Well, it seems that Nintendo has done it again. After the mediocre performance of the N64 and the less-than-spectacular Gamecube, the Wii is a huge success. Going against current trends, Nintendo stuck to their vision of fun over technological dominance.
In contrast, Sony and Microsoft have spent billions of dollars in the battle for the space under the living-room television; a field dominated by machines which try to combine every possible technology under the sun.
(True convergence will never work; since completion is an utopia which will never be attained.)
While the Playstation3 and the Xbox 360 tried to be true multimedia machines, there always seemed to be lacking something. Either the technology was incomplete, or the implemented poorly. For instance, the xbox360 does not have an internet browser, while the Playstation3 has a poorly implemented online messenger service.
Nintendo, however, went in a complete different direction. They tapped into a market previously thought unreachable by the conventional videogame industry: people who do not play videogames.
It seemed that the biggest hurdle of non-gamers (is this term can be used) was the input method traditionally required for videogames. Faced with a game controller with more than 10 buttons and input methods, it is no wonder that there is a natural reluctancy towards using such a device.
Furthermore, a lot of people do not “get” the relationship between a controller and an on-screen activity.
The Wii changed all that, by drastically reducing the number of input methods involved, and by establishing a direct link between input and on-screen reaction.
In retrospect, this only seemd natural. But Nintendo was the only company with the guts to pull it off.
