Mark Danks

Every blog, website, and media outlet is saying that the Nintendo Wii won the console wars, especially the battle for this holiday.  The sales numbers are starting to come in, but I think that the actual press coverage is alot more interesting.The Nintendo Wii.  Everyone loves it, little kids, grandmothers, non-gamers.  In my family, it was the hit of the holidays.  I took it to my brother’s house and it was basically turned on for the entire time.  The thing that I found interesting is that people only wanted to play bowling or tennis from Wii Sports.  I have a bunch of Wii games (Rayman, Madden, etc) and none of them got any play time.  People would try them for about one game when I encouraged them to try something different, but within 5 minutes, they always wanted to go back to bowling.

In all of the press for the Wii, I see the same statements.  “My 80 year old grandmother loves to play bowling!”.  I never see any statements about people playing other games.  Zelda does not count, because that is a hardcore game.  Non-gamers are not interested in it.  My mom and dad were joking about buying a Wii, until I pointed out that they would be spending $250 on a bowling simulator.  The reality is that they loved playing, will want to play when they visit, but actually have no interest in purchasing one.

I am waiting for the actual software sales numbers to come through for the Wii.  My guess is that for the first 3 months of the year, publishers which are not on the Wii bandwagon are going to get lambasted in the press, while publishers which are banking on the Wii will be praised.  After 3 months when the actual software sales numbers come in, everything is going to flip.  The publishers which focused on the Wii will have horrible sell through and people are going to remark on the Wii’s novelty.

The blandness of the Xbox360 and PS3 controllers is actually a good thing to me.  It means that you can play lots of different types of games on the system.  So far, all of the games that I have for the Wii either 1) feel the same or 2) feel wrong because they do not use the controller well.  It will be interesting to see how much variety developers can really get out of the Wiimote.  Admittedly, it is still early in the development cycle, but right now, everyone seems to be gravitating to the same controller mechanisms.