Anyway let’s start off with the Nintendo Wii. One thing I hate is that people often refer to the Nintendo Wii as the “family” console. Yes okay maybe it is the console which has the most family games on it. What’s wrong with that? Just because it’s a family game it doesn’t mean that you can’t play it alone and have fun. Another thing that annoys me is that some people say that you have to like Mario or Sonic otherwise you won’t like the Nintendo Wii. Mario and Sonic are on the Nintendo Wii but a large proportion of the games do not include them at all. Also there are many “hardcore” games on the Wii with 18+ ratings such as Resident Evil 4 etc. So anyone saying either of those two remarks about the Wii has no idea what they are talking about.

Anyway the Nintendo Wii as a whole is my personal favourite of the three consoles. I think that the Wii will win with style and how unique it is. The other two consoles adopt the button smashing controller controls, while the Wii uses a wii remote and/or nunchuk. Also the Wii has to be the friendliest console for you body. You actually get exercise playing on the Wii (and no exercising your fingers on the other consoles doesn’t count!). I personally would rather swing the wii remote like a racquet to play tennis than press a button on a controller. It gets you more into the game. The Wii also has many options with the Internet Channel, Wii Shop channel and many others. Also the Wii out of the other two consoles has the best selling game. Wii Sports has sold 21.56 million units as of 31st March 2008! While the Xbox 360 game “Halo 3” has sold 8.1 million and the PS3 game “Motorstorm” has sold 3.31 million. Now of course we have to take into consideration that the games release dates are different. Halo 3’s first release date was on 25th September 2007. Motorstorm was released on 6th March 2007 and Wii Sports on 19th November 2007. So technically it should be wii sports first then Motorstorm and then halo 3. However we also must remember that Wii Sports is sold with the Wii Console. So you should take the next best selling game “Wii Play”. It was released on the 2nd December 2006 and has sold 11.51 million units! So still that is nearly double Halo 3’s sold units.

There are of course down sides to the console. The biggest downside for the Nintendo Wii is unfortunately the graphics. Both the PS3 and Xbox 360 have brilliant graphics while the Wii does not. Some games more than others you can see how bad the graphics are but they aren’t too bad. They are still okay. Also the Wii has the lowest memory so you either delete games or get a SD card. I think that the Wii is the better console but I’m sure you won’t agree with me if you are a hardcore gamer!

Moving on then, this time to the Playstation 3. The PS3’s graphics are the better of the Wii’s and in my opinion slightly (ever so slightly) better to the Xbox 360’s. The main focus a lot of people get when buying the PS3 is the extra bonus of the blu-ray player. One thing that stops a lot of people buying the PS3 however is the price. They think “WOW too high!” I thought that as well, especially when it first came out, however the price has been lowered now so all is good. What you have to remember is that a blu-ray player alone is about the same price as the PS3 alone so technically speaking you are getting the PS3 for half price.

Also this “blu-ray” technology gives the PS3 an advantage in many things. For example it doesn’t take a genius to release that games are getting bigger, which means that more space is needed to put games on. Soon for some games on the Xbox 360 you will need 2 or more discs to put games on just like the computer. However because of the blu-ray player in the PS3 games will quite happily and easily fit onto one disc. I think a lot of people weren’t ready for the PS3 when it came up, and many people are starting to warm up to it now.

The PS3 is generally nicknamed “the console for the future” why, because in most things it is generally ahead of the other two seventh-generation consoles. One massive advantage the PS3 has over the Xbox 360 is that you pay nothing to play online, it’s free! While with the Xbox 360 of course you pay like £40 a year. Also the PS3 online system is getting better, especially with the introduction of the Playstation home.

There isn’t that much more to say for the PS3, apart from that the next couple of years it will probably dominate the Xbox 360, with all new games etc coming out the PS3 is getting better and better each passing day.

Now onto the Xbox 360. Like the PS3 it has brilliant HD graphics and there is also a fair amount of memory, though not as much as the PS3’s. The Xbox 360 is host to one of my favourite games of all time: “Halo 3”. However I know that it is not worth buying a console for one game so you have to look at the rest of the other things that the Xbox 360 has to offer.

The Xbox 360 is the first seventh generation console to be released which was probably why it had the lead in sales coming out a year or two before the Wii and the PS3. There are 3 different versions of the Xbox 360: Arcade, Pro and Elite. Arcade I must say is completely rubbish, there is hardly any memory on their at all! You will probably play 1 or 2 games before the memory is used up. The Pro or premium as it is also called is the standard Xbox 360 with 60 GB of space and a lot more features. Then there is the Elite version which has 120 GB of space and even more features.

There are many advantages of the Xbox 360 one of these being that the console has the most games on to date. The Xbox network is also wicked, although you do have to pay for it. The controls for the Xbox 360 are okay and again I have to mention the graphics are brilliant. However from there everything goes downhill, except of course the price: they have even managed to match the Nintendo Wii however I think that they are trying too hard.

The one thing that puts me and other people of the Xbox 360 is the very short life span. The Xbox 360 has the highest liability to crash. They even have a name for it! It is called the ring of death and when you get 3 red rings on your console your history. It can even happen with the first 6 months! An image of the ring of death is below!

I think overall each console has its highs and lows. The Wii is the best console for fun unique games as long as you don’t mind the graphics. The PS3 is the joint best for graphics and a variety of other things such as games etc. The Xbox 360 is also joint best for graphics and has the most games. If I had to put these consoles in order then I would put the Nintendo Wii and the PS3 in joint first with the Xbox 360 trailing in last. Sorry to all you Xbox 360 fans out there but I just believe the other two consoles to be slightly better than the Xbox 360.

So yea the Nintendo Wii has the worst graphics of the bunch. But not everything is about graphics. Is someone comes up to me and tells me “I’m not buying a Nintendo Wii because it’s a family console”; well if you believe that you couldn’t be more wrong! Okay the Nintendo Wii probably does have the most family-based games on it, but it still has a lot of hardcore games such as Resident Evil 4 etc.

In my opinion if I was given the choice of which console to buy I would still buy the Nintendo Wii because it is better than the other two consoles. Now I won’t go on about the Nintendo Wii is miles above the other two consoles because its not (well maybe the Xbox). But it still is better whether you be a family based gamer or a hardcore gamer. The controls are unique and really make you think you are in control of the game a lot better. I mean come on; waving a wii remote like a lightsaber is a whole lot better than tapping a button.

The Nintendo Wii has even more features now then it did ½ a year ago. The virtual console has improved significantly. For everyone who isn’t sure what that is I’ll explain it for you. Nintendo is trying to put all of the best games from as the NES, Super NES all the way up to the Gamecube onto the virtual console. Why? So you can download them and play them on the Wii. A must buy and legend games such as the game that started it all “Super Mario Bros.”, you’d be a fool not to buy it. Oops did I say buy? Yes there is a price but you don’t necessarily have to pay it.

The games on the virtual console are priced in points. 500 points being the lowest and then anything up to … about 1500 points for the more expensive games. Most games on the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) and SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) are 500 points such as Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3 as well as the classic Mario Bros. While Nintendo 64 (the 2nd best console in Nintendo history … the first being the Wii) games such as Mario Kart 64 are 1000 points. The channel also has WiiWare which also features games but these are exclusive and new to the Wii, so you won’t have seen them anywhere else. They are generally more expensive with most being 1000 points.

Okay 500 points cost £3.50 so 1000 cost £7.00 etc. How can you get it free you ask? Well in every Wii or DS game made by Nintendo you should see a little scratch card thingy which has the Club Nintendo Logo on it (yea now you’re wishing you didn’t chuck it away). Anyway the code on that card gives you star points for Club Nintendo. Then guess what? You can exchange 2000 star points for 500 wii points. So technically you can get brilliant games for free!

There are loads more to say about how great the Wii is. One thing would be the brilliant games it has: Mario Kart Wii, Wii Fit and Super Smash Bros. Brawl just to name a few. One good thing about it that tops the Xbox 360 is that it doesn’t have a 1 in 5 chance of breaking down! The Wii simply is the best unique overall console out of the three with the PS3 trailing in second and the Xbox 360 in last.

I would seriously recommend getting a Nintendo Wii if you don’t already have one. After all at only £179.99 it is one of the cheapest consoles out there!

Did you know that the Nintendo Wii is actually the greenest out of the seventh-generation consoles (Xbox 360 & PS3) The PS3 & Xbox 360 used over 10 times the amount of amount of power the Wii uses.

Plus this console is home to the future of video games. Pretty soon we will probably be seeing all consoles using motion sensitivity to give the game a more realistic approach, because it certainly feels that way using a wii remote rather than a dualshock controller or an Xbox 360 controller. The Wii was actually going to be called ‘Revolution’ but because it was going to be in every continent the makers decided to think of a name that would mean the same globally and that word is Wii (meaning ‘we’ or ‘us’) which pretty much sums up that the wii is about playing together etc.

For years now developers, programmers etc have been trying to find a way to get kids off of video games. Why? Because apparently they needed to get more exercise rather than sit down all day playing games, and technically that is true, from any previous game console the only exercise you would be getting is exercising you fingers! So finally Nintendo have managed to merge video game fun with exercise. Most people don’t even notice that their exercising while playing the wii but it’s true. While playing tennis on wii sports for example: you’re rushing around pretending to hit the ball and that is giving you some form of exercise. It may not be as good as jogging up and down the street but it’s definitely a good start.

The top 4 best selling wii games so far are:

1) Wii Sports (No surprises there) with 11.4 million sales!

2) Wii Play with 6.5 million sales

3) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess with 3.8 million sales

4) Mario Party 8 with 2.8 million sales.

You really need to make the most out of the wii channels. Going on to the shop channel online (Broadband connection required) you can download free channels such as ‘the everybody votes channel’ and updates to regular channels like the photo channel. Also on the shop channel you can download (not for free) games that have been on previous Nintendo systems. Such as Mario kart 64 on the Nintendo 64. Games go as far back as NES (Nintendo Entertainment System).

Have you ever turned your Nintendo Wii off and now found that the disc slot flashes blue and the light turns yellow? Well if you have then you must have connected it to the internet as it is on WiiConnect24 which is a online service which is where you get emails from and updates. It is always on hence by the name and will only be off on your console if you switch it off by the mains.

The Wii is classed as the fastest selling UK console beating the Playstation 2 by over 11 weeks! Did you know that the wii has well over 300 games that have been released by the console?

If I was to give a rating to this console I would have to say 9.9/10 it is simply brilliant!