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Wii's Longevity, Competition Questioned
Gamasutra reports that, despite the Wii's breakaway sales success, some analysts are skeptical of the Wii's staying power. Other analysts are, of course, pointing out that many of the 'hardcore' titles are expected later this year. "[They] not[ed] that 31% of Wii owners surveyed in March said they expected to play the Wii more often a year from now, compared to 21% of Xbox 360 owners." At the same time, Nintendo of America's George Harrison is questioning the staying power of Sony and Microsoft. According to Harrison, the two larger companies 'lack the DNA' to move with the industry, and keep with the the demand for casual, more family-friendly titles. "'They're really good at reaching a certain customer, and have a real difficulty understanding how we succeed with the customers that we have,' said the senior vice president of marketing and communications. With the sales of Wii and DS hardware crushing the competition in the US, Harrison is confident that Nintendo could take up to as much as 50 per cent of the market for this latest 'next-gen' cycle."
I'd play ALOT more a year from now, as I figure that's about when i'll finally get my hands on one!
"Nintendo comes out and says they kick puppies, love Nazis, and wipe their ass with every nations flag in the world they are not likely to drop the ball. "
Is that a preview of the next Nintendogs game? Sounds like things have gotten much more exciting.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Are these the same analysts who predicted that Nintendo would be a distant third this cycle?
Funny how you don't see them making a statement of "Oops, sorry we had no clue what the hell we were talking about."
These analysts are as good at predicting the future as any random person off the street, they just get paid a lot more.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I am bored with my Wii at the moment but my wife and daughters who never play anything beyond popcap games on the web are still playing it regularly. I dont have many games and do play it alot when I get a new one, but they dont seem to have the staying power with me that they do on the rest of the family. Nintendo really has managed to capture an untapped market and because of that I think you can toss probabilities and gamer opinion out the window, its not a gamers console, its a non-gamers console. That may change as more high profile titles are released, but so far my wife and my parents (who picked up their own after their last visit) would be happy if nintendo just kept cranking out minigames. My mother mentioned that what her Wii really needed was a trivia game and some board games. There are so many of the non-gamer genre's out there that are untouched and dont have to rely on gimics. Imagine "Pictionary" where you could sketch the "clue" on the screen with the remote, the secret word could be given quietly via the remote speaker. Maybe Wheel of Fortune where you can zap away the letters to select them, chess where you can just point to the piece you want to move, Jeopardy using the remote as the buzzer, the possibilites are endless.
Regardless of the AAA "hardcore" titles that come out later, the Wii has all the possibiilty of being the casual gamers ultimate game center.
I guess I could be considered a "hardcore" gamer... Been playing games since the early 80's and never really stopped. It's nothing to log close to 100 hours in a good RPG.
That in mind, I wanted a Wii from when I first saw it, looked to be a very fun system that would give a chance to be more "social".
I would casually look for one from time to time - then last month, one showed up at my local Walmart (very small store, not one of the new big ones), and I picked it up along with Zelda TP.
Immediately, I began to see the way the console changed the way people around me thought of video games... My wife is absolutely hooked on Wii sports, and the neighbors come by at least a couple nights a week for some tennis or bowling. Most interesting however, was the interest of my parents. Both nearly 60, they never liked video games in the past. Could never even get them to try one out. The Wii was different. They watched my wife and I play a game of tennis, and wanted to try for themselves. Now, every time they stop by there will be quite a few games of bowling played.
You shouldn't underestimate the attention span of the casual gamer, look how long SOL.EXE has been around.
On a side note, the success of the Wii wasn't really unexpected. Everything I read and everyone I've talked to who knew about it prior to the launch said it was going to blow the PS3 and the xbox 360 out of the water, and it has.