| BTFeather55 said: well, one answer to your question is that Nintendo has a long history of doing what they are doing now going back to the days of the nes. it wasn't the most powerful system, it didn't have all of the best games, but it totally dominated the market. strangely enough when Nintendo has had some of their most powerful consoles and best games they have had harder times selling. the price was another part of it. the tickle me elmo effect. where some toy becomes scarce and sells many times its retail value at Christmas is another part. the 360 had that in 2005, and it's just my opinion, but i think Nintendo saw that and used it to their advantage in '06 and somehow carried it over in 07 and 08. some things i find unexplainable like the line at e3 2006 to play the wii, maybe changing the name generated curiosity. a mixture of shrewd business strategy, opportunism, and zeitgeist. i tried to answer your question. |
And I appreciate your attempt at doing so. It just strikes me that there are too many implausible things for your theory to work. For starters, the "Tickle-Me-Elmo Effect" is nothing new to videogames: most consoles, even ones that eventually fail, go through large markups and forced bundles their first Christmas.
More importantly, IF Nintendo was deliberately trying to emulate the 360's experience, it would have noticed that demand cooled off fairly rapidly shortly after that first Christmas. If you're correct, Nintendo would have consciously been following what it knew was a losing strategy. I don't see Iwata doing that.
Moreover, I appreciate that you're willing to admit that you don't know why the Wii attracted so much attention out of the gate, or why it's sustained that unprecedented level of momentum for the past two and a half years. I submit to you, however, that artificial shortages are definitely not the answer, for the reasons I've outlined above: supply is at an all-time high, making it hard to say that Nintendo is deliberately withholding units. Additionally, that explanation does little to explain why it continues to post large numbers in Europe, and why it's still far away from its competitors in Japan (since in both regions supply and demand have roughly been balanced for over a year now, holiday season excluded).
You conclude that the Wii's success is "a mixture of shrewd business strategy, opportunism, and zeitgeist," and in all honesty I have to agree with you. Timing in particular should play an interesting role in the near future, as the recession looks like it'll give gaming a big boost...or at least to the companies who have read the winds correctly and positioned their sails accordingly.
Where we seem to differ is in what weight we give each factor. You favor the latter two factors, whereas I believe that the former is by and large the greatest one. The Wii may well be the most thought-out system ever made, and I mean that in the sense that everything about it, even the most minute of details, was the subject of long and intense periods of thought, study, and planning.
The Wii's broken many of the Rules of the industry, including some of its sacred cows, and none of that was by accident. Having read Nintendo's comments about the system, both before and after its launch, I firmly believe that the Wii's success comes about primarily because Nintendo alone read the market and tailored its system around the consumer, whereas its competitors made the system that they wanted to make, and then tried to force it on the populace.
If you wish, I can direct you to several examples of this...
