Stan Beer
Tuesday, 02 January 2007 04:54
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
You have to hand it to Nintendo. The company got its Wii console launch strategy about as right as Sony got its PS3 production and pricing wrong. Now it seems that just about every gamer, kid, and even quite a few non-gamers want a Wii while scalpers are struggling to get rid of PS3 consoles for a little more than list price on eBay. However, if one month is a round, there are 11 more to go until next holiday shopping season comes round.
The final figures for 2006 are not in yet, but
there is a chance that Nintendo reached its target of 4 million Wii
units sold world wide. Meanwhile, it is almost certain that Sony,
plagued by severe supply problems, did not even come close to meeting
its far more modest projection of 1 million PS3 units in the US and
Japan.
On the surface, the future looks spectacular for Nintendo and
exceedingly bleak for Sony in the new generation games space. Over the
pre-holidays shopping period, the Wii has probably outsold PS3 four or
five to one. As the lines of kids, gamers and casual onlookers at
retail stores will attest, everyone wants to try their hand at using a
Wiimote.
Nintendo has also clearly won the PR war. While everyone initially
ridiculed Nintendo for its choice of name, the Wii brand has proven to
be a bonanza for the media in terms of generating clever headlines. The
puns have continued to flow thick and fast. Coining the term Wiimote
for the Wii controller demonstrates what a great choice of name Wii
turned out to be.
There has been a slight hiccup with the flying Wiimote incidents and an
associated lawsuit. However, Nintendo seems to be taking it all in its
stride and not many, the media included, seem to be taking the issue
seriously.
The fact that my own gamer fanatic teenager is now begging me to go
halves to buy a Wii seems to indicate that by the time PS3 reaches the
global market in acceptable production numbers, Wii will probably have
won a couple more rounds and may well rival Xbox 360 for marketshare,
with a big lead over PS3.
From then on, however, the latest console war should become a
fascinating spectacle. By March, the Wii with its revolutionary
controller will no longer be a novelty and the hard core and casual
gamer market will be judging it from what it can and can't do from a
games perspective. Likewise, there should be more games on the market
that can take advantage of the superior processing and graphics
capabilities of PS3.
