It's simple, really. Once the Wii is successful at what it was sent out to do, everyone wins, especially the graphic whores.

 Massive penetration into the mainstream  means actual justification for mega hundred million budget for games. $40 million($20M promotions, $20M actual game production) for Lost Planet was already considered too high. Imagine what they could do with $100 million for production alone. More customers will ultimately mean considerably cheaper software, considerably cheaper systems(imagine the PS3 at $300 right out of the gate) and accesories because a larger number of people are footing the bill. Why do you think movies, even though they cost considerably more to make than videogames cost less to enjoy? $50 vs $10-$20. Yup, it's because the market is significantly larger than the videogame industry.

It also means more people would enter the industry, more creative talents, more games(yes, even more games that graphic whores will like), more "art" videogames(if you thought Okami was the pinnacle of arthouse style video games, you haven't seen nothing yet) and actual stories with actual depth, not some cliched mess. With all due respect to talented videgame developers out there, save for a few legendary ones that are almost godlike anyways, the industry could use more Steven Spielbergs and more Quentin Tarrantinos. The industry  should be able sustain more people of similar pedigree if the Wii is succesful at expanding the market.

 The Wii was sent out to bake that larger pie for the whole industry. I suppose some belt tightening is in order. You won't see the immediate effects of the Wii, probably not this generation. It's not capable of Gears of War, Halo 3, MGS4 kind of graphics after all. But the future of videogames might just become brighter, thanks to the little bugger that would.

This post is so asking to be flamed...

Anyway, there are pluses and minuses to a Wii 'win'.  I believe many gamers are concerned that while more games may be produced, they will not be interested in them.  Back to your movie analogy for a second.  There are hundreds of movies produced a year, but many of them suck.  The same could happen with a game system that caters to the mainstream.  We've seen a bit of this happen on the Nintendo DS.  The success of Nintendogs and Brain Age brought out terrible copy cats.  If those titles did well (and thankfully most did not), we risk the possiblity of getting even more of those kind of titles and fewer and fewer 'games'.  On the other hand, a larger game audience creates more opportunities and greater acceptable of video games as a whole.  And the unique interfaces that Nintendo has pushed with the DS and Wii does open up the consoles to games that aren't as easily played on a regular controller and to  possible game players who were put off by all the buttons and such on today's controllers.

In general, we should be routing for all the systems to do well.  If any of the big three leave the console space, it could create a huge wave of consolidation that would ultimately decrease creativity and the number of games produced.

PS1 - 102 Million

PS2 - 115.36 Million

I have said enough.

Well if you look at the DS you still see quite a few games that would appeal to hardcore gamers, in spite of the prescenese of the "nongames", in fact there are a ton of DS games in Japan I wish they would localize over here in the states

Edit: Hey Steve was right the first flamer has arrived in PS360N64PSXBOX

mainstream penetration would be atleast double that... PS2 hardly counts as mainstream penetration regardless of that success. No console so far has had the penetration that DVD players or MP3 players do...

 Edit: forget it.

Give it time, the PS systems increased the size of the market more than any other system before it.

USA Average family size. 3.14

PS2s in us 45million

US pop 300 ,million 

 In the USA there is a PS2 in every other home... this is called MAINSTREAM!!! 

I generally agree with this (the thread). If the Wii does really well, it brings a lot more people into the industry (people who never played games before), and they become potential customers for other systems.

Note - gaming has *never* been mainstream. Even the 100m + PS1/PS2 units... many are bought to replace each other, many are bought as presents, etc. A real indicator is how many PEOPLE actively play games on an average day. Compared to watching TV (or a movie), listening to music... or even browsing the web - gaming covers just a fraction.

This is much of the theory behind the "mobile" games industry - it is a serious push to make games more mainstream, as *everyone* will eventually be carrying around a device capable of playing games everyday (talking several BILLION people/devices - not 1-2% of that).

From this point of view, the Wii will definitely help (and more so than either the 360 or PS3 could).

you make an excellent point about the PS2. I literally do not know anyone who has there original PS2. Thats one thing Nintendo has always had, quality. They could have sold alot more GCs and wiis and DS's if they would make horrible quality systems that break down all the time. I guess they really dont know how to work the system like sony does.