| greenmedic88 said: The big hurdle for Nintendo for the "Super Wii" or Wii HD (or whatever) will be convincing all the light gamers that they need to buy another Nintendo console, even if it's very reasonably priced at $250 again. By then, the Wii should be selling for $150 or even $99. Unless Nintendo wants to pull a Microsoft and kill the platform (which the generation leader never does), Nintendo's main competition next generation will probably be itself. |
I think this generation is going to be the last console generation decided using the thirty-year old strategy of launch ... then sit and wait and try again next gen if you failed.
Nintendo has adopted virtually all the same principles found in the design ideas kicked off by Apple this century which has brought them back from the dead, right down to the gloss white w/ matte gray accent finish to its core product line. Nintendo has become too agile for MS and Sony to keep their current strategies and be successful. Like the DS Phat to DS Lite to DSi release cycle, the Wii will probably see colored permutations in a year, then DVD capability, then extended support for this peripheral or that peripheral, and so on and so on, with only minor tweaks to the horsepower for the forseeable future. Ninty will only add features to the unit as pennies dictate, and I think they were already pushing the limits of their current case tech with the ATi Hollywood GPU, so their short term goal should simply be getting the exisiting GPU greener and cooler.
Instead of one or two SKUs, we're heading into an age where every vendor is going to wind up having dozens and dozens over the lifetime of the product, like with the iPod. I don't know that we'll even know when this gen ends and the next one begins. At least, in my view, the 360 looks like the only system on a linear path with a near-term plan for obsolesence. Ninty seems insistant that they're not competing with Sony and MS, and Sony seems insistant that they're not competing with MS or Ninty.
As TVs and LCD-PC displays inch closer to merging, and all of our content goes IP-based digital, I'm not sure MS or Sony will have clearly defined "games consoles" for the next gen (you could argue the PS3 isn't one for this gen). I mean, they're already just glorified HTPCs with a bluetooth game pad thrown in instead of the traditional keyboard and mouse.
