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TheLastStarFighter on 18 December 2013
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padib said:

Hi folks, I saw this posted by someone on a user's wall and I was wondering if you agree with this point of view:

Our market will shrink this gen and be completely controlled by Sony and Microsoft with Nintendo picking up the table scraps (as they did two gens before that). Because Nintendo created a fad and attracted people who have no true interest in gaming and just saw it as a passing Christmas gift that they could just enjoy and throw away. Its the reason why generation after generation Sony sells 80 million+ and higher. Microsoft figured out how to have a stable fan base like Sony and they have over 80 million in sales now. They basically have half of the PS2 real estate. The Wii U is not completely the problem with the tablet...its that the market Nintendo created from the very beginning did not care about gaming enough to truly invest in future iterations. They are apart of the casual market. Look at the sales of consoles before the Wii and await the sales of consoles after. Nintendo went after a disloyal community of people who more often than not wont be coming back. They only respond to trends like the plague because of price and marketing. The Wii U is not the case because it doesn't make gaming simple for non-gamers to just enjoy and move on with their lives. The Kinect did that hence why it gained twenty million in sales off the back of the Wii. Microsoft knows the Kinect wont sell amazingly by itself because that casual ship has sailed, so they bundled the Kinect 2 with the Xbox One to make a profit regardless of whether it needed it or not.

If not, what is flawed about it?

I'm interested in your responses.

No.  The Wii had a typical video game system sales life, very much like PS1.  Almost identical, really.  The so called "non-gamers" who loved Wii is greatly exhaturated.  Wii was loved by the mass market.  The same people who loved the novelty of Guitar Hero or GTA on PS2 flocked to Wii to try out Wii Sports.

The problem Nintendo is facing is that gen 7 was very long and was almost 2 gens in one.  Consumers picked up a Wii to play when it was new and used it on their SDTVs.  When HDTVs were rapidly adopted, PS3 and XB360 offered a new experience to consumers with HD visuals and great 3rd party content not available on Wii.  In particular, COD became the new mass market fad with Moder Warfare and so many consumers upgraded to PS360 as they became cheaper.

Going forward, neither Sony, MS or Nintendo have a "stable" or massively loyal user based.  Each has dedicated fans, but the mass market buys whatever is interesting and trendy.  Right now, none of the gen 8 systems have really captured imagination.  Nintendo is facing on uphill battle because many in the mass market are associating Wii with something passe and low-tech.  They have also developed online communities on PS or XBOXLive.  That said, the market is ready to be won by any company offering something that can get the mass market attention.  Right now I actually think it is MS in the worst place, simply because of the high price of One.

It is not the Wii audience that is disloyal.  The mass market is disloyal.  They jump from Nintendo to Playstation, back to Nintendo, over to XBox and right now they will go to something exciting.