Wii've have hardware problems? =(

[Hikari-chan]

Houston, Wii've got a problem?

Any piece of consumer electronics is bound to ship with a small number of units affected by hardware problems. From manufacturing defects to units manhandled during shipping, a small percentage of devices will exhibit some kind of abnormality. Still, with the recently introduced Nintendo Wii containing untested electronics in the form of the motion sensor, it is a useful task to see if early adopters are having any more problems than usual. The answer: not really.

The official Nintendo Wii forums have been host to a number of folks having various issues with their brand new console. One person had their Wiimotes go out of sync and resist repeated manual resyncing. Another had their Wii freeze up in standby mode.

Connecting the Wii to the Internet has proven problematic for some users. The console will display numeric error messages if it cannot connect to the Wii's network. Error 110213 is a typical message, which can sometimes be resolved by upgrading the firmware for certain brands of routers (such as Linksys) but in other situations indicates a hardware failure for which the unit must be replaced. There were also reports of DNS propagation issues with the newly-launched Wii store.

Others found that the console worked well until the first software update was installed from the Internet, after which the dreaded 110213 error made its appearance. However, the number of users affected by the update bug appears to be quite small.

Some gamers have reported that the Wiimote sensor is sensitive to light from the sun, as well as highly reflective surfaces between the player and the sensor bar. Changing the environment that the Wii is played in seems to fix these problems.

Minor but still irritating issues include some units being unable to recognize SD memory cards—as the Wii has no internal hard drive, it can use flash memory cards to extend its built-in storage. According to the manual, the Wii supports the SD format.

Nintendo has announced that they will replace damaged Wii consoles free of charge, so the only downside for afflicted gamers is having to wait for a replacement unit. After three days of the Wii being available, the hardware problems thread in the support forum had barely made it to the second page of posts (21 in total). While this is a completely unscientific measurement of how many people are having problems, the low number of posts does point to the problems being fairly rare. We'll keep an eye on future Wii issues, but for now, the problems don't seem widespread enough to discourage anyone from picking one up. Your biggest challenge will be Black Friday crowds and the general rush of the Christmas shopping season.

Look for a complete Ars Technica review of the Wii, coming very soon!

source

 

[Steelia]

To be expected. Not all systems are perfect on first go... Bound to be some problems. It's times like this that I'm glad I procrastinate in buying new major consoles.

 

[Habunake]

Good thing I usually wait till nearer Christmas then.

Atleast Nintendo offers to fix them free, unlike some companies...........

 

[Coffee]

... Well this isn't good.

*Got a launch Wii*

 

[DarkEliteKaren]

Yeah. My Wii just got here today and it won't load Wii Sports (I get a message something along the lines of "An error has occurred. Press the eject button to remove the disc, turn off the Wii console and check the Wii Manual for troubleshooting"). I've been told to wait 'til my copy of Zelda arrives in a few days to see if that loads (since I have no other Wii games yet and know no one nearby with a Wii for me to go test my Wii Sports on). If it does, I just need to send in Wii Sports for a new copy. If it doesn't, I have to get a replacement.

 

[bell02+]

With nintendo, it doesn't matter much because they'll fix the problem so quickly at their expense.

 

[Geodude]

No problems here so far, with updating or anything else.

 

[Rocketto-Dan]

Oh man...
I knew that something would go wrong with the Wii's the first try. I can't play mine until Christmas though O_O
I hope it was worth waiting 19 hours in front of Target for XD

 

[Dogasu]

No problems on my end.

 

[DarkEliteKaren]

Woohoo! Turns out my problem was a problem with Wii Sports itself, not the console (I got Zelda yesterday and it works fine). And a new copy of Wii Sports shipped out to me today, Nintendo saying I should have it sometime in the next two weeks.

 

[airo]

ohhh nooes, my launch released wii is defective thanks to a faulty update from Nintendo and looks like I will have to be sent a new one, and my progress in Zelda lost forever