Looking at its size, shape, white wrist strap and B-button on the bottom, it's easy to compare the Stix with the Wiimote, the wireless controller for the popular Nintendo gaming console. Except the Stix is for your PC.
The Stix comes from Playhut Inc., a toy company that also makes cute little indoor tents for kids. The Stix 200 remote, which began selling for $49.99 at Target, Costco and other retailers this week, promises to redefine the PC and online gaming experience with the motion-sensing controller.
A stab at some of the 2D casual games available on Sphere, the game portal of Playhut subsidiary GoLive2, offers a bit of novelty and fun, though nothing as exciting as scoring that first strike in Wii bowling.
For those who feel constrained by 2D games and want to do more than shake their Stix left and right, the company plans to release the Stix 400 for $59.99 in October (though it's already on sale on Amazon.com for a higher price.) The Stix 400 is compatible with 3D games and sounds more promising.
Wowbotz Bomb Battle, a Pong-like game but with shields and bombs, is as simple as the 1970s arcade classic, with players moving their Stix up and down in front of the monitor to hit a bomb back and forth with their opponent.
Kuttiez Wishing Well lets your little witch character move left and right as well as up and down as you fall down a seemingly endless well. The object is to light up Jack-o-lanterns as you fall while avoiding flying ghosts.
Stix can work with any Web-based game, so long as either the player or the folks at GoLive2 map out the controls to translate them from the keyboard to the Stix remote. But it doesn't always work the other way around: To play Bomb Battle, for example, you'll need Stix.
The Wii it isn't, but for the price of a tank of gas for an SUV it might give your wrists a welcome break from playing keyboard-and-mouse computer games.
Of course, if you already have a Wii you can always sync your Wiimote to your PC through Bluetooth and be done with it.