Bodhesatva said:
I'm not being sarcastic, but I am trying to lead people down a specific logical path. It is interesting, for example, that everyone was claiming just a couple years ago that the "Playstation" brand name would rocket the PS3 to victory, but suddenly it's the Wii brand that is insurmountable. The "Wii" brand name is less than two years old. Something in the last two years has taken this brand from nothing to explosively popular. What was it? If Wii Fit is simply living off the popularity of the Wii brand name, then what lifted the Wii brand name in the first place? Credit has to be given somewhere: Nintendo did something spectacularly right with something in the last couple years, to take the "Wii" brand name from something literally no one had heard of to one that apparently people will buy like zombies.
|
If it were that simple to just come up with a winning game plan and then let it run, everyone would be doing it. Nintendo would have done it with the N64 following the success of the SNES and then followed up again with the GC. As history would have it, that didn't happen.
It was Nintendo's conservative approach with the N64 that led to their loss of market dominance to the Playstation brand among other things. Primarily it was their insistance in keeping the ROM cart format when everyone else was going with cheaper, larger optical storage formats. I think that hurt the games more than anything in the end. Additionally, Nintendo's business practices in how they dealt third party developers had many searching for greener pastures. Nintendo has a history of being very controlling with their platforms. Even the cart decision was largely in part to deter easy piracy and receive more per unit in manufacturing costs relative to storage size.
They did the same thing with the GC by using a proprietary optical disc offering no advantages to developers, just a fraction of the storage space. Again, to deter piracy and keep their game format proprietary as a means of control.
After two mediocre generations, Nintendo had little to gamble and as a result, they gambled big with the Wii by moving in a lateral direction rather than a more expensive vertical direction with their hardware.
The result was accessibility, both in user interface, as well as user friendliness. Broadest appeal made even broader with a very modest price, relative to other current hardware. Wii Sports sold everyone on the accessibility of the controls and I'm still under the belief that it was the same level of killer app for the Wii that Super Mario Bros. was for the NES.
So the reason for success in one word: accessibility.
