Christopher Null from The Working Guy blog made an interesting point this week. The Nintendo Wii is incredibly popular, but how long will that popularity last if the games that are released for the Wii stink? On game ranking sites, games for the Nintendo Wii consistently get lower scores overall than games made for other systems, and the vast majority of Wii games get poor reviews.
What's going on with the Wii? A quick perusal of the games available for the Nintendo Wii shows that there is a clear marketing strategy at work. Leverage hot brands and turn them into Wii games as quickly as possible. This isn't a new strategy by any means in the video game market, but apparently, quality is suffering for the Wii as a result of this strategy.
I can't blame Nintendo and the game developing companies. Slap the name Wii on just about anything these days and it will sell, but for how long? Eventually, consumers are going to demand more in terms of quality games. The demand will slow and there will be a need for quality over quantity.
What do you think? Will the Wii make it in the long term?
I find this fascinating. I'm in the 'new market' segment and just got a Wii. Never owned a PS2, GameCube, etc. So the complaints that the 'gamers' are raising that it's just the same games from PS2, etc. fall flat on me. It seems to me that the 'active' games that Wii has found huge new adoption with are going in a whole new direction than the old school gaming industry. I would also say that the simplicity of entry is greatly appealing to non-gamers who are somewhat intimidated by the complexity of the 'great games' we're supposedly missing out on.
I think Nintendo has stumbled onto a market-expanding moment and that the game has just changed. (pun-intended)
Posted by: DaveG | May 6, 2008 10:08 AM | Permalink to Comment