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December 24th, 2006, 05:46 Posted By: gunntims0103
news via timesonline
The Nintendo Wii is this year’s must-have games console, and should delight the lucky few who receive one tomorrow morning. But the huge public acclaim for the Wii and its unusual motion-sensing remote control has already ruined Sir Howard Stringer’s Christmas.
Stringer, the Cardiff-born chairman and chief executive of Sony Corporation, is relying on PlayStation 3 to help revive the misfiring Japanese electronics giant that he has run for the past 18 months. This Christmas, however, the Wii is estimated to be outselling the PS3 by more than two to one.
The faltering progress of Sony’s new games machine has been the subject of constant debate, a testament to its commercial importance. Yet the PS3 appears to have been blown away by the early success of a rival that went almost unnoticed before its launch last month.
All the focus has been on Sony’s battle with Microsoft, the software giant that launched its Xbox 360 console a year ago. Nintendo was regarded as a distant No 3 — no longer able to match its rivals’ firepower.
The Wii’s graphics engine is technically less sophisticated. But Nintendo has compensated with the novelty and appeal of its remote control, which allows players to swing at, say, an electronic tennis or golf ball as if playing the game for real. Apart from anything else, the “Wiimote” has generated lots of media coverage.
One report declared the Wii is “the best excuse to get off the couch. Anyone who plays the included Wii Sports will almost certainly come to the same conclusion: this thing is really fun! Seriously, button tapping can’t compete with this system’s intuitive, tactile remote controls that must be swung around”.
Van Baker at Gartner, the research-and-analysis firm, said: “It’s created some excitement around gaming that has not been there in a long time. Nintendo’s titles are more family-friendly and more fun.”
The Wii is also much cheaper, costing $250 (£127) in America, or £179 in Britain. The Sony PS3, which is not yet available in Europe, costs either $500 or $600, depending on the machine’s memory-storage capabilities.
In America, analysts believe Sony is struggling to hit the 1m sales target it has set for the end of the year. In contrast, Nintendo’s Christmas sales look likely to exceed 2m.
Baker said: “My best guess is that Sony has sold 300,000 to 400,000 units. They’ll get about 750,000 units, or a little more. That leaves them with a lot of ground to make up.”
Both firms are struggling with supply shortages, although Sony’s problems are more severe — it was forced to postpone the European launch of PS3 until next year.
“The big challenge for Sony is that PS3s are so hard to get,” said Baker. “To a large degree, many people are buying something else. Sony is going to have to battle to retain the market share that they’ve had historically. They’ve given a two Christmas advantage to Microsoft, and a one Christmas advantage to Nintendo.”
The number of consoles in the market is important because it provides the platform for lucrative game sales, the more profitable end of the $27 billion- a-year industry. Sony and Microsoft both lose money on console sales, but experts believe Nintendo makes a decent profit on the Wii.
The early sales figures tell only part of the story. There is ample evidence that there is more buzz and excitement surrounding the Wii. For example, dedicated gamers have been camping out to queue up for the limited stocks available, and forming online discussion groups to help track them down. In the UK, Hitwise, the internet-data firm, has reported that Nintendo Wii has suddenly become the most searched-for gadget, quickly overtaking Apple’s Ipod.
“Nintendo seems to have stolen the high ground in terms of playability and entertainment value,” said Paul Jackson at Forrester Research. “Nintendo seems to be surfing this wave of public interest and this idea of accessibility that they started with Nintendogs and these brain games.”
Nintendogs, Brain Age and other similar “brain-training” titles are games designed for the Nintendo DS, the hand-held console aimed at a broader audience than just hard-core gamers. They are very different from traditional shooting and racing games.
Dawn Paine, Nintendo UK marketing director, said the Wii followed the DS in trying to offer new types of games and a new interface. Brain- training games brought in older players while Nintendogs attracts young girls. She said Nintendo was trying to do something more than the same old stuff with this year’s technology. “For us the technology is not the main element,” she said. “We felt it was crucial to stir up the market and offer this paradigm shift.”
Jackson agreed: “Sony and Microsoft are talking to the converted. Nintendo is trying to attract people who used to play games or who have never played games — people who don’t consider themselves gamers.”
In doing so, Nintendo has opted out of the technological “arms race” which previously characterised much of the competition in the games industry.
Microsoft and Sony have broader strategic goals for their consoles, hoping their machines can be the entertainment hub of the digital home — a device that can also store music, photos and videos.
One of the reasons the PS3 is so expensive, and so late to market, is because Sony is using it to deploy Blu-Ray, the technology it favours for high-definition DVDs. As a company focused on electronic gaming, Nintendo has no such ambitions.
It is not without its own problems. Some early buyers of the Wii have found that the wrist strap supplied with the remote control broke too easily, in some cases causing the device to fly out of their hands. Nintendo has offered customers stronger replacement straps, but an American law firm has already filed a class-action suit.
Neither the lawsuit nor the problem with the wrist straps looks likely to stop the Wii from outselling its predecessor, the Gamecube, but it is far too early to count Sony out. The estimated 90m players of PlayStation 2 provide a huge pool who could play their existing games on the new, more advanced machine. And Sony’s strong recovery in the flat-screen TV market shows the brand’s enduring power.
However, Microsoft is hoping to end the year with 10m Xbox 360 consoles in the marketplace, and is working on the launch next year of a follow-up to the successful Halo 2 game. The enthusiastic reception given to the Wii is a reminder that it is not always the best technology that wins battles in consumer electronics. Stringer has his work cut out.
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