Who can argue that the Wii and the DS are by far making money for Nintendo hand over fist? So far, no one. The Wii stands as the leader in the current generation, and the DS is just running laps around the PSP. Not many people would believe me back in 2002/2003 when I said that Nintendo would rise again. People thought I was nuts when I said that the newly announced PSP would lose to the Nintendo DS. No one would listen to me when I told them that Nintendo's next system after the Game Cube would put the company back on the video game map. People laughed when I said that the PS3 would NOT be the leader of this current generation- I actually believed it would be the 360. I was right for a while, but I had NO IDEA the Wii would end up being THIS popular!
How did I know? I looked at trends. I saw that the 2 previous companies with four generations of systems BOTH lost their dominance on their third system. You know one of the two already, I've been singing their praise all along, but, and this could be because I'm old enough to remember, Atari was the other. Back in the early 80's, it was ATARI who controlled the market. They were the pre-Nintendo Nintendo. They were the dominant force of the late 70's, and carried that over into the early 80's. That is until the 7800 came out, and by that point, Nintendo had taken the market from Atari.
It was Atari's third system to the 2600 and 5200. I've had many a debate over which system Atari lost the most market share over, and I still believe it was the 7800, not the 5200. Yes, they went down in the 5200's life, but they still had the market because of the 2600. When retailers put video games out, they were usually crammed in the back of the electronics section, and very hidden. By the late 80's when Nintendo came out, they were usually in their own section called, I believe, "World of Nintendo". This put video games on the forefront. Much more than what Atari had ever had. Thus, on their third system, Atari was already becoming a fading memory. This is VERY similar to Nintendo. When the NES was out, no one could touch Nintendo- okay, they were FAR more dominant than Atari in their heyday, but remember, Nintendo used price fixing and other illegal practices to become that dominant.
Well, during the early 90's, when Sega used their in-your-face attitude, the Genesis took the market over, for a time, from Super Nintendo. Eventually, Nintendo would sell more SNES systems than Sega sold Genesis systems, but at a cost. It hurt Nintendo's share, from over 90% with the NES to just over 50% for the SNES, so that when the Nintendo64 came out, Nintendo's dominance was over. It was the third system for Atari, and the third system for Nintendo.
My prediction was that Nintendo and Sony would fight each other for second place like Nintendo and Microsoft did previously. With the XBox 360 having such a head start, especially in America, I really didn't believe the Wii would catch up. I'm glad to say I was wrong. I was right about Sony fighting for second, but they are going to have to REALLY fight if they want second place, because Microsoft seems fixated on getting 3rd party support from Sony, and the Wii seems stronger than ever!
The other reason I believed the DS would outsell the PSP? I knew Nintendo's track record- so did 200 million other people! I knew NO ONE had ever been successful in the portable market since Nintendo created it in 1989. Yes, there were handheld LCD games before it, but none of them had the full video game system like Game Boy did. I thought the contest would be closer between PSP and DS, with Nintendo edging it out at the end, I had NO IDEA Nintendo DS would more than double the thing in sales.
As much as I like gloating about my predictions 5 1/2 years ago, I should also mention I got Nintendo's stock right about the time the Wii was coming out, and all I can say now is I'm laughing at all those people that said I was wrong about Nintendo all the way to the bank! Now they wish they too had gotten Nintendo's stock, but as long as video games are a market, the market will have trends, and I hate to say it, but Nintendo will go down again. I just hope it doesn't go down to Game Cube's level again!
30-someting now, 40-something next decade!
