Wii Succeed?

About a year and a half ago a little company named Nintendo churned out their latest video game console; the Wii. Now, I grew up with Nintendo, I lived through the first great console war and I saw the NES and the SNES make a company that started out as a playing card company into the predominant force of an industry that most had written off after the crash of the early 80’s. I then proceeded to see said company fall to second and then to third place in the great saga that is the video game console wars.

So how is it that a console that is technologically inferior to the other two major players in the industry has become such a phenomenon? Now I’ll be the first to say that I feel the Wii has an innovative method of control that if more third party developers could implement properly might become industry standard. But if you really want to know what I feel makes the wii a success I’ll tell you in two words…. Casual Gamers. Now, I’m not knocking the Wii (settle down Nintendo fanboys) I own one myself I just feel more limited on what appeals to me that is released for the wii. I personally think that the big N saw a market segment that the other two big players weren’t even thinking about, non traditional gamers. These folks don’t care about leveling up their character or what Master Chief or Dante are doing. They just want to play a game and have some fun possibly with friends they don’t meet over the online gaming service, without having to do too much for that experience. I’m not saying the wii doesn’t have games for us old school gamers, just when compared to the PS3 and the 360; the Wii has a disproportionately large amount of content that attracts people who aren’t really gamers to it.

Case in point, most of my wife’s family thinks I am odd because at 27 I still play video games at the very least 3-4 days a week and own 4 systems. Weirdo that I am, I took the wii on a family trip with all of them a few weeks ago. Now yes my wife and her brother played games as kids but they grew out of it, but, on that trip they all had so much fun playing this thing that I wouldn’t be surprised if we go to visit her brother or her parents and see that they got a wii if they could find one that is. And they were playing Wii sports which is pretty close to about as shallow as a game can get but they loved the hell out of it. It says a lot about a console when a free game that really amounts to a tech demo can make a potential sale of a system. So in short a cadre of simple but typically fun games sell this system to people that think gamers are either angsty teens or people living in their moms’ basement. But isn’t that really how video games started out before they became 60.00 interactive movies? Everything comes full circle.