- November 19, $250, one color, one configuration

Yes. The date is no surprise (that's a Sunday, so is that actually the shipping date? Or are we talking a Saturday night midnight launch?): holiday shopping season. And this is announced just as Sony delays the PS3 in Europe and seems treacherously close to delaying everywhere, again. The price seems a little high since, as recent as last week, we were hearing rumors of a $150 price point... but there's enough new promises coming later that seem to justify it. And even at $250, it's still significantly cheaper than the 360 and the PS3, plus it includes debateably better built-in features.

I'm surprised about the color, since Nintendo has chosen to cherish the cool cachet of crapping out a collection of coordinating cases. I'm sure we'll see color choices by this time next year, and not just in Japan.

The one configuration is super-important, since both Sony and Microsoft have confused the issue with differently-abled editions on the racks. Pro gamers like you and me know that the "core" versions are crippled and priced accordingly to fool casual buyers and the odd gift-shopping grandma... but nobody else knows that, so you end up with people buying the core version, unpacking it and realizing they didn't get what they thought they were getting... or store shelves overflowing with core systems and not a single full version to be found. It was a stupid idea, and the only reason the other guys did it was so they could squeeze out a million more units at a reduced cost and pump up their market share. It wasn't about choice. It's about inflating their sell-throughs so the press releases all sound better.

Here's hoping that the only Wii multiples are based on color and bundled games. Keep the hardware uniform.

Apparently, there's no DVD playback. Huh. I guess I don't care, since my PS2 is not going anywhere any time soon. Still, seems like that should have been an easy thing to include. I think my friggin' phone plays DVD these days.

Region free. Awesome. No more fear of importing! (EDIT: Booo! They backed off on this!)

- Wii Sports included, along with one remote and one nunchuk

The inclusion of a game - which NOBODY does anymore - helps to assuage the price somewhat. Although let's be honest, in the whole storied history of video games, there's very few launch titles that end up being worthy of full price six months on. Wii Sports would not have been worth $50 on the racks (which, Nintendo further announced, will be the standard pricing for all first-party prices). Wii Sports is a tech demo designed to show off the new bizarre hardware. It makes perfect sense to include it. Now people will consider it an awesome "free" bonus and be less likely to dump all over it.

Because, it's not going to be that cool.

I do have to laugh at the big "WII SPORTS INCLUDED" on the box, because it kinda nicely attacks several Nintendo weak spots in one. First, included game: nice bonus that nobody else is doing without waiting half a year for the first launch game to drop in price. Second, "sports." Nintendo usually is not thought of as the place to go for sports games, so this sort of looks like Nintendo making an effort. There are people out there who solely play sports video games. I think those people are sadly shortsighted and possibly maladjusted, but they do exist. Just maybe this box would encourage them to branch out and buy a Wii. I doubt it, but it's probably a better marketing bone to throw than "WARIO WARE INCLUDED," even though that's what I would prefer.

There's no "standard controller" included, just the remote + nunchuk. New standards will be sold separately, but regular GameCube controllers will work on the Wii (will WaveBirds work?), so if you want that, those damn things are currently wallpapering your EB. Extra remotes will go for $40 and extra nunchuks will be $20, which is way too pricey. I'm guessing that all of the Wii Sports crap won't require the nunchuk, but to fully enjoy Nintendo's Revolution, you're going to want another $40 remote for 2P. At least everything is wireless.

- Launch day first party games: Zelda: Twilight Princess, Excite Truck and (obviously) Wii Sports

You know, I'm pretty much waiting to see how the Wii reviews go for Twilight Princess. I don't doubt that Nintendo will make fun games that work with the remote... but I'm skeptical of them taking an existing title in development and hitting it with the Wii stick. I mean, the first round of stylus-based DS ports were lousy (Super Mario 64DS, boooooo), but now they know what they're doing. I'm perfectly willing to wait for the GameCube version of Twilight Princess.

And I'm kinda ticked whenever I hear somebody talk about how awesome it is that we're getting a Zelda title at launch. That's only true because they delayed the hell out of it. We were supposed to have Twilight Princess for holiday 2005, man.

I have no interest in Excite Truck. Had they turned it into a Mario title, I would have considered it. At least then I'd be getting the next-gen predictably silly hijinks I crave.

I'm in for Trauma Center, that's my launch title.

- Wii Channels

This is where the unexpected stuff starts slipping in, and where my jaw started dropping at the sheer surprise of it all. The "channels" concept continues the metaphor of the remote. If you want to play whatever game is in the drive, you boot up and select channel #1. If you want to buy/download a new game, you go to that channel (which then shows up as it's own channel button - and Reggie said you get to keep the game "forever," so that seems to mean that the retro games will still as long as you own the thing.) Nintendo is counting on having multiple channels ready to go at launch, including news and weather channels! Which, I'll assume, run sort of like leeching somebody's RSS feed. Wasn't that an After Dark screensaver that did that, once upon a time before the internet existed? Kotaku video here.

They priced the retro downloads at $5 for NES games, $8 for SNES, and $10 for N64. This is amazingly close to my prediction back when the "virtual console" was being market-tested. I stand by my $3/5/10 model, however. Didn't mention pricing for Genesis and Turbo-GRFSHPHXHCCXXX games. I'm a little bit interested in buying Toe Jam & Earl, even though I have a perfectly fine working copy about nine feet behind me.

You pay with "Wii Points," which I hate. Anything that attempts to turn actual money into a fanciful harmless-sounding buzzword is inherently obnoxious and dangerous for unmonitored kids and others with a poor grasp on their expenditures. 500 Wii Points = $5, so they might as well call it what it is: yen.

The photo channel instantly reads pictures off your digital camera's SD card (hey! I have one of those!), and it looks sort of like iPhoto without the awful load times. You can produce simple slideshows, and it displays movies as well. There is also some intriguing little fun games hidden here, which would let you doodle on your photos or play sliding puzzle games with them. I'm thinking Clark is going to dig the hell out of that. Virtual scribbling!

Another channel lets you leave messages for other Wii owners (or to a PC or cell phone!), since the Wii is "always on" once you get it on your WiFi or your ethernet. This feature is the missing link that will let friends easily set up DS online games. Although for Wii titles, I'd like something more Xbox Live-esque, where you can instantly talk to another Live friend no matter what they're doing and no matter what you're doing. No mention of that today. I also lust over the 360's strange-o-rama automatic weblogging feature, incidentally.

There will also be a web browser channel (Opera, just like the DS version), but it will be a separate purchase. Although it would be a huge feature for the Wii, it's easy to see why they avoided including it in the box. Parents would not care overmuch for their kids' new Nintendo sporting a hidden web browser.

Oh, have I been perfectly clear that all this wonky WiFi stuff won't cost users a damn thing? No monthly cost! NINTENDO'S TEH JUGGERNAUT, BITCH!

- The Mii Channel

This one is going to be completely divisive among gamers. Exactly half of us are going to gush all over it, because of the extreme cuteness and potential hilarity of it. The remaining half will instantly hate it for the same reason.

Guess where I sit.*

The deal is that you make a little avatar that (can) look like you. Or several of them. And they dap around the Mii screen like virtual pets. The Mii-creation process looks like a do-it-yourself Animal Crossing avatar. The picture to the right shows the Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction era) Mii they made at the show, which I'm sure was well-planned in advance even though the presenter tries to make it seem off the cuff. Kotaku's video here.

The Miis will be used by games that have a need for silly low-poly customizable avatars. Like Wii Sports, FTW.

Miis (is that the proper plural?) can also be contained in your remote, so you can take them to visit your pals with their own Wii. And I think you dupe them so your Mii can appear on other machines. Presumably, this means the remotes can contain other information that would tag along with the Mii... like control preferences, high scores, maybe even your Friend Codes.

*The former!

All in all, a typical Nintendo announcement: nothing like what you wanted (we all wanted Xbox Live with a less irritating design) but tons of stuff you could never have predicted. While Sony and Microsoft are beating each other senseless with horsepower arguments ironically aimed at the Hot Topic Basement Nerd crowd, Nintendo is going to sneak in the damn back door and surprise everyone with a lifestyle device that appeals to people with lives.