Wii kicks @ss

Wii kicks @ss

The early success of Nintendo's Wii and it's portable brother the DS comes as a big and pleasant surprise to myself, and perhaps many of you out there. Given their outrageously innovative ambition and major focus on interaction instead of graphics, I thought that Nintendo was making a move that will probably land it a trip to gaming heaven in the console world besides it's nemesis Sega. However, that's quite the opposite. Instead, it's new gaming machine boast the highest number of units sold out of the 3 major next gen console releases. Beating both the Xbox 360 and PS3 in sales durring launch numbers. This means that we have a 3rd serious contender in the console gaming wars, and that's good news to all gaming consumers world wide.

Sony's spokesman Dave Karraker, said the Wii did not belong in the same category as the more powerful PlayStation 3. "Wii could be considered an impulse buy more than anything else," he said. He added, the Wii is attracting newcomers while while the PlayStation will be the console of choice for committed gamers.

I, personally, think that Wii's early success are due to 3 reasons:

1. The price is right. At $249.99 MSRP, it's launch price is over half that of it's competitor.
2. Innovative gameplay. Instead of the over 20 year standard of controller players using a controller, Wii gamers get to physically interact with thier games. This feature attracts many younger gamers and older gamers that do not have the time or neccessary skills to play games such as Metal Gear or Halo.
3. Killer launch title. Let's face it Perfect Dark: Zero and Resistence aren't really launch titles that exposes players to the "next generation" of gaming. In contrast, Nintendo releases the Wii with one of it's biggest gaming franchise, The Legend of Zelda. Which is an excellent game, and reason enough for many to warrant the purchase of the Wii.

While it's still very early to declare any winner in this next generation of console wars, given the success of the DS(which many were very skeptical about as well), the future is looking bright for Nintendo.