Now I'm going to talk about the WaveBird.

Let me start off by saying that I totally dig on the WaveBird. I've got two of them connected and it is so liberating to not have to deal with those damn wires any more. The dog can't trip on non-existant wires, and I can make myself a sandwich in the kitchen and keep advancing dialogue or navigating menus.

However, the WaveBird suffers from a huge design flaw. I do not speak here of the lack of a rumble function. I can understand the logic behind exluding that. The Wavebird only sends signals, it does not receive feedback from the GameCube. I speak instead of the lack of an auto-off function on the Wavebird.

From the average person's interaction with both remote controls and with video game controllers, nowhere is there a precendent set for a power switch. The average person does not think, "Oh, I need to turn off my controller!" Thus, the WaveBird is often left on. This drains the batteries and is bad. In fact, the WaveBird should not have a power switch at all, instead only powering on when it is used, and then auto powering off when not in use. Even if the only thing that is draining the battery when it's on and not in use is the little LED on the front, that's too much.

Nintendo has a funny habit of leaving one huge design flaw in each one of their products. No auto-shutoff on the Wavebird, small discs on the GameCube, no headphone jack on the GameBoy Advance SP, and don't even get me started on the development tools I have to use. The big huge "Dolphin" GameCube debug kit has the cartridge slot on the front, the controller ports on the front, and all the debug buttons on the front, but the memory card slots are in the back with the networks cable ports and power cord! Why? The memory card emulator uses dip switches, so I have to poke around in this little space with a pen or a paperclip. Hello Nintendo, humans have to use these things! Would it kill you to put some finger-sized switches on it?

Sigh, I guess each major console manufacturer makes mistakes, though. Like the size and shape of the Xbox (Why is the top curved? Do they not realize that most gamers are innate stackers?) and its controllers (though S-controllers are standard now), or the PS2's tendency to... y'know... break.