Nintendo Wii - Its Successes and Its Failures

Nintendo has caught everyone, even themselves by surprise after the unbelievable success of their Wii console. A year before it's release, many experts predicted that the industry leaders at the time, Microsoft and Sony, would eat them alive with their hugely powerful machines and huge marketing budgets. After the generation that saw the death of the Sega Dreamcast and saw the Gamecube struggle to move units, many industry experts assumed that big companies that can throw a lot of money at advertising will in the end prevail. Nintendo has proven that if you just show a bit of innovation and take a bit of a risk, you can do anything.

The first thing that you think of when someone mentions the Wii, is the very original approach Nintendo took with regards to the "control pad" or, more accurately, the "control remote." The creative team acknowledged that they couldn't match it with the big guns when it came to a regular console, so they began thinking outside the box to offer an affordable console that was also unlike anything we'd seen before.

Unfortunately, such a move was always going to be met by criticism for various reasons. Many are of the belief that game developers are struggling to work out what to do with the unique control system, and that there aren't as many quality games as there are on the Xbox 360 and PS3. This is a fair criticism. A quick skim through the games available for the Wii will leave many feeling quite underwhelmed. While there are a few top quality games on the system, many are sick of poor quality party games that get thrown together in a month.

The other problem Nintendo are currently having is that there simply aren't enough consoles available to meet demand. This just goes to show that the success of the console has even caught the company off guard. There are reports that the lack of consoles has cost Nintendo upwards of $1 billion in sales. Not to mention the fact that many will just elect to buy a much easier to find PS3 or Xbox 360 instead.

Regardless of the criticism's, Nintendo seem to be comfortably in the battle this generation. Not only are they outselling the 360 and PS3, but they're obliterating them. With more than 3 million consoles moved compared to the 360 (even though it's been out a year longer) and more than 11 million consoles than the PS3 as of the 29th of December 2007. That should say one thing to us all: After two consoles that lost out to the respective PlayStation systems, Nintendo are back.

Keep up to date with your much loved Wii. Check out my Wii blog entitled Wii Want to Blog for all my adventures in Wii.

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