OK - so first off, i'm as guilty as many for giving the Wii negativity.

As a gamer since the days of 16k spectrums and Commodore 16s, I consider myself an avid gamer and real champion of the hobby - recommending it to anyone and everyone I come across. This means that I do, at most times unnoticable to me, get on my "high horse" and believe that my opinion on games (to non-gamers at the very least) is what counts, and people should listen to me.

Well I'm wrong. And I'm here right now to admit and realise that (whether I stop doing it is another thing, but at least now I'm aware).

Now I'm going to go way off subject a second here before swinging back... take another media - music is the best example for me here. I've always liked "alternative" music, and used to get ribbed all the time by the many who liked mainstream music. Essentially, their opinion was that the music I listened to was crap - my argument against this was, at the end of the day, millions of people bought and listened to this same music, even though it wasn't mainstream. So it may not sell as much as others, but the music cannot be crap, because millions of people buy it. If no-one at all bought it, then I could concede that it would be rubbish, but the mere fact that it has an audience means that many people enjoy it.

Of course, personal opinions always are valid - to you at least. But to apply them to a whole genre of something you don't like and then brand it as crap is actually very presumptious and childish and a clear sign of elevating your opinion above others.

Well, I'd believed in that mantra for years - specific to music. And then I realised something - I've made both negative and positive comments about the Wii (mostly negative) and was branding the console as rubbish just because I personally didn't find a great number of decent titles on it. Why was I having this double standard? Had my years of gaming shielded my opinionated soul from myself?

I've realised that for this very fundamental reason - I.E. just because I don't like something very much - that I have no right at all to brand the Wii as rubbish. I can think it to myself all I like, and I can even express it as an opinion, but what I (and countless others of us gamers) do is tend to rip it apart and give my opinion about it, like it's some sort of gaming gospel of truth. Well it's not. I'm a humble guy, and actually, although I'm a very knowledgeable and avid gamer, I have lots of gamer friends who's gaming knowledge and geekiness knows no bounds compared to mine, so actually, my opinions are nowhere near as valid as my initial reactions would have me believe.

For the Wii specifically, the main argument for it being a great console is so very, very clear. First off - look at how many people have bought it. Yes, even I have said myself that sales figures don't necessarily mean a great product - i've used the analogy of explaining how corporate boy bands sit at the top of the charts.... yes, they sell, but anyone in the music biz and in the know, knows that they're awful and do not deserve to be at the top... so does that apply to Nintendo? Some may say yes, but I don't fully agree with that...

There are manyWii games thatI, and you other discerning gamers, would call absolutely rubbish. I mean, these games flood all platforms these days, but the Wii seems to be the home for more of them at the moment. You know the games - "Hamsterz" or "My Boutique" or "My Badger Hospital" etc etc, those games that you've never heard of in development, but they seem to even have TV adverts for them... and they sell like crazy too. Looping back to my earlier comments - these games clearly have an audience. I'm not presumptious enough to assume that everyone buying one of these games will like it and think it was awesome (lets face it, many are presents and are just bought for someone else), but these games continue to sell, so there must be a lot of people out there who enjoy them. These same people are now the "alternative" music fans, like I was, and I'm one of the mainstream, musically aware, on-his-highhorse know it alls that scoffs at them for what they like.

Well it needs to stop. For gaming to move forward and truly become what we have all said we want from the start - for everyone, with wide acceptance and ceased media frenzy on violent titles - then we all need to realise that our little corner of gaming that has been pre-reserved for the "hardcore" gamers (I hate that phrase, but it works for this purpose) is not just ours, it's for everyone. And no matter how crap you may think "Hannah Montana" is, somewhere out there are many, many gamers playing that, loving it, getting a kick out of it - and most importantly, getting involved with and enjoying games. That's a good thing.

My second argument for why the Wii is a great console is this. ALL of us have a great console from our past - mostly childhood - that gets remembered with a certain rose tintedness. You go back and play about 75% of the games on it you thought were awesome at the time, and you'll find you were wrong, but there's still those 25% of games that just never get old. Now, in 20 years time, when the kids who got a Wii in recent years are looking back - they'll remember the Wii. They'll remember all those classic awesome games they played, and no matter how rubbish those games actually were - to them, they'll always be important. And no-one can take that away from any games console. There will be millions and millions of people in years time looking back at the Wii with serious rose tinted spectacles, because for them it was part of their childhood, or their first few steps into gaming.

My final argument for why the Wii is a great console is accessibility. The great controller debate... I myself have also been guilty of this. How many times have we read that perhaps games were not accessible to people because of a complicated game controller? And then how many times have we, as gamers, laughed at this.... "of course it's not difficult to use a controller!!".... yeah, because we use them every day. I got my first real example of this and it was stark obvious, when my wife started picking up gaming herself afew years ago.

She has a gaming past - she played a few master system and SNES games when she was little, so she was more than familiar with the usual 8way digipad and a few buttons to press. But when she came to pick up a "modern" game (it was Munch's Oddysee on Xbox), the analogue sticks and the 3D field caused massive problems for her at first.... she just couldn't grasp the 3D concept of pushing up to go "into" the screen, and down to come "out of" the screen. The 2nd analogue stick especially confused her. It took her a long time to get used to moving her right thumb between buttons and a 2nd stick, but she eventually got it. I could easily see how this could put someone off who gave it a try, but didn't have the inclination to put up with the frustration of the controls.

Fast forward about a year, and the Wii comes out. She picked up the controller and with zero direction from me was doing anything and everything the Wii can do. Particularly Animal Crossing, she spends hours a day on it, and my Mrs never used to game when I was out of the house, she would always wait for me to come home and set stuff up for her. The Wii has completely removed the technofear, and sheis now a fully fledged gamer, probably putting more hours in than even I do(!)

So how can the Wii be bad, if it gets even my wife to game (not to mention the rest of my family - mums, dads, grandparents, but that's another story), and now we happily sit together playing our respective games? They're totally different games, and I don't like her games any more than she would like to play the ones I like, but the important thing is we're gaming together, and the stigma surrounding the games taking up all my own time is now gone. We're gaming united, so to speak.

At the end of the day, the proof of the pudding will be in a few years time, when the Wii will be remembered very fondly by countless millions of people who bought it. And that's what counts.

So next time you feel like bashing the Wii - remember the above. It IS a great console, I just don't personally like it very much myself - it's capabilities and audience speaks for itself though.