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Leaving aside the the wacky new name of “Wii,” Mike Musgrove speculates at the Washington Post that Nintendo may be on to something with their upcoming video game console - it’s sole objective is actually playing games:
It’s almost a radical thought in the video game industry these days: What if a new game console were actually just about the games — and not about having a zillion other multimedia features?That’s the question posed by Nintendo’s new console, scheduled for debut later this year. The Wii — pronounced “we” — does not feature scorchingly advanced technology, compared with its rivals, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 3. And, unlike the competition, the device does not push a DVD replacement technology or strive to be the living room’s all-purpose media center.
It’s almost as if Nintendo is sometimes in a different industry than Microsoft and Sony.
Maybe it’s the game industry?
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May 10th, 2006 at 2:57 PM
[...] In a refreshing counterpoint, Nintendo, as expected, stuck entirely to the game business in their Wii game console press event: Asked why Nintendo didn’t release pricing and availability information for the Wii (the company said only that the product will be available in the fourth quarter of 2006), Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo executive vice president for sales and marketing, told CNET News.com that the company isn’t interested in diverting attention from the roster of 27 Wii games and the controller system it’s showing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this week. [...]
June 7th, 2006 at 7:39 AM
[...] Once again Nintendo confounds the conventional wisdom in the game console business. Not only is their forthcoming game console, the Wii, low priced and only designed for gaming, but they don’t plan on losing money in launching it: Japanese game software and console maker Nintendo Co. said on Wednesday it is unlikely to lose much money on the launch of its new “Wii” video game console, in sharp contrast to rival Sony Corp., which expects a hefty loss on the debut of its PlayStation 3. And Microsoft whose Xbox 360 is bleeding red ink. “We can’t promise we won’t have even a one-yen loss, but we are not expecting an enormous loss,” Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told a news conference. “It is a strange notion that a game console always leads to mounting losses in the beginning.” [...]
October 5th, 2006 at 9:50 PM
[...] You may recall that while Sony and Microsoft are going to fight it out at the high end with expensive high tech machines that double as home entertainment centers, the Nintendo Wii is a comparatively inexpensive console with aspirations for gaming only. It also doesn’t hurt the bottom line that Nintendo is planning to sell its Wii gear for a profit, unlike Sony and Microsoft. Filed under Coopetition, Xbox, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo [...]