[insert obligatory crapass Wii pun]

Everyone seems to be doing something painfully interesting around here lately. Editors and cameramen getting shipped all over the map. Leipzig, Tokyo, Seattle, New York, etc. My biggest field assignment this year was Dallas. Non-stop thrill ride my life is. It's weird being the only person at a desk in 1UP's nexus of hate. When Luke, Mielke, and Jeremy are all gone the river of pink slime normally running under this part of the office slows to a trickle.

Putting my infantile feelings of exclusion aside for a moment, there's been an absolute blitz of news coming out of New York today. The biggest deal probably being the Wii's $250 price point. Yeah, that's a whopping $50 more than most of our guesses. There's a certain amount of fanboy outrage going around about that. I can't really understand it, myself.

The only foothold I can see for any kind of pissed off stance is that the Japanese price will be 25k yen. That's slightly less than ours, and they don't have the Wii Sports pack-in game. Maybe there's some slightly justified bitchery in wanting to pay less and pick out your own game, but honestly, if ever there were a system that needed a pack-in, it's this one. There are bound to be a lot of early third party games that are either just clueless as to what to do with that weird damn controller, or halfassed ports with an equally halfassed use of the wii-mote uncomfortably crammed in sideways. Having a pack-in that showcases the thing will mean that even uninformed consumers will have at least one game that actually shows what the thing is good for.

Of course, any bitchery about an unwanted pack-in is kind of undermined by the fact that the pack-in game really can't be adding much to the cost. This isn't like the unneeded blu-ray thing that costs a fortune. Physically producing the discs costs, what? A nickel? The development costs of the game don't seem to matter in this case, either.

So yeah, fifty bucks. Not a big deal. If anything it'll probably help to push the thing just over that line of consumer perception from "Toy" to "Serious" Electronic Entertainment Device Thingo.

Hell, I think from here on we should define "Wii" as a new unit of currency equal to $250 dollars. "How much is a PS3?" "2.4 Wiis." "Shit. Can you spot me a Wii for the weekend? I'll pay you back Monday."

Meanwhile, I had a chance to chatter with Ken Levine about Bioshock. He's a clever son of a bitch, and Bioshock is one of four games I've been seriously looking forward to, the others being Defcon, Spore and maybe Portal.

Speaking of, it looks like someone's kind-of-sort-of beat Valve to the punch on that one. Something to keep an eye on if you can't wait for, you know, Portal.