Shadow1980 said:
TheLastStarFighter said:
You're getting very specific with numbers despite having nothing to base it on. There certainly were some blue ocean people who picked up Wii's, but the ridiculously high sales of games like MKWii, NSMBWii and other classic style games - along with the major hype in the gaming community that existed during Wii's launch (remember the long lines at e3 2006?) and the slow early sales of PS360 tells me that the bulk of Wii's success came from the "mass market" portion of the gaming community. People that grew up with NES or SNES but moved on to PS2's decided to give the more adult, sleek and high-tech looking Wii a try after skipping the purple gamecube. Nostalgia was big in pushing Wii, and Nintendo was ahead of the curve with online service and the Virtual Console was a big selling point for these displaced older Nintendo fans. But once homes got HDTV's and cool titles from 3rd parties (like COD and GTA) were only available on PS360, those same consumers began to pick up a new, more powerful console. Those same consumers were also slow to look at Wii U as a worthwile update to their PS360.
This is what I've observed en masse in my part of Canada and it makes perfect sense. Those that say the bulk of Wii owners were nursing home folks who bought it for Wii Sports have nothing to support this. Wii's attach rate was similar to other systems, with average consumers buying over 9 games while PS2, PS3 and 360 owners buy just over 10 games. To me this suggests the portion of grandma's who bought Wii for Wii bowling was about 10%.
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Thank you. Somebody else gets it. The idea that the Wii was bought primarily by this "blue ocean" demographic of "casuals" and non-gamers that appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly never sat well with me. Everything from the attach rate of the Wii to the types of (non-bundled) games that sold well to the sales curves of the Wii and the fact that it appeared to delay the peaks of the 360 and PS3 (the Wii had a normal peak, while the 360 & PS3 not peaking until 5-6 years after launch was anything but normal) and various other factors all seem to suggest that the Wii was bought primarily by "traditional" or "core" gamers that buy other systems. I think the Wii just happened to have the right combination of price, marketing, games, and a gimmick that clicked with gamers, and the system ended up being a second console for a lot of gamers.
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Yeah, people often draw conclusions without facts. A few feel-good stories on evening news about old people playing Wii Tennis and everyone lumps it with that. But most of us core gamers were enthrawled with Wii upon release and maybe a bit pissed off when Sony announced the pricing of PS3 ( I know I was). We also didn't know things that are clear in hindsight, such as Wii wouldn't get 3rd party support (there were a flood of early titles like RE4) and that COD would become so big. People will believe what they want to believe, however, and their memories are short.
