Pellegri said:Boston Globe has a good story on how the Wii will/won't be a success.
With a relatively low-powered computer chip, an innovative motion-based controller, and a comparatively slender $250 price tag, the Wii (pronounced "we") is designed to attract millions of buyers put off by the high cost and complexity of Xbox and PS3. The Wii is also cheap to assemble. The Xbox ($300-$400) and PS3 ($500-$600) sell for hundreds less than it costs to build them, forcing Sony and Microsoft to swallow hundreds of millions in losses that they must make up on sales of games. In contrast, Harrison said, the Wii's sale price is only a little higher than its manufacturing cost, and that by next year, Nintendo will make a profit on every unit sold. Sony and Microsoft are huge companies that can rely on other profit centers to soak up the red ink. Not so at Nintendo, said Harrison. "We're only a video game company, so we don't have anywhere to hide our losses."
In the fight for gaming supremacy, however, it looks like Nintendo brought a knife to a gunfight. Because of its lower computing power, the Wii can't match the lavish 3-D graphics so popular with fans of first-person shooting games. Nintendo's machine doesn't even support high-resolution graphics as its rivals do.
The Wii's chief technical advance is a unique wireless two-piece game controller. With help from a motion-sensing chip developed at Norwood's Analog Devices Inc., the Wii controller lets users play games by moving their hands and arms.
I think the writer from the Boston Globe needs to exercise more effort in his/her reporting, or at least take the initiative to understand the gaming industry rather than make visceral judgments. Nintendo has specifically marketed the Wii to the casual gaming demographic rather than the hardcore gamer/hi-def community; there's a much broader audience when you think that the number of people in the U.S. who don't own hi-def TV sets still outweigh those who do. To claim that this strategy is fallacious or bound to fail ("Nintendo brought a knife to a gunfight") fails to show comprehension of this evidently clear-cut strategy. Nintendo and the 360/PS3 are on two completely separate ends of the spectrum.
Furthermore, one only need to look at the handheld platform to see how "lavish 3-D graphics" don't equate to instant success. Nintendo's efforts with the GB Advance and DS completely mock what Sony did with the PSP -- the total number of handheld units sold between the two giants isn't even close. In broad generalizations, Nintendo succeeds with innovation rather than cutting edge technologies. Even a simpleton can comprehend that.
I'm not a Wii-fan, I don't even own one, but I've been a gamer for so long that I've seen my share of lazy reporting. The world needs less white noise in our media, driven largely by people who don't know what the hell they are talking about.
P.S. This has NOTHING to do with this thread, but well I saw the Boston Globe segment so I just HAD to comment.
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