Predicting Nintendo's next move is an infuriatingly difficult task in spite of knowing the rules they're following, a bit like trying to predict how somebody is going to throw a rock-paper-scissors move before you've even seen the person or started the game. Ostensibly your odds of getting it right are okay if you know the rules, but still pretty low and mostly just guessing.
All that said, I don't think a lot of people understand just what Nintendo is doing, or why the Wii is experiencing unchallenged market growth. The answer is, as it was when the NES came onto the scene, staring us in the face. And like then, the failure to acknowledge a certain key fact is why nobody sees it. Let's look at what happened back in the late 1980s.
When the NES came out, computer manufacturers thought they were competing against it, and didn't understand how such an underpowered computer that doesn't even come with a keyboard or monitor could be trouncing their systems. What they failed to realize was that the NES wasn't competing with computers at all; it was opening an entirely new segment of the market where the standards expected of a computer didn't apply.
The same thing is happening again, of course. Console manufacturers Sony and Microsoft think they're competing against the Wii, and don't understand how something so outclassed specs-wise is trouncing them. As with the NES, the incumbents fail to see that the Wii is not competing with consoles, it's opened an entirely new segment of the market where the standards expected of a console don't apply.
The short of this is that the Wii has no competition in the same sense that the NES had no competition until the Sega Master System came out. The values which are embodied by the Wii are not embodied at all by the 360 or PS3. This is important to understand, because in an environment of no same-value competition, a product holds a monopoly on its market segment. And when this happens, the longer it takes for same-value competition to emerge, the greater their advantage remains.
What this all adds up to is, the longer it takes for the Wii to get a true competitor, the longer it's going to live. Nintendo might not even have to make a truly new system until as late as 2026, though that's extremely unlikely and would require the entire industry to basically give up, give in, and let Nintendo rule the roost unchallenged; even in the NES days that didn't happen.
On the other end of the spectrum, if same-value competition came out tomorrow, the Wii's lifespan would be cut short no matter what Nintendo did to keep its competitive edge, and we'd likely see its mainstream halcyon days fade a few years early (2012 or so instead of 2016 or so). It would also prompt Nintendo to get things ready for releasing a new system. What I can assure you, because Iwata has clarified it at least three times now, is that the next Nintendo system will similarly defy existing standards and basically "kill" the Wii and its competitors.
I have no way of predicting what that specifically will be, however. If it were predictable, it wouldn't be disruptive, and Nintendo would be in really big trouble.
Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.
