So I've been thinking... There is this concern that while the Wii has supposedly been sold to a large number of new "casual" gamers, some of who have never owned a console before, the number of games these new gamers buy in the future will be few if any. The average number of games each owner of a game system purchases is called the "attach rate" and if the attach rate is low, the system suffers for it because developers do not want to make games for a system whose owners buy very few games. But I doubt the existence of this "casual" demographic who bought the Wii, in spite of how much it has been touted by the media and even Nintendo itself. I'd like to know just how many single men, women, as well as married couples without children, who have never had an interest in gaming before, purchased a Wii. I can't imagine the amount being high. If a high number of such people have purchased the Wii, then Nintendo MAY have something to worry about in the future, especially if these people do not buy WiiFit. Because I do agree that these people may not be buying very much else in the way of software in the future. But if the number of newly minted gamers of this type is low then Nintendo has less to worry about. Because that means that it has been mostly traditional gamers have been buying the Wii after all, and will buy software for it in the future. The only "new gamer" demographic I can envision is that of non gaming families that have picked up the Wii for their young children because it is the most affordable of the new systems. After all so many families are "poor," having no savings, living from pay check to pay check to pay off debts. But they're going to have to buy a current game system lest their children grow to hate them, so they will go with the most affordable one (I would consider them bad parents in fact, and think about calling child protection services if i suspected a family didn't get at least one game system for their children). And while buying the cheapest game system in the past might have potentially left children disappointed and full of hatred for their parents, in the case of the Wii, it is a fun and popular system that children will be satisfied with. And these families with no previous interest in gaming will now have at least one newly made traditional gamer in the family, especially if any of the children are male. The parents will also enjoy playing the games and the bonding experience it will create with their children, so they too might get more into gaming. But if they do not they will still buy software for their kids who will continually clamor for new games to play. The Nintendo DS succeeded in expanding the market to non-gamers. I really believe it did. I think the huge amount of "brain training," quiz, educational, and practical software in the library is what did it, especially in Japan where software of this type is very numerous. The Wii doesn't have software like that yet (apart from brain academy). I don't know if it ever will, and if it does I don't know if those types of software will be successful. It may turn out that such software is more suitable for a portable system. We will see what happens with WiiFit. That is a piece of non traditional game software that is clearly not designed for a portable system. WiiFit may succeed in bringing in people who have never been interested in games before, it may not. But my main point of all this speculation is that the non gamers haven't really been brought in yet. Wii hasn't expanded the market to non gamers. It was the DS that did that. It may be possible that momentum from the DS brought people to the Wii, with the casual DS owning gamers buying a Wii, but I do not imagine that that happened. I speculate that Wii has been most successful in cornering the "family console" market (because of price point relative to competition), not the casual game market. How many Wii systems WiiFit manages to move will be a good indicator of whether the non gamer has gotten on board with the system.

As we in Gamefaqs say....

WALL OF TEXT! HOLY FREAKING CRAP!

Well, it needed to be said.

I REALLY don't want to be the one that points out how incredibly untrue this is, so I'll let someone else do it.

I stopped reading when you said you would call child services if a family didn't have a game console. That's just crazy.

"(I would consider them bad parents in
fact, and think about calling child protection services if i suspected
a family didn't get at least one game system for their children)"

Just Wow.

I stopped reading when i opened the page and saw i needed to read something, i like purty pictures :P

Ummm... Where to begin?

I assume you're kidding about calling child protection....

You seem to be missing one major non-gamer group: women. Nintendo claims stats show 1/3 of Wii owners are females. That is extremely high. Will they buy games? Hell yes, as long as they appeal to them. And that doesn't have to be Catz and Dogz either. Kirby, SMG, Mario Kart, Rayman Rabbids, Trama Centre, heck maybe Endless Ocean. The list of games girls will like is huge on the WII. My ex is going to purchase Manhunt 2! Ummm... hope she doesn't get any ideas....

Another major group are what I call the Atari generation. People who like myself once played back in the 70's and 80's but 'grew up'. While I did purchase a Wii for my son originally, I, for the first time in 23 years, purchased a console game for myself (Tiger Woods) because of the Wii. RE4 followed, and there's 18 more I want to get. Friggin' Wii..... costing me a fortune....

I've seen a lot of 30-50 year olds looking at Wiis and know a lot who own one. They not only will buy games, they have a lot more disposible income than college kids or 20 somethings.

I could go on and on (like the original post) but the point is made. It works on the DS, no reason it won't on the Wii.

Ah good, an actual response. That's a good point about women. I agree that they'll be much more inclined to get a Wii than a PS3 or Xbox360. This point makes me feel more secure in continuing to hold on to Nintendo's stock.

And you yourself seem to be an example of what I mentioned above where a parent might get the Wii for a child initially but then get into gaming themselves.

I'm sorry you stopped gaming. You missed out on a lot, not the least of which were the N.E.S., Genesis, and Super Nintendo. But thanks to the Wii's virtual console library you can at least enjoy a good amount of the cream from the previous console generations you missed out on...and the enormous profit margins on the VC helps the stock.

Everyone says these non gamers wont buy games, but you all seem to really be ignoring the sales of games like Rayman RR (1m worldwide) Mario Party 8 (Smashing the charts worldwide) Wiiplay (Destroying the charts worldwide) Wario Ware (also sold 1million) etc.

Who are you really trying to convince here? Are you saying that the hardcore gamers are the ones buying hundreds of thousands of copies of MP8 Raving rabbids and Wiiplay? Those casuals are buying software. You just dont seem to be recognizing it. The hardcore are the ones buying Redsteel (to bad it sucked tho) that sold 1m, Zelda that sold 3m Resident Evil which has sold 500k so far, Metroid Prime and Super Paper Mario (1.25 million sold). There is really crystal clear sales numbers here that show those casuals are buying some software. As well as the hardcore buying software. All of the doom and gloom about casuals not buying down the line is just unfounded.

Ugh, VC... Another pocket drainage.  Nintendo has quite the money making machine with the Wii, despite what some analysts have recently said, I'd definately hold on to their stock.

Most of the major third parties have announce more support for Wii, but any AAA games in development won't see the light of day until mid to late '08 because they waited so long to start.  Once those start to be announced (probably in the new year) that'll spur Wii sales more. Even with the hardcore crowd.

 Also, Nintendo has a the DS as a model on how to sell to the 'casual' crowd, so expect a lot of games that'll keep the non-hardcore buying. WiiFit is only the beginning.

Another market to watch is Korea.  Korea is a huge market no console has ever successfully broke into. Why? Koreans love their MMOs on PCs.   But the Wii is completely different than a PC and early reports is it's popular although I don't think Nintendo is even selling there yet due to supply constraint. If they solve the supply issues and win over Korea, that'll easily make the Wii the most successful console in history.

 Actually, you should sell that stock. To me. Cheap.