Nintendo
With the success of Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo found itself in third
place again. Nintendo had a lot of work to do to regain its top notch
status. Even through the less than stellar performances of its last two
systems, the N64 and Gamecube, it was still selling tons of its handheld
units, including the Gameboy advance in all of its different forms and
then the super popular DS with its innovative touch screen interface.
Even the not so great decisions like going ahead with the crazy Virtual
Boy and its decision to not have DVD or online capabilities with the
Gamecube was not enough o derail the massive company. It still had
influence and power in the community and it was only a matter of time
before Nintendo told the gaming public what it wanted in the next
generation of systems.
It told us that we wanted a unique experience with a new way to play our games. It told us that we wanted motion sensitive controls and that everybody wanted to play games, they just needed to be more accessible to the general public. It also told us that we didn’t care about next generation graphics or high definition picture or DVD playback, that we didn’t even care if it was really online and not just a weird hybrid of Wi-Fi. It told us that we didn’t care about these things, and that we did care about those other things. We read these reports when they were releasing little snippets about their super secret next gen console and we thought they were crazy at the time. They even told us that we didn’t care if the console had a funny sounding name and made us feel silly when we talked about it. And you know what? For the most part, they were right on the money. Everybody forgot about their past mistakes and didn’t worry about the shortcomings of the new system and for months after its launch, you had to be lucky just to find a Wii on the shelf. The reason? It was a blast to play. It was just as fun, if not more than they had promised in the years before it was released and people ate it up. It was new, different and definitely fun. Who cares about all that other stuff, and to top it all off; it was two hundred dollars cheaper.