking on your Wiimote, check out this quick how-to [flickr.com] on flickr. Just use some heavy duty fly fishing line to reinforce it.

It's time to stop the lawsuits

[ShadowsHawk]

There's a warning screen before each game to tightly grip the Wiimote. I wouldn't blame Nintendo for my inability to grip an object. On a related note, society on the whole is far to sue happy and I'm of the opinion that they should institute a mandatory penalty for bringing frivolous law suits.

When you said 'fix'...

[maniac/dev/null]

I was hoping this there would be news of a Wii system update, perhaps to allow the Classic Controller to be used with Gamecube games on the Wii. As it is, you have to use a Gamecube controller. The Classic has all the buttons you would need, even the analog-style L and R triggers, but for some reason, it is not set up that way. I really don't want to buy a Wavebird, and I really REALLY don't want an ugly dongle sticking out of the top of my nice new Wii.

Re:Heh...

[Otter]

I did straight-up RTFA, and would suggest that Gamasutra and Zonk each inserted their own preposterously positive spin on top of Nintendo's already preposterously positive spin. I mean, just the part I quoted is 89% Zonk, and 4% of the remaining 11% is a word he inserted into a supposed quote from Iwata.

Re:foobar

[Control Group]

Gears Of War required a patch on release day.

HTH
HAND

Sony got it right - for me

[Murrow]

I'm a PS3 owner, and the new settings are the right ones for my non-1080p HDTV. So, I'm happy with them. The better choice, of course, is to make these choices more user configurable so people can get the mode they prefer for each situation.

I'm a little miffed that when a patch comes out they force me to install it before I can log into the playstation network. This patch had nothing to do with networking. Of course, the 360 works the same way.

Re:"even more excited"

[Chris Burke]

Nintendo is generally responsive to this kind of thing, even if they could be excused for not thinking it was actually their fault (do makers of baseball equipment get sued when someone lets go of a bat and it hits something?).

Back when Mario Party 1 came out, and there were the analog stick spinning games, Nintendo received many complaints from players getting blisters in the middle of their palm, since the fastest way to spin the stick was to put your palm on it and move your hand in circles. I myself got one and wore out a glove besides but it never occured to me to blame nintendo. Nintendo, under pressure (and maybe a lawsuit) from customers, decided to give out gloves to anyone who wanted one and removed the spinning games from future titles.

Also considering their commitment to making astoundingly durable machines, I'm surprised that the straps weren't sturdy enough in the first place. That is a pretty serious oversight.

Blame CinemaScope

[tepples]

Is there even one good reason why every video I watch, be it Blu-Ray or DVD, needs to be letterboxed? Hello..there are like 80 lines missing from the top and the bottom of every movie. Widescreen video on widescreen set should not equal letterboxing.

Your TV is 1.78:1. A lot of widescreen movies are shot in 2.40:1 and transferred to DVD with black letterbox bars to pad it out to 1.78:1. Blame CinemaScope for introducing 2.40:1.