The system is not quite as pure as the previous description would lead you to believe. First of all, the gyroscopes alone do not provide the accuracy needed to play certain games. A sensor, or "control strip" must be placed on the user's television to monitor the position of the controller. Secondly, in many games you need the ability to aim and control more than one thing at a time. For example, in any first-person-shooter game, you will want to shoot while running. This means that you must be able to aim the gun and simultaneously move your character. The Nintendo Wii system has two ways to handle this problem.

A Nunchuk analog unit is attached to the Wii controller.

Photo courtesy Nintendo of America, Inc.
Here, a Nunchuk analog unit is attached to the controller. Thanks to an on-board accelerometer, the Nunchuk is also motion sensitive.

The preferred way is to attach a separate joystick pod, or Nunchuk, to the controller. You hold the controller in one hand and the joystick in the other. In a first-person shooter game, the controller controls the gun and the joystick controls the running. The second possibility is to add a standard game controller. Speaking of standards, to get the most enjoyment from playing classic games using the Wii's virtual console, Nintendo will be releasing the "Wii Classic Controller," which feels similar to the old SNES game controller. These add-ons attach to the controller using a special socket built into the butt of the controller.

Speaking of attaching stuff -- thanks to Bluetooth technology, the Wii will be able to handle up to four remotes at once. And don't worry that it will get cramped with four folks hovering near the console. That's not necessary. Thanks to the Sensor Bar, as long as a remote is within a 30-foot range of the Wii console, there should be no problem with the wireless signal.

Powering the Wii
To power the Wii, Nintendo has taken an interesting approach. Nintendo has focused on building a console that is "more power-efficient, quieter and faster to start" [Source: IGN].

According to an article on the IGN Web site, Wii runs "on an extension of the Gekko and Flipper architectures that powered GameCube." The "Broadway", Wii's CPU, which is made by IBM, packs 729MHz of power. Wii has 24MB of "main" 1T-SRAM on board and an additional 64MB of "external" 1T-SRAM -- for a grand total of 88MB of RAM [source: IGN].