Predictions on the future of the consoles: Ben Heckendorn's take

[Avinash_Tyagi]

Yet another "hardcore" gamer who doesn't realize that he represents a niche market.

His belief that the Wii reaching out to those who normally would have no interest in gaming or are lapsed gamers will crash the market is woefully flawed, as it won't matter even if people got out of gaming, as they would have already purchased the machine, not to mention Wii is self sustaining as people who play it want it so even if some drop out, it will continue as more and more people play the system. The reason the industry crashed in the 80's was due to a glut of terrible games, Nintendo systems never have that issue as you can always count on Nintendo games for quality. Also his idea that Hardcore are the puls and purse of the industry is flawed as we can see that the hardcore games only sell to a select group of the industry over and over, you have to reach beyond the hardcore to emerge victorious, every top system has reached beyond the hardcore, Wii just goes further.

His belief that Nintendo is faking the shortage is foolish, as he doesn't seem to realize the production bottlenecks involved in producing a system like the Wii ad the fact that Nitnendo doesn't want to overproduce and be left with excess stock, they'll keep ramping up, but slowly, so as to not overshoot demand.

His idea that Wii tech being outdated tech will hurt it is ridiculous, as it didn't stop the NES, which was facing 16 bit gaming PC's at launch.