The Wii is a marvelous device. Even though it’s constantly under fire by many in the gaming community that consider themselves "too hardcore" to bother themselves with "underpowered hardware," it doesn’t seem to matter. Even I’ve been surprised by it all. I always expected the Wii to take a second-place spot behind the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 — on paper, it just seems so underwhelming. Is Nintendo the least bit fazed by this? Not at all.
Nintendo continues to laugh all the way to the bank as Wii shortages continued through yet a second Christmas season, and there’s still proof that people just can’t seem to get enough of what critics compare to discount-bin hardware with yesterday’s technology. Still, it marches on, oblivious to the criticism… and why wouldn’t it?
The control scheme may be starkly different, but the Wii isn’t exactly forging new territory on the hardware front. The PlayStation 2 proved long ago that having the most cutting edge hardware isn’t necessarily the ticket to taking home the biggest prize. Though easily outmatched visually for several years by the Xbox and GameCube (before developers figured out how to optimize the code for it), it came out on top. Hell, it’s still on top.
So why does analyst Michael Pachter seem to believe that the era of the Wii is near about over? He points to continued price cuts (and high profile games) from the competition to erode Nintendo’s lead. There is no doubt that price cuts do spark interest in other consoles, but it’s not exactly like Nintendo can’t do the same. So what is a competitor to do?
More of this, after the jump.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Entries (RSS)