The key to Wii success - Pre-teen girls and OAPs
By Dave Parrack
When the next generation consoles were all originally announced, I’d have put money on the PS3 emerging as the early victor, with its already huge installed user base of PS2 owners. What I didn’t foresee was the Nintendo Wii kicking both the Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360’s asses. So why has this surprise result occurred?
For the past numerous generations of games hardware, gamers have been made up of a core group of people, usually male, and usually between 12 and 30 years of age. The upper age has been gradually increasing as gamers get older, and don’t just abandon their favourite hobby. The PS1 and PS2 had a lot to do with this, increasing the variety of gamers massively. And then along came the Wii.
Unlike both the PS3 and Xbox 360 that cater to the hardcore male gamers who love new technology and are verging on geekdom, the Wii caters for a much wider variety of people. Nintendo sensibly and correctly realised very early on that they could no longer compete with Sony and Microsoft on a level playing field, so instead they changed the goalposts.
According to The Guardian, Nintendo has grabbed a massive share of a market which didn’t even exist before the Wii hit shop shelves. From pre-teen girls to old age pensioners, the Wii has opened up gaming to a whole new wealth of people who before this generation hadn’t expressed the slightest interest in playing games.
It’s meant that the Wii has left the Xbox 360 and PS3 standing, both in terms of sales and demographics. While Microsoft and Sony scrap over the traditional gaming fraternity, Nintendo are harnessing the power of diversity, and making a load of money off the back of it. If only Sega had thought of this first, the Dreamcast could have become the success it had the potential to be.
And the best part of all this? These gamers who have been enticed to have a go by the simplicity of games such as Wii Sports and MySims are likely to stay as gamers for a long time now that they are hooked. So by a simple change of who they’re appealing to, Nintendo have ensured success for years to come. Sony and Microsoft take note.
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October 12th, 2007
[…] Article here […]
October 12th, 2007
go nintendo go go nintendo kick sony in the ass for beting you with the ps2 and ps1 the ps3 will fail
October 13th, 2007
You’re finally getting it, aren’t you?
If anything, Wii’s success is well deserved. Unlike Xbox and PS that only gives people better and better graphics, Wii is a REVOLUTIONARY product. It revolutionizes the market, changes how people do things.
It’s like how iPod completely transformed the way people listen to music - now we have a whole new generation of young music lovers who have never owned a CD. You can complain about how CD has superior sound quality than MP3 (like how PS3/360 has superior than Wii,) and how people will “wake up” one day and go back to CDs. It’s not gonna happen. iPod (and its clone) is here to stay.
Now Wii is transforming the way people play games. Wii is creating a whole new market for itself — and it’s a market that’s totally out of the reach of Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PS. And that’s the staying power of Wii.
Girls and grandmas play Wii. They love Wii. And they tell their other girl/women friends about Wii. That market is 50% of the human population right there, just for Wii to grab. And that market is untouchable by MS or Sony, (certainly not by Xbox nor PS in its current iteration.) And 50% of the human population is a HUGE market.
Do you think that’s gonna stop? NO. Wii will continue to bury PS3 and Xbox 360 in terms of sales, and PS3 and Xbox 360 will be fighting over for and swapping the same market shares (i.e., hardcore guys who are already into games.)
Wii is here to stay… because of women.
October 15th, 2007
Yay (sarcastic) go wii! You have chosen a great audience. Female gamers. Wanna know why sony and xbox don’t focus on that market? Because girls get bored of things quickly. Wii is a novelty until the next fashionable toy comes out. Remember the tamigotchi? A majority female audience. And it died just as quickly. I bought a wii on release. Took it home and played it for 3hours. Boring, unimaginative, 1 trick pony. Next day, took it back and traded it on a 360 with gears of war. What’s that? A game with substance? A goal? A story? A team of developers with ambitions to make it look and play the best they can? I love that game. And soon I will have a ps3. And the darkness, played a demo on 360, getting it on ps3. When the wii is finally put back in its box, on the shelf beside the dreamcast and nintendo go back to making graphically abismal ds games till the staff all slip into a mario-mega-happy-sunshine-paper-crap-3, coma and die. Taking their lack of imagination and ambition with them. This sums em up best “Nintendo-when you can run the race, give up and throw a tantrum”
October 16th, 2007
Wow, way to spin a story and create a misleading topic.
The numbers recently released (for Japan) do shot that Female users are in the Majority as Wii users… by a whopping 51%.
The truth is, the Wii isn’t succeeding because it has a special appeal to females, but because it doesn’t alienate them.
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