Nintendo’s Virtual Console – the Wii’s trump card

June 7th, 2006, 23:05 Posted By: wraggster

IGN carries a good op-ed piece this week on the importance of the Virtual Console to the overall success of the Nintendo Wii.

Whilst it was clearly the innovative Wii controller that wowed the E3 crowds, some of whom were patient enough to wait in line for four hours to get their mitts on the thing, there is still much, much more to the Wii, which Nintendo will be shouting loudly about over the coming months.

The WiiConnect24 service which enables your Wii to effectively be "always on", just like your DS in sleep mode, will also enable Nintendo to deliver demos and content to your living room (and to your DS via the Wii) whilst you are sound asleep.

Thus in one fell swoop eliminating the need for overpriced 'Official' print magazines with their 'Official' demo discs (ie only thing of value) stuck to the cover. That era is well and truly over. Which can only be a good thing, for both the forests of the earth and for the young and impressionable gamers of the earth. Today's announcement that Future Publishing's long-serving chief executive, Greg Ingham has handed in his notice, is surely testament to this.

We digress. As well as the Wii's amazing control method and WiiConnect24, it's the Virtual Console that SPOnG is truly excited about and the IGN piece hits the nail on the head: "Of the added functionality embedded in the Wii, however, nothing provides more curiosity or true potential... as the Virtual Console. The possibility of downloading nearly every classic game from our younger years spanning every major system is awesome, and the added interest Nintendo has shown in ushering smaller developers into the next generation through smaller-budget downloadable games holds limitless potential."

There are clear similarities between the Virtual Console concept and Xbox Live Arcade, the main difference being the fact that Microsoft's backlog of classic arcade games relies purely on third-parties, rather than white-hot first party content in Nintendo's case. The amazing number of high-quality titles from the last twenty years of Nintendo's history should also ensure that the Wii has a bolstered launch line-up, with Virtual Console titles on offer as well as sixteen (so far) superb new titles we've already seen.

The Virtual Console should also help Nintendo (and it's many vociferous fans) ride out those inevitable 'drought' periods, especially in the first year following the autumn/fall and Xmas/holiday seasons after launch. As IGN outlines: "the backlog is so immense.... Even if Nintendo released a new game every week (four-five games a month ), it'd still only need 52 games a year; an order that could be filled with NES titles alone. That's marketing power that only comes with years of consistent product."

As the IGN piece concludes: "Xbox may have a few strong titles in the mix right now, but all Nintendo has to do is launch a marketing campaign that showcases as small as the top five titles on every previous system and the backlog already blows away the Live Arcade list as it stands. How do you compete with two decades of the biggest names in gaming? The answer is, you simply can't."

We can't wait for that marketing campaign to roll-out, and we'll be sure to bring you news on how Nintendo are going to play it as soon as we get it.

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