Why Wii Won
it's simple really
it's simple really
Page 1 of 8
“How can the seventh generation be over already?” you ask. “Are you not jinxing it? We must witness sales performance before we declare a winner.”Oh, you need to stop thinking about the machines and more about the business strategies involved. Sales performance is merely a reflection, a type of ‘lag’ that appears as the business strategies undergo their thing. Around 80% of a console’s success is dependent before that console is even launched.
Every business exists in two parts: the part on the outside you all see with its sales records, the product on the shelves, and all of that. The other part, the most important part, is the core inside.
Using historical and proven benchmarks of the console market, here is why Wii, provided execution remains unhampered, essentially has the Seventh Generation in the bag:
1) Focus on Entertainment, Not Technology
Every console generation, competitors try to ‘win’ by becoming more technologically powerful than the market leader. And every time, the competitors fail.
Generation One:
PONG > the technologically superior PONG clones
Generation Two:
Atari 2600 > the technologically superior Intellivision and Colecovision
Generation Three:
NES had all the games so Master System was out of luck.
NES > the technologically superior Sega Master System
Gameboy > Atari Lynx
Generation Four:
While some might say that the SNES is the exception since it was technically superior to the Genesis, this is not true for the speed or the Sega CD and 32X that came out for it. Clearly, Sega was gunning for technical superiority which is why it lost in the end.
Look at how black and white Gameboy outsold a color handheld again. And people think HD graphics are going to matter.
SNES > Genesis
Gameboy > Gamegear
Generation Five:
The Saturn and Nintendo 64 were created to be technologically supreme consoles especially over the Playstation. Still, Playstation won.
Playstation 1 > Saturn, N64
Gameboy Color > Neo Geo Pocket
Generation Six:
Xbox and Gamecube were far superior consoles to the Playstation 2 yet the PS2 won.
Playstation 2 > Gamecube, Xbox
Gameboy Advance > Whatever
The iPod was not the first mp3 player nor the most technologically advanced. The iPod succeeded not because it focused on technology like its competitors but because it focused on the user-experience.
2) The Console Market is Momentum Based
Microsoft likes to say that the first console to ten million wins. In Microsoft’s reasoning, at ten million, the system will have such an installed based that all the developers jump on board. Microsoft hoped that the Xbox 360 would sell ten million in the year before the Playstation 3 even launched. Microsoft is around six million sold and won’t be arriving at ten million for quite some time.
The point is clear. A console with momentum eventually becomes the ‘dominant’ platform. The Playstation 2 had such momentum when the Gamecube and Xbox launched that both systems were literally jumping in front of a juggernaut. The Dreamcast began to lose momentum when software became delayed.
Momentum revolves around the software flow. It is widely assumed that killers apps are ‘best selling games’. No, killer apps are ‘best selling games that sell hardware’. If Nintendo made a hundred Mario games, they might be best selling but they will not all be killer apps. The first GTA for the PSP is a killer app but the second one cannot be. A great multiplayer shooter is certainly a killer app for the Xbox 360, but more than one becomes preaching to the choir, to the already installed base. For the Playstation and Playstation 2, games like Final Fantasy 7 and Grand Theft Auto 3 were like rockets that shot the Playstation hardware sales up. Halo was like a rocket that shot the Xbox sales up.
The DS has had three major ‘rockets’. The first was Nintendogs which sold the hardware to girls. The second, Brain Trainer, that sold the hardware to older adults. And, third, New Super Mario Brothers that sold the hardware to kids and core gamers. Pokemon, Animal Crossing DS, and Super Mario 64 DS are other quasi-rockets.
At launch, the Wii has two such rockets. The first is Wii Sports. Wii Sports is, I suspect, to sell the hardware to families and older adults. The second is Zelda: Twilight Princess to sell the hardware to Nintendo core gamers (which it should if the game is ‘as good’ as Ocarina of Time). It is because of Zelda that Reggie said, when Nintendo announced the launch details, this console cycle for Nintendo is like the Yankees starting a game already in the lead.
What does the Xbox 360 have as ‘rockets’? It has Gears of War and Halo 3 along with previous shooters. But only one will be the true ‘killer app’ to sell hardware to the shooter happy crowd. There was Oblivion. Grand Theft Auto 4 should boost hardware sales. I’m sure something else will appear in the console’s lifecycle but this is all I can think of as of now.
Playstation 3’s big launch title is Resistance which is definitely not a Halo. Metal Gear Solid 4, Final Fantasy 13, and other Japanese adventure/rpg games will sell the hardware.
The problem is that publishers will be less willing to risk with the larger budgets that Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 demands. As development shifts towards the Wii, and due to the controller demanding new creative investments, probability sides with the Wii for the next ‘big hits’ (which no one can predict now).
The digital distribution of the three consoles also has to be considered. Xbox Live Arcade demands every game released to be tied into its online services as well as being in high definition. Playstation 3 also has similar requirements. As costs rise, this puts these games on a harder treadmill. The Wii will easily surpass these rival digital libraries due to leveraging Nintendo’s previous consoles as well as the PC-Engine and Megadrive. And this doesn’t include original content on the Virtual Console.
“But what about downloading Playstation 1 games?” Let me ask you, where is the excitement for the PS1 games? I don’t see it anywhere. But there is excitement for the old 2d type games. Why? Many of the PS1 games are similar in nature to many of the PS2 (and soon), PS3 games.
One the biggest problems with both the Xbox 360 and PS3 are that many people are waiting for the price to come down. People waiting for a price drop on the PSP killed the machine’s momentum. However, you don’t hear of too many waiting on the Wii.
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