With all of the “next generation” gaming systems now released (essentially making them no longer “next generation"), there has been quite a bit of discussion concerning how things are likely to shake out for each of the three competitors.  Nintendo, in particular, has generated debate by essentially becoming the wild card this time around.  Everyone seems to be focused as much on what the Wii lacks as on what it adds, and rightly so.

That Nintendo would choose to go the route they have is not entirely surprising.  They have always been somewhat of an oddball player, even when they dominated the market.  Remember, this is the company that decided to make a game about tiny Italian plumbers.  Why they are Italian and not Japanese I don’t know, unless perhaps there is some sort of tradesman shortage and they are forced to import them from other countries.  I would assume it is lucrative work, so those of you trying to decide on a career may wish to look into it.  Mario was, of course, later given an evil doppelganger (because why wouldn’t he have one?) whose reddish nose appearance leads me to believe that he is some sort of drunkard.  I am simply inferring this on my own though, as I have not heard anything official.

Has Wario perhaps been inhaling illegal
substances through his nose?  You tell me.

Anyway, I think the point I was trying to make had to do with Nintendo daring to be different or something.  Honestly, I have forgotten.  But let’s go with that premise, which explains the decision they made to essentially bow out of the technology race for this generation and instead focus on doing what they do best: making games fun.  However bizarre any of Nintendo’s games may seem at first, they are almost always unrelentingly fun to play.  They are also frequently the sort of game that isn’t intimidating to non-hardcore gamers, the kind that you can just pick up and have some fun with almost immediately without needing to read a manual and memorize button combinations that would stump an actual fighter pilot.  This has always been Nintendo’s strength.¹

It is also important to remember that Nintendo is in a different position than the folks over at Sony or Microsoft.  Those guys can afford to put out a product that will lose money on every unit because they intend to make the money up elsewhere.  Sony is diversified over several different areas of business and Microsoft has multiple, very reliable sources of income.  And both see consoles as much more than gaming; they’re intended as weapons in a battle for the living room that neither one wants (or can afford) to lose.

Nintendo, however, is in a very different position.  They are certainly not a small company, but they aren’t in the same league as behemoths like Sony and Microsoft, either (although Nintendo’s American division does share a certain Seattle suburb with the latter²).  Nintendo’s handheld division is certainly a nice profit center for them, and their in-house games are some of the best known titles around, especially with the general public.  So it’s certainly possible that they could afford to subsidize a more expensive console, but it’s a riskier proposition for them than for their competitors.  Nintendo has also generally chosen to forgo using their consoles as anything other than a gaming platform.  They aren’t intended to become the do-everything center of your electronic world, which helps decrease cost and complexity.

But Nintendo’s biggest savings this time around has clearly come at the expense of graphics.  Not only are they not in the same league as the PS3 and Xbox 360, but many reviews so far are comparing Wii launch titles to nice-looking GameCube games.  Perhaps that will improve as time goes on, but likely so will the other platforms.

Nintendo has been down similar roads before, and they have no doubt taken that experience into account in the decisions they made regarding the Wii.  Consider the DS handheld, which debuted to talk that the dual-screen setup was a gimmick which would never catch on.  In hindsight, it has been utilized by many developers to introduce a new twist on games and the DS has gone on to outsell Sony’s PlayStation Portable by significant margins.  The PSP, of course, is much like the PS3 and 360 in this scenario—same old games (often literally), better graphics.

So it appears at this point that Nintendo has made a fairly bold decision going forward, one that seems to have mostly alienated only those hardcore gamers who probably weren’t going to be purchasing Nintendo’s system anyway.  It remains to be seen whether the general public will be dissuaded by the Wii’s lack of graphics prowess, something we won’t presumably know for quite some time.³ But Nintendo has certainly put itself in arguably the strongest position it could have, playing to its strengths and minimizing its weaknesses.  They may have lost the graphics battle, but they could very well still win the console wars.

You may find more of my rantings here and elsewhere on this site.

¹ As a completely anecdotal aside, I have been to the occasional party where a game of drunken Donkey Konga breaks out, but I have yet to attend any sort of festivity where a random Halo tournament has taken place. ↩

² I wonder if they get together for milk and cookies? ↩

³ Wouldn’t it be ironic if someone accidentally smashed their screen bowling with the Wiimote and upgraded to a new HDTV, thus triggering the tipping point for Sony and Microsoft?  I vote yes. ↩