Over the past few months Nintendo has been enjoying great success and popularity with the introduction of the Wii. To me, this success is mainly due to the innovative Wii-mote which explores a whole new level of interactivity with games and takes gaming in a whole new direction. This has got me wondering though. Would Nintendo be enjoying the same level of success and popularity if they had released the Wii-mote as just a peripheral for the Gamecube? Could Nintendo not achieve most, if not basically all, of the same functionality as the Wii, with a Gamecube and Wii-mote combo? If Nintendo couldn't have achieved similar success/results without introducing the Wii with the Wii-mote, then what other factors are contributing to the Wii's success?

I have to say no, they would not have been successful if the Wiimote was only a peripheral. By releasing a new system they get to clean consumers palate and force developers to take advantage of the new functionality.

No. Not at all. Name one successful peripheral, let alone one that completely revitalized a console. There aren't. Because of a whole host of problems. 1. It will only support games that work with it, and who asside from Nintendo would want to make a game for a system, and a dead system at that, in which only those that bought a peripheral could use it. 2. Momentum. A new console that does amazing things is news, a new peripheral for a dead console isn't. 3. There's also Mii's, Virtual Console and all the online stuff Really, if Nintendo released the Wiimote peripheral for the Cube, it would have see very poor sales and only have the support of two or three games

So it basically boils down to consumer's and developer's perceptions of Nintendo releasing a new console? From a technical standpoint the Gamecube can function at similar levels to the Wii. Didn't the Gamecube also have some sort of unused online capability too?

Nope. The stigma of the Nintendo and Gamecube name would be too hard to overcome. People associate Nintendo with Mario, teh kiddeh, and hardcore Nintendo fans. Not casual, approachable and a console for everyone. Why do you think they are emphasizing the Wii brand instead of Nintendo? It is officially called the "Wii", not the "Nintendo Wii". Why do you think they used Miis instead of Mario and friends in Wii Sports? Mario isn't prominent in any Wii commercials and marketing .at all They even have commercials airing now emphasizing the Miis, their newest cash cow. When you say "Wii", people think of the "Wii". Not Nintendo. Not Gamecube. The Wii.

Actually, if you go back to E3 2004, Nintendo said that they were planning a peripheral for Gamecube that would increase the life expectancy to 'ten years'. What ended up happening, is that they realized not everyone would be able to play the games (they wouldn't all buy the peripheral). In the same speech, Nintendo said they would not make a traditional (solely) graphically enhanced console in the future...obviously they ended up scrapping the add-on philosophy and putting better design, innovative feautres and slightly better graphics into Wii as a successor console to Gamecube.

The same question could be asked of any console. Why not just add a peripheral that increases the power or changes the format of the console? Afterall, it's been tried before. The Sega Cd, Sega 32x and the 64DD all offered what a new console could do.

No way. There are lots of reasons actually - but here are some: 1/ The GC isn't actually powerful enough to handle these "input" calculations & game logic (the Wii *is* much more powerful than a GC guys - the CPU cache differences alone determine this) 2/ The GC has a poor perception 3/ Its larger, purple - and doesn't support wireless (out of the box). A lot of people buy the Wii 'cos they like its size, look, compact nature. 4/ Sensor bar / port?? Even if the Wii came out with a "standard" controller as the norm, and the Wiimote as an extra - it wouldn't be anywhere as successful. The Wiimote completely changes the interface, and usage nature of the machine. Developers are also forced to (pretty much) use it in some form - rather than take the "easy" road of a pure port, including non-Wiimote controls.

I'll agree with the others in this post. Nintendo needed a 'relaunch' and hit the nail on the head with the Wii. When you get down to it, the Wii is a great looking, souped up (yet low voltage) GameCube with a creative control interface and some extra nice features (Miis, built-in wireless networking, VC). Not that there's anything wrong with that.

What's most impressive (and I think people overlook this) about the Wii is not the fact that it's successful. It's the fact that if it wasn't successful (even if it was only slightly so), then Nintendo would have found itself in a very bad position. That's what so great about the Wii (or well, Nintendo actually), that they were willing to take a risk. I think that might also be why the Wii is not all that powerful, and the fact that it actually makes profit for Nintendo. If it fails, at least they still make a small profit. Course, now they're just madly making money from it. I read somewhere on here that if the Wii was $200, it would still make a profit for Nintendo of about $20 (course... I assume the guy who posted this converted the numbers to American dollars and did it right and all). So that means the Wii makes for Nintendo around $70 per console. If we assume that's the case WW, then at 6 million units... Nintendo just made 420 million dollars. I wish I were that lucky. But all in all, they were lucky that it worked out. If it didn't, then I guess a new console would have come out a lot quicker than a Wii2 would. We could also ask if the Wii did have better graphics and better everything, and cost even $400, would it still be doing as well as it is now? I can't honestly say. I think it would still be a player in the market, and the three consoles would probably end up being closer in WW sales during the next few years. As it is, the Wii is just an affordable console, and also is liked by more than the normal gamers... My father for instance. So as it is, those who don't need the great graphics for their games don't mind paying for it, because it's so cheap. Remove that, and you probably remove some of the Wii's sales.