Console Post of the Week
I usually talk about data in this post, but for once, let's use our imagination instead of numbers.I think it's interesting to consider what this console market would look like, right now, if Nintendo hadn't created the Wii. Let's imagine that the Wii doesn't exist, and that Nintendo exited the console market after the Gamecube.
Is it possible that instead of all these magazine articles talking about how the gaming demographic is expanding rapidly, that instead we'd be seeing articles about the "great gaming crash?"
It's not unfair to argue that the 360 and the PS3 would have higher sales, to some degree, if the Wii didn't exist, but their price would still be an obstacle. Microsoft and Sony are doing everything they can to ignore the hard-wired fact that consoles are a $299 market. It doesn't matter if you include a microwave, a snowblower, and a Hemi--it's still a $299 market.
Take the Wii's seven million units in six months out of the console base, though, and you could make a serious argument that console gaming is floundering, at least in terms of the rate of adoption. Tell me this: how many people believed that the Wii would outsell the 360 and the PS3 combined?
Here's your answer: absolutely no one. I was tremendously positive after trying out the Wii at E3 (thanks Erik), and totally negative on the PS3 (price--that was dead solid obvious), but even I had no clue that the Wii could turn into such a craze.
Sure, some people now say "Well, of course it's selling like crazy--it's $249!" In a word: bullshit. None of those people were saying that before the console was released--almost everyone was questioning Nintendo's ability to survive in the console market.
So take out the Wii. Have a console at $399 and one at $599. Have them selling, combined, about 600,000 units worldwide in April. You know what the story would be?
Next-Gen is dead.
There would be analysts freaking out everywhere, talking about the upcoming Gaming Ice Age. It would be the end of days. Newsweek would have a magazine cover with 360's and PS3's being buried in the desert, along with Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges.
I think that's what we'd be reading about now if the Wii wasn't around. So for all these high-paid analysts who claim that the Wii succeeding is bad for the gaming industry, I say think again. Nintendo is saving everyone's ass until Microsoft and Sony stop kidding themselves and price their consoles for the mass market.
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