How Wii Is Creaming the Competition

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @05:11AM from the my-favorite-flavour-of-competition dept.

CNN has a report on the Wii's success in the games marketplace right now, referring to their sales dominance as 'creaming the competition'. The article tries to break down exactly why Nintendo's console has sold so successfully, discussing the system's marketing, engineering, and philosophy. "Next, engineers settled on a new approach for the Wii's looks. Just as the DS shunned the Game Boy name to appeal to a broader audience, the Wii would adopt a sleek white exterior instead of the toylike loud colors used on the GameCube. Even CEO Iwata got involved in the design process; at one point he handed engineers a stack of DVD jewel cases and told them the console should not be much bigger. Why so small? To work with the motion-sensitive wireless controller Nintendo planned, Iwata reasoned, the console would have to sit directly beside the TV. Make it any larger and customers would hesitate to leave it there. " Their sales strategy is working in spades. CVG reports that at least one analyst thinks that Wii demand won't be met until 2009. This past weekend Chris Kohler had an interesting comment on the 'ambassador programs' Nintendo ran in advance of the Wii's launch, and how that might tie in to the system's financial success.

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Re:They're outselling them? by (A)*(B)!0_- · 2007-04-25 05:58 · Score: 5, Interesting

"I'd say Sega slaughtered itself more than Sony did. The Dreamcast's lack of copy protection, while great for homebrew, made it a very easy target for software piracy."
Sure, that was a problem but look at the history of the Dreamcast. The hardware sold well for a short period of time and then numbers of consoles sold fell off. If your thesis was correct, shouldn't we expect to see a huge installed user base of the console coupled with poor sales of games?
That is not what took place. The Dreamcast sold well but then slumped badly after Sony promised the moon with the PS2. Even if you only look at the sales figures in a vacuum - a drop in hardware sales does not indicate, to me at least, a problem with widespread piracy. If anything, piracy should have helped to move more numbers of consoles.