Wii Wins Popular Science “Grand Award”

U.S. science and technology magazine Popular Science has given the new Wii console a grand award in its annual Best of What’s New award event. The magazine, founded in 1872, uses ten separate categories for its grand award, with other winners this year including the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 in the Automotive category and e-book reader Sony Reader PRS-500 in the Gadgets category. The Wii won in the category of Home Entertainment, beating other products such as the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray disc player and Hitachi 37HLX99 LCD HDTV. The PlayStation 3 was not included in this year’s nominations. The explanation for the Wii’s award, according to the magazine’s website, is as follows: “Remember when videogames were fun? When the controllers had only a couple buttons and you didn’t have to spend an hour learning the seven-step finger dance for ‘walk?’ Nintendo does, so it took a step back, looked at its superpowered competitors, and took a totally different path with its new console, Wii.“ The magazine’s Innovation of the Year award went to the Bostitch Hurriquake nail, winner in the home tech grand award category.