The thread about the old vgchartz, let me dug up some old threads and brought up some memories. Back at the time, as all three competitors had entered the new gen, basically every Wii Nintendo could produced got sold. That were crazy times. Wii was popular.
But the fans of the competitors (hmm, mostly of the PS3, the X360-fans seemed not THAT optimistic about their console) always were looking for the beginning of the end for Wii, so that their console could start to dominate. So I saw:
- the Wii is a fad
- as the adoption of HD-TVs will grow, the Wii-graphics will look terrible and people will move on to the HD-consoles
- Wii will not get the 3rd-party-support
- the HD-consoles are more future-proof, the Wii will be look old in a few years
I remember, that they looked for evidence, that saturation for Wii was reached. A photo of 3 Wiis in stock in some shop - OMG, Wii has reached saturation, now the HD-consoles will take over. We Wii-fans said: no, it will be soon market-leader (and later: it will hold the leadership), 3rd-party-support will come to the winning console, HD is not that important as games are...
The sales-numbers were supporting the claims of us Wii-fans. The Wii broke sales-records. Nothing seemed to be able to stop it. At some point even the fans of the competitors moved on and started talking about who will take the second place. Wii was nearing 50% market-share. Everything seemed fine.
But then the Wii started to fail. The HD-consoles there increasing in sales while the Wii was stangnating and decreasing.
If I look now at the sales, the PS3-fanboys seem to have predicted right. The Wii stopped selling at some point. Was the fad over? Was adoption of HD-TVs too big, that people now were seeing the bad graphics. Even the prediction about the 3rd-parties: Wii lacks the same 3rd-party-support the HD-twins are getting.
Was the Wii really a fad - that only lasted a bit longer than everyone were thinking? Discuss!
