http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=131888 Nintendo Wii success a good thing says Microsoft Nintendo's raging success at the moment is a good thing for the video game industry, or so says Xbox Marketing VP Jeff Bell in an interview published on Wednesday. Microsoft to Nintendo: Why can't we be friends? "I'd like to see the industry grow and be robust" Bell told Canada.com. "In many ways, I'm thankful the Wii has been as successful as it has. If the Wii does grow the market, it's good for all of us." The Microsoft executive said he doesn't mind surging Wii sales, so long as an Xbox 360 is sitting next to Nintendo's console in homes. "I don't see any problem with a household that has both a Wii and a 360. In fact I would expect that you'd see that, as they are very different experiences," he said. Bell remained skeptical, however, of the popular belief that Nintendo is expanding the market to players other than just core gamers. According to his findings, Wii owners are merely former GameCube owners and Nintendo enthusiasts, not legitimate non-gamers. "The data that I've seen has not suggested that in fact these are new gamers," he said. "It looks like they're GameCube owners and Nintendo fans." Regardless, Bell knows where his priorities lie; winning the hotly contested console war in an effort to frolic in the piles of cash to be had in the taking. "I think there's more than enough room for everyone, but we definitely want to win. It is our ambition to win this generation and we've never been more prepared than right now."

Silly PR people...will they ever learn?

O rly!?... Well nintendo's success is good... because that means Sony doesn't have that success...lol

Gamecube owners. Yeah. Since there were oh so many of those.

It's not even that stupid as it sounds, because for Microsoft, Nintendo REALLY is no competition. Microsoft wants to win the living room and Sony is the only contender for them. All they want to do is be profitable and sell more than Sony.

Of course it'd be easier for them to be first, but he also says that, so this really sounds like a legit statement to me.

So if its just selling to GC owners when the Wii passes the Gamecubes lifetime sales in Japan in a few months it will stop selling AMIRITE?

Nintendo's success is a good thing for gaming but it's not a good thing for Microsoft. Nintendo have just showed Sony and MS that price is a more important factor then they thought. Nintendo have quite possibly forced gaming prices to remain affordable as if the PS3 succeeded at it's current price I would hate to see the price of Sony and MS's next systems.

Sony have bit the bullet twice now, both with the PS3 and PSP. Hopefully they will not release technology that is too expensive.

As for MS's exec spin. Complete nonsense and if he thinks that the only ones buying the Wii are GC owners then he is a complete moron.

What the data suggests is what Nintendo said long ago: That, at the moment, only 10% of Wii owners did not own a console last gen. Therefore, 10% of Wii owners are either lapsed gamers or non-gamers.

What Microsoft is assuming is that, if New Gamers are not buying the Wii in droves (yet, because it is still very supply constrained) then it MUST be only Gamecube owners purchasing the Wii. He doesn't believe that previous PS2/Xbox owners will purchase the Wii.

Just from the polls we have had on VGchartz, less than 50% of Wii owners owned a GC last generation(myself included). However, it also supports the data, because only around 5-10% were lapsed gamers (Most of them PC only gamers before).

I think just the fact that so far, the Wii has sold over 10 million in less than a year, while the Gamecube sold only 21 million in 5 years shows that Wii buyers are not primarily Gamecube owners. I expect Wii sales in Japan to eclipse all-time Gamecube sales in Japan before December 31, 2007.