Could Wii become best selling peice of hardware ever?

[Bodhesatva]

grandmaster192 said:
No, not at all. I have stongs doubts about thw Wii expanding the market. I see the Wii as taking over the market instead of expanding it.

The available statistical (and anecdotal) evidence doesn't agree with this position, so I'm not sure why you hold to it so tightly.

Specifically, the Wii seems to be expanding the female and adult (age 25+) markets, according to NPD. At least in terms of console gaming -- PC gaming was always more mature and feminine than console gaming, which has tended to stay very young (6-17) and very male.

Posting again:

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16691
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8802

It's clear that the PC has generally been the home for adult gamers, while teenagers have largely dominated console gaming.

http://www.ign.com/index/e3/2007/videos/

(Nintendo conference, section 1). Please note that the data compiled in the E3 conference is actually from the NPD, not Nintendo itself. These show rather convincingly that 1) console gamers were much younger than previously believed and 2) the Wii is currently grabbing profoundly more adult marketshare than ever before.

If you insist on seeing more anecdotal evidence, here you go:

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/blogs/paging.dr.gupta/2007/03/my-very-adult-addiction.html
http://video.aol.com/video/wii-lifestyle-sr-bowling-leagues/1939739
http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?pager.offset=4&cId=3145462
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0713biz-videogames13-ON.html
http://www.ksdk.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=124270
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/arts/30seni.html?ex=1332907200&en=071aee3567f7bb9b&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

(Episode 65 of the 1up show. Note most importantly that the only game these elderly women do not enjoy is the only violent one, suggesting again that violence is either irrelevant or a direct inhibitor to adult involvement in gaming). 

Quoting the last linked article, relevant text:

Spurred by the popularity of the Nintendo Wii game system among older players, Erickson Retirement Communities, based in Baltimore, which manages 18 campuses around the country with 19,000 total residents, is installing the consoles at each location.

On Thursday Norwegian Cruise Line announced that it was installing Wii systems on all its ships.

 

Again, there are hundreds more all over the web. Like the Red Ring of Death issues, the examples are enumerable and begin to look much more like a data set than individual points. But again, we don't need to rely on these anecdotes anyway: the statistical evidence is right there, provided directly by NPD and the CEA. As I said, I'm not sure why you hold to this misconception so tightly, Grand, but it does seem to fly against all available evidence.