| A Wii Retrospective (from an industry insider) |
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| Gadgets | |
| Written by Administrator | |
 A Wii Retrospective by Mark HattonTwo years ago it was a Revolution. Nearly 18 months ago it became the target of schoolboy sniggering and consumer ridicule as it became the Wii. Now, approaching its first anniversary it’s a 9 million-selling generation-bridging phenomena, the fastest selling console in history. In terms of total sales, it has already surpassed Microsoft’s green-themed reliability liability, the Xbox 360 - and that’s ignoring the 360’s 12 month head-start to the market. Its other competitor, Sony’s PS3, currently languishes so far behind that Sony must surely be gazing at their own over-priced and over-complex black behemoth and wondering where it all went wrong. On top of that, unit sales of the console itself are only a soupcon of the overall flavour of the scalding hot cake that is the Wii – there’s an awful lot more to that particular recipe and one which, without a doubt, must leave a bitter after-taste in the mouths of Sony and Microsoft; despite their belligerent assertion that Nintendo isn’t strictly a competitor at all. First let’s look at what really matters to these companies and, let’s be honest, only the very naïve amongst you will believe it is the happiness of their Customers! There is no doubt a sprinkling of that particular fairy-dust lingering in the research labs along with a liberal dose of desire to ‘push-the-envelope’ in terms of technical innovation BUT none of that matters in comparison to the bottom-line for any company: Profit. Profit is something that Nintendo have made from day 1 of the Wii’s market presence. Every single unit sold generates profit and not just revenue. Sony and Microsoft both subscribe to the loss-leader approach to the games console market, they sell the hardware at a loss and then recoup that loss with software sales – or at least that is the intention. This typically takes a couple of years to achieve and that’s why they like to thump their chests with regard to ‘attach-rate’ – i.e. the average number of games they sell per console. Nintendo are of course very happy to sell you software too but the crucial difference is that everything they sell generates a profit. That’s quite an achievement - even more so in light of the risk they took in marketing their technically inferior product alongside the high-definition horsepower-pushing competition. 
Whilst the Wii is indisputably a stunning success story for Nintendo and indeed for many gamers it is also an abject failure for many other consumers. My own family has owned a Wii since launch day and we have had a lot of fun with it. The early days of Wii Sports addiction were fabulous but since then there has been little to ignite the imagination. My eldest Son (11 at the time) noted almost immediately his disappointment with the console he had craved for so long – “it just doesn’t feel right”. He was absolutely correct technically speaking - the motion control is a hotchpotch of relative movement sensing and triangulation coupled with a distinctly inconsistent implementation of interpolation and filtering. The games are usually lacking in imagination, frequently gimmicky in execution and generally speaking hastily and carelessly designed. There are a few highlights out there, but for the moment at least the Wii’s list of “must have’s” is excruciatingly short. In many respects, the Wii really is just a “re-imagined” Gamecube repackaged (with several nods to Apple in that area) and bundled with a novel controller. Personally speaking, our Wii rarely gets turned on and then frequently only as a big-screen-lounge-based-web-browser. We desperately hope that those must-have games are on the way (and there are several candidates on the near-horizon), we long for imaginative DS integration / interoperability and we dream of something more interesting than 20 year old “classics” on the shopping channel but ultimately we’re all rather disappointed with our Wii – and I know we’re not alone. It’s a console with vast potential for hardcore and casual gamers alike but, for the moment at least, when you look past the smoke and mirrors and push back the magician’s curtains the disappointment still echoes sharply one year on. Many (perhaps most?) people are happy to keep bowling or waggling their Wiimote insanely in any one of dozens of games and for those people I’m very happy. For the rest of us, let’s hope the coming year fulfils some of the potential we see in our little white slabs of plastic… Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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