Wired's GeekDad recently had quite an interesting experience with Nintendo's tech support line, regarding the functionality (or lack thereof) of his Wii remote. After opening up an xmas Wii for his kids and putting the thing to work for a while, the motion detection on one of the remotes went dead.
Replacing the batteries, re-synching, and resetting the remote yielded no breakthroughs with the problem, so the GeekDad sucked it up and gave Nintedo a call. The conversation went a little something like this:
Friendly Nintendo Help Desk Lady: "Okay - I want you to take the remote, button side down and smack it into the palm of your hand two or three times."
Russ: "You've got to be kidding"
Friendly Nintendo Help Desk Lady: "No sir, do it hard enough that I can hear it across the phone line but not hard enough to damage the remote"
Russ: "You're sure?"
Friendly Nintendo Help Desk Lady: "Yes, sir."
Guess what...it worked! Seems the accelerometer must have been stuck or something.
So just remember, my dear GN readers, if your Wii becomes limp, just smack it around a little bit. It will be working in no time!
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If it was akin to MS tech support-
"I don't know what you're talking about, our controllers have no motion-detecting functionality..."
"...did you try buying a new console?"
"you better just send us money. that'll fix it."
"...what was the problem again?"
LOL!!! thats frigin hilarious.
lulz at you rtanger
It seems to make sense. Kind of.
My friend returned his 360 within warranty and when tracking its return found it had been sent to an address basically at the other end of England. He was so annoyed that he could barely talk about anything else. After making a few calls he received a new 360 within the week.
That's good to know!
No problem, I've thrown my wiimotes across the room many times so ithey are probably immune to this sort of thing XD
where did you get the cover in that picture??? It makes the wii remote look so much more retro. I wish I had one of those things..... >:D
I think they come with the wii, Big. My sister got a wii a couple months ago and it has that wii remote cover on it.
If you got a Wii before they packaged them with the remote covers you can get them for free from Nintendo.