But if none of those titles appeal to you, third-party publishers are offering plenty of alternative game titles to choose from. At launch Activision is offering Call of Duty 3, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam; Atari is delivering Dragon Ball Z Budokai: Tenkaichi 2; Atlus is offering Trauma Center: Second Opinion; EA is offering Madden NFL 07 and Need for Speed: Carbon; Midway is offering The Ant Bully, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Happy Feet and Rampage: Total Destruction; Sega is offering Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz; THQ is delivering Avatar: The Last Airbender, Barnyard; Cars, and SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab; and Ubisoft is delivering Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII, Far Cry: Vengeance, GT Pro Series, Monster 4x4: World Circuit, Open Season, Rayman: Raving Rabbids, RED STEEL, and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent. A ton of other games will be available by the end of 2006 from both Nintendo and it's third-party partners.

Final Thoughts

The Nintendo Wii has a lot going for it at launch. It has some compelling (though limited) first-party game content that fans will buy the system for, a unique controller that plays like nothing on the market, downloadable content, a commerce system built in, a fairly low price-point and a lot of units hitting retail at launch - perhaps when it's all said and done that latter fact may be the most important of all. It will be interesting to see who is on top at the end of 2007, but for now we can all bask in the glory of yet another next-generation toy that will entertain us beyond measure.