Gadgetory

hi there I'm Scott's time with C net and this year is the Wii mini not the Wii U if you're shopping this holiday season and you see a little box like this and it says it's a me.we mini now you're going to know what it entails because while it seems like a potentially great holiday buy it's hundred dollars and it comes with Mario Kart Wii comes with a Wii Remote Plus comes with the nunchuck and the system well you add that up the Mario Cart and the remote and the nunchuck actually sell for nearly $90 now and a lot of sites I've looked at so maybe that means that this is basically free or ten dollars so that may sound like a great deal but consider this the Wii mini doesn't go online I'm going to let that sink in for a moment it doesn't go online no there's no Wi-Fi connectivity no Ethernet here maybe that's a parent's dream but I'll tell you two reasons it's a big problem one you can't go online and play with friends now maybe the Wii wasn't a great online experience but Mario Kart certainly is in fact it's the best online playable racing game that's out there and you can't do that with the Wii mini the second thing and this is a really disappointing one is that there are a lot of great online downloadable games on the Wii Shop there are Virtual Console games all your cool NES Super NES all those little retro five-dollar games that you want to play a lot of indie games guess what you can't download and play them on this system what you can play are all the Wii disc games now there are a really good selection of wee disc games out there there are a lot that you may not even realize we're there and you can get them for a song and use game shops and you know you get all the Mario games in the Zelda games and and Wii Sports sure but consider the fact that there are Wiis that are still out there that cost about as much as this and there are bundles that are just a few dollars more that include the online connectivity and still have games plus if you want to think about the fact that you're there's a new Wii U that's out there that's as better graphics and can play Wii games and uses the Wii remotes so it's backwards compatible system yes that costs a lot more and the Wii U is not really a perfect console yet but it's a tempting and maybe take that money and put it towards one of those that has video services like Amazon and Netflix because again also you can't use Netflix with this so that's a third thing you can't use any video streaming services that's a lot of stuff that you're not getting in the package now a family that might consider this the OTT lack of online a plus well then have at it if you're we you know died in a fire and you've got a lot of games and you want to find a way to get play all those games you don't want to spend a lot and you don't have Mario Kart you want an extra controller well then okay but I've considered that online a huge downside and there's one other thing this connects with a built-in RCA cable RCA that technology I have not seen in a long time and it produces video quality like this really really fuzzy not the ideal way to play games so you have to buy one of those cables too which takes away from the value proposition in the wii mini now Nintendo did budget right with the Nintendo 2ds that thing packs all the features of the 3ds and cost less the Wii mini is the same size pretty much as a Wii and has fewer features that's not the way I go with a budget gaming console I'm Scott Stein and that's a look the disappointing Wiener