Saturday, November 24th 2007
Wii Could Possibly Become Most Successful Console of All Time
Despite some PlayStation3 success in Japan, the Nintendo Wii is selling extraordinarily strong all around the world. While Nintendo hasn't been able to keep up with Wii demand since the console was released, they continue to make insane amounts of profit. After selling 200,000 units in Australia in just 50 weeks, analysts in the country declared that the Wii is the fastest selling console to ever hit Australia. Even the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable, which both were met with extreme fanfare, took at least 55 weeks to reach the 200,000 mark in Australia. Sony refuses to let Nintendo take this title without a fight, as their PlayStation2 continues trucking along to its seventh birthday. Sony announced that they will continue to sell the PS2 throughout all of 2008, and possibly 2009. It is priced competitively, at $199AUD, for Christmas. Microsoft also is working hard to compete with Wii sales, by pricing the Xbox360 at the same price as the Wii ($399AUD). Time will tell if the Wii really is just a fad/gimmick, or if it really has something going for it.
20 Comments on Wii Could Possibly Become Most Successful Console of All Time
Everyone knows that the NES/SNES will always be the best of all time.
wii looks cool, but not my bag.
Games like Wii sports are good fun in a group every now and again, but it's hardly something that you would frequently play alone and lacks any depth - unfortunately that seems to be true of too many Wii games. I would have to say that Mario, Zelda and Resident Evil 4 are all very good games, but only one of those (Mario Galaxy) is a Wii exclusive (not on the Cube or the PS2), which means that in one year the Wii has one very good exclusive non-party game that wasn't available on other last-gen formats - and even that may be a partly biased view, as some of my enjoyment of Mario Galaxy comes from the fact I remember playing the Mario games so much as a child.
There are some other ok games, like SSX Blur for example, but again, that's nothing you can't get on the PS2 TBH. My personal opinion is that the new control style is the primary reason for this. As much as the motion control is good (and actually much more accurate than many people give it credit for, just most game designers aren't taking full advantage of that yet) I feel that companies are forcing themselves to try and integrate motion sensing in some way, even when a game would work better without it. NFS:Carbon is a great example of this. It's as good as any other NFS game, but on the Wii there are no control setups that don't require motion sensing, when it would be much nicer just to use standard buttons and be a normal multi-platform game. A number of other games on the Wii could have been good if only the controls hadn't ruined them, Red Steel comes to mind there.
Hopefully this will change in future, but IMO for the next year nearly all of the good games are likely to be Nintendo's own, just like Mario and Zelda were.
For a company that was thinking of becoming a third party developing company, they sure made their mark on the console market! :toast:
But a lot of the games on the wii are genuinely fun and i'm not surprised its been so popular. Nintendo dared to do something new before the other major players and it fills a market that the ps3 and 360 can't fill. I originally thought the console was one of those things you'd love for 10 minutes then get a bit bored of, however after the university i study at got some wii's (which are security coded weewii's :D) and I've had the oportunity to play with them and develop for them I can really see where the appeal comes from and it doesn't grow old either.
It was fun for the first time you played.
Every subsequent game made you appear to be more and more of a massive wanker.