Wii Wrist Straps

Hot on the heels of some complaints from Wii owners that their wrist straps broke as they were playing -- sometimes resulting in damaged hardware or worse, personal injuries -- Nintendo today announced that it is improving the quality of its strap for future controllers.

The thickness of the Wii wrist strap was initially set at 0.6 millimeters. However, all future versions of the controller, whether packed with the console or sold separately, will feature thicker 1-millimeter wrist straps.

Nintendo Co. Ltd. out of Japan is offering users who bought original Wii consoles and controllers the option to exchange their wrist straps for free. The company is also stressing that the wrist strap is designed as a secondary safety device and that users should not let go of the controller when they are playing Wii software.

It is not yet known if Nintendo of America, Europe and Australia will follow suit, but we expect that all three will make similar announcements in the near future.

Stay tuned for more.