The Wii Address Book
Posted November 21st, 2006 @ 10:07am by Erik J. Barzeski
Is anyone else bothered by the Wii's built-in address book? My list of complaints may be short, but each complaint is substantial:
- Nicknames are limited to what has to be an arbitrary ten letters. Sorry, Phil Letourneau, but you're just "P. Letourn" in my system. The Wii has 512 MB internal storage and you can't give me even 32 characters for names?
- I deleted the first item I ever added - my own email address - and the remaining address book entries stayed where they were. None moved up to take its place. So now I have four addresses on the first page and one address on the second page.
- The address book shouldn't prompt me to add a Mii to the entries - it should fetch the Mii from the remote machine after both owners have added each other to the address book.
- No sorting or searching will severely hamper the ability to quickly use the address book once you have more than four or five pages of friends. I don't particularly care for the fact that I'm limited to five friends per page, either.
I have other gripes as well. There is no one-way authentication, meaning both friends have to accept each other. I like the instant messaging approach here instead: I can allow people to add me as a friend without adding them to my buddy list, too. When they message, I can reply. Otherwise, they don't take up space in my list.
The Wii also has no concept of "Me" (not "Mii"). I am the only person who will ever send messages on my console, yet the Wii has no idea who the "owner" is. I'm not asking for full-blown users (like, say, Mac OS X) with different settings or anything, but a concept of "this is the owner's Mii" would be nice.
Why doesn't the Wii support a damn USB keyboard? Typing messages is pretty fast, but… not nearly as fast as it would be via keyboard.
Donate Life
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 12:39pm #
I agree, the limited characters sucks. I've resorted to "Erik B" style contact names.
I'm hoping they won't mess up with those 2 usb ports. They are just begging for a keyboard, external usb drive (or any mass storage compliant device). My cellphone (Sony Ericsson m600i) supports USB mass storage mode. It would be wicked to plug it into a friend's Wii and swap saved games, channels, and whatever else.
I'm also curious about what other "nunchuk-like" attachments we might see in the future, and whether Nintendo will allow 3rd parties to make attachments.
I sent a couple emails to regular addresses using the Wii, and was hoping that including a "Mii" character would somehow appear in an html email... It didn't... They should remove that function unless I'm missing something.
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 1:03pm #
[quote comment="24375"]I'm hoping they won't mess up with those 2 usb ports. They are just begging for a keyboard, external usb drive (or any mass storage compliant device). My cellphone (Sony Ericsson m600i) supports USB mass storage mode. It would be wicked to plug it into a friend's Wii and swap saved games, channels, and whatever else.[/quote]
Get yourself an inexpensive SD card, boy.
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 2:01pm #
Back in the day when the broadband adapter for the Gamecube was very reluctantly released by Nintendo (with about two games supporting it, none of them first-party), they said that "gamers weren't ready for online play" - and then they got broadsided by Xbox Live.
Ever since then the opinion on a gaming forum I frequent has been that it was Nintendo that wasn't ready for online play. And apparently they still aren't. The friend code system was annoying enough on the DS.
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 2:01pm #
Just wondering (as the Wii will only hit Europe in spring) how you report such bugs to Nitendo so they can fix it for later versions of their firmware?
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 2:09pm #
Ugh. I hope we see some firmware updates soon.
Although I'm not sure whether any of those are as bad as Sony's wonderful "Let's not learn any lessons from the 360 and allow download backgrounds" firmware on the PS3.
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 4:00pm #
[quote comment="24378"]Get yourself an inexpensive SD card, boy.[/quote]
I agree, and I have a 512mb mini-SD card with an adapter that I'm using in my Wii. However, I always have my phone on me, but not necessarily the SD card. For the sake of convenience..
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 4:22pm #
[quote comment="24383"]Just wondering (as the Wii will only hit Europe in spring) how you report such bugs to Nitendo so they can fix it for later versions of their firmware?[/quote]
Ludovic: Spring? The product launch in Germany is on December 8, 2006. Are you sure you're not mixing that up with the Playstation 3 (which will launch at the end of March, 2007)? Where are you located?
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 8:02pm #
The authentication issue is simple, they are aiming to be the parent friendly console. Requiring the two-way authentication basically renders nil the likelyhood that anyone can add people they don't know to their system. And assures that the messaging is really safe for any age person really.
Posted 26 Dec 2006 at 9:19pm #
what i would really like to see is a later firmware update that allows the wii to play dvds...
but i heard that they're only going to be releasing new wiis with the dvd playback built in in 2007, so i doubt they'll add the function with an update.
but it would be nice.
also- can someone explain to me how the adress book works with adding an email adress? (i get the 'adding a wii' part, but not the 'adding an email' part)
thanks
Posted 18 Jan 2007 at 11:37pm #
[quote comment="24382"]Back in the day when the broadband adapter for the Gamecube was very reluctantly released by Nintendo (with about two games supporting it, none of them first-party), they said that "gamers weren't ready for online play" - and then they got broadsided by Xbox Live.
Ever since then the opinion on a gaming forum I frequent has been that it was Nintendo that wasn't ready for online play. And apparently they still aren't. The friend code system was annoying enough on the DS.[/quote]
Double Dash used the broadband adapter, and it is definitely first party.
Posted 18 Jan 2007 at 11:44pm #
[quote comment="38750"]Double Dash used the broadband adapter, and it is definitely first party.[/quote]
No, it didn't really. Double Dash was far and away NOT an online game in any real definition of the word.
Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 8:48pm #
I don't understand.
Both my Friend and I are online, Connect24 enabled and both are browsing the Internet successfully. Problem is that even though we both have Registered each others Wii we cant send messages to each other. I am not quite sure what I am missing cause I can't find a single thing on the Web that gives me ideas on things to try.
Any help would be appreciated. Thank You
Posted 14 Mar 2007 at 10:02pm #
Since the Wiimote is a Bluetooth device, maybe we'll see a Bluetooth keyboard. Do you really want a USB cable running across your living room?
I wish there was an option to add the person's console number to the addressbook directly from the message instead of having to close the message and type it in.