Sony: Wii U is "its own generation"

[Aielyn]

I can't help but notice that Iwata, quite a while ago, described the Wii as "New Gen" rather than "Next Gen". I think Sony has merely realised how right Iwata was. Essentially, it's a grudging admission that the Wii was in a class of its own, and that this resulted in a strange organisation within the industry.

In fact, the best way to put it is that, just as consoles and handhelds compete, yet are distinct and operate on different generational patterns, so too did the Wii differentiate itself from the PS3/360 and operate on its own pattern. This is why the Wii U is now coming out when the next generation for the other two are barely even acknowledged. It's also why their successors will sell less well than the PS3/360 did.

A look at Wii sales demonstrates the point - the PS3 and 360 were locked in a death struggle, and oftentimes a boost to one console would result in a decline for the other. Meanwhile, the Wii operated completely independently, in this regard - it was like the only thing that the Wii was competing for was consumer dollars themselves; consumers have a limited amount of money. The Wii was independent of the PS3 and 360 in the same sense that the DS and PSP were independent of the PS3 and 360.

All of this is likely to continue with the Wii U, in that Sony's and MS's consoles are likely to focus more on "traditional" power concerns, etc, while the Wii U just boosts the power enough to make sense, and no more. All it requires is a moderate boost relative to the PS3 and 360 (we're talking of the order of maybe 2-3x at most), and it's all set with regards to those "traditional" factors. Meanwhile, while the next gen systems for Sony and MS will likely try to emulate some of the features of the Wii U, those features will necessarily be less focused upon. The big problem for Sony and MS, of course, is that they can't really afford to boost the power too far, as rising costs are slowly killing the industry in that respect (notice how closure of major studios is becoming more common, especially studios that focused on PS3/360 rather than Wii?).

Where I have to give Yoshida credit is that he didn't even remotely try to bash the Wii U. It seems that Nintendo has achieved one thing, at least - transcendence above the console war. There was a time when the media and analysts would just ignore the Wii entirely... now they're forced to pay attention, and are unable to find a way to throw the regular console war attacks at it.