I remembered when I was a little boy, my bro went to Singapore to accompany my mum for an operation. When he was back, he brought along a Nintendo game console, and it was a console that I had never seen before.

I had played Atari a couple of times at a friend’s place, and we were already jumping around shaking the joystick and pressing the red hot button enthusiatically. But Nintendo had a different game controller, instead of Joystick, it has a “plus” button with two red hot buttons. Soon both of us were glued to the TV, playing Mario Bros days and nights, and soon also my friends, my brother’s friends, and our neigbour’s kids stormed our house joining the fun.

After the Nintendo wave, Sega came, Sony introduced Play Station, and Microsoft joined the game-console market with XBox, leaving Nintendo trailing behind Sony and also behind the new kid-in-the-block, Microsoft. But not now, if you are like me, a blog sucker that has been reading blogs all over the places, Nintendo has made a super-hero-style come back, it introduced Wii (pronounced ‘we’), just like the old days, Nintendo is creating a big BUZZ in the game-console market again.

What’s so different about Wii is the game controller. Nintendo has revolutionised the game controller into something that we have never ever thought before, a short and fat wand with a trigger and a tv remote-controller look a like, called Nunchuk Controller. Look can be deceiving, the controller is also packed with laser pointer and motion sensor.

Playing games will never be the same again. Based on the experience of Time magazine reporter, Lev Grossman, if you want to swing a sword, just swing the controller, if you want to fire a gun, just aim the wand and pull the trigger, to play tennis, just swing your wand, as if you are swinging your racket. I think this is FUN!!!

Wii is a revolutionary game console, but what drives Wii is what we all should learn. Microsoft and Sony are racing to produce a better and faster console, better graphics and better online service. But, Nintendo was looking at another problem, how to turn non-gamers into gamers.

There is a large gap of statistics between gamers and non-gamers. Non-gamers mostly find that the current game controllers are too complicated to operate. So Wii is going to change that, with the new revolutionary controller, Nintendo is not only attracting the gamers, but also tapping the unreached, the non-gamers, and their cash registers are expected to be busy ringing again.

Similar with Wii, competition in the web development is not about racing for faster server, better content, better graphics. Simply, it should be about how to improve the user experience. How to make the web simpler, more intuitive, and more fun to use. When your web site/application is able to attract not only the current users, but also the previously unreached users, that is what I think the spirit of Web 2.0.