Why the Wii Wins

As I was shopping in my local Best Buy store I noticed a demo station for the Wii and I stopped to take a look. I smiled as I watched a demo directed at both children and families and amazingly enough, both boys and girls. The demo starts with a mother sitting down with the Wii remote and writing a note to someone using the Wii’s internet mode, then the daughter comes in and the mother and daughter start to play a game, they are eventually joined by the father and son and all four family members are playing the Wii. The demo shows the entire family having fun playing the Wii. It also shows a group of girls playing games on the Wii and a girl and a boy playing the Wii together. Here is where the success of the Wii lies. While the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 were getting attention from the game industry insiders that they had faster, better, sleeker game play, Nintendo was quietly doing what would guarantee huge sales. They were making the Wii look like fun for EVERYONE! Not just the hard core gamer who the majority of the industry blindly insists are the REAL gamers.

When the Wii was first discussed within the video game industry Nintendo was considered a bit foolish for not implementing the dramatic upgrades that were being implemented by Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s Playstation 3 as Next Generation machines. The trouble with thinking only about the technology is that both Sony and Microsoft forgot that the market could be much broader than the gamers who play the shooters and are driven by technology. They forgot that video games didn’t just need to be better looking and have more bells and whistles, they should also be fun.

When Nintendo designed the Wii they remembered the people who just want the games to be fun, maybe even dorky, but always fun. This was played out by the massive sales numbers for the Wii since its release. And this past Christmas, it was almost magical if one appeared on the shelves, they were flying out the door so fast.

Personally, I wanted a Wii for the same reasons I wanted an Atari 2600 when I was a kid. It looked like a really fun game console that I could play with my family. And it is.