Will Nintendo's overconfidence be its downfall, again?

Mike Bantick
Wednesday, 31 October 2007 04:17

Opinion and Analysis

Sony is seen as arrogant, Microsoft as a tri-hard, whilst Nintendo has injected a simple fun element back into gaming.  But, could Nintendo be catching a little of Sony’s complacency disease, whilst all around them competitors plot?

Next-gen wise, Nintendo has been riding high, with sales of the Wii going through the roof in all regions.  Likewise the Nintendo hand-held DS has dominated rivals, of which only the Sony PSP comes close.

By breaking down gamer demographics, Nintendo has been able to take advantage of the consumer curiosity to entice people from seven to seventy.  The pick up and intuitive play of games such as Wii Sports has catapulted the Wii into the mainstream.

After the success of the N64 console, the follow-up GameCube sank – in Western markets - behind rivals Sony, with the phenomenally successful PS2 and the game fledgling Microsoft with the original Xbox.

Some pundits thought that Nintendo would go the way of Atari and Sega before them, disappearing off the game hardware map.

A lot of these experts were from big-name game publishers who wrote off the GameCube successor prior to release.

With a simple flick of the wrist-strap attached Wii-mote, Nintendo created a public psyche, so immediately popular, many of these publishers were left scrambling to provide content for the new platform.  The Wii outstripped sales of the PS3 and Xbox 360 in all markets sometimes up to a factor of six or more.  Nintendo, simply cannot make enough Wii’s available for the demand.

Though it does not command the technical wiz-bangery of its more acclaimed peers, the Nintendo Wii has garnered that intangible market penetration that all good marketing students and advertisers dream to attain.

But do Nintendo believe in their own hype?  Is there a certain amount of laurel shaped couches being installed in the big N’s office? 

Having usurped Sony and Canon in recent months to take a snug 2nd place role behind Japans largest company Toyota, and a quadrupling of the share price, Nintendo do indeed have reasons to smile.

So what could possible go wrong? Move onto page 2