It’s one of those weird Tinker Gnome idiotisms. (Did I just make up a word?) Why have one highly functional device when you can add more bells and whistles to defeat its purpose?

And so we have “Ron” Tajima of Japan who turns his completely automated robotic floor vacuum Roomba into a manually controlled unthinking robot driven by a Wii Fit.

Functional? No, not really. But hey, who cares? When it’s geek enough, you hardly need any reason to do it. Because sometimes in life you just have to have a little fun.

The Nintendo Wii. The only console to not pretend to be otherwise. The price is low. The performance capabilities don’t try to compete with up-to-date computers. The console isn’t designed to do anything more special than play games. There is no media player to speak of. The complexity isn’t there. All-in-all, it’s simply about having fun. No more. No less.

So how is this seemingly insignificant device at its lower price point then competing with the biggies like Microsoft’s XBox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3?

It’s totally kicking asterisk!

Clearly Nintendo knows something that Microsoft and Sony don’t. With the introduction of the Wii Fit sales continue to soar for Nintendo. Why? What is it about the little Wii that makes it so much more desirable than the other consoles?

Well, price for starters. I mean, geeze. Have you seen the price of a Playstation 3 with all of the bells and whistles? If it weren’t for being such an awesome steal as a Blue-Ray movie disk player, it’d be hard to justify. And the XBox 360 that isn’t even that? Meh!

Nintendo knows one simple truth. Eye candy is nice and all, but like any sugar rush, it only lasts so long. It’s not the gimmicks that matter. It’s the fun. And it’s providing that fun at an affordable price. Way back when, before 3D acceleration hardware even existed, games were still fun. You don’t need the top of the line anything to make a fun game. You just need people with the heart to look past the pixels on the screen and into the minds and hearts of the player. Something that Nintendo has always understood.