I've been guilty of making a lot of pointless flamebait posts lately. I fully admit that. I've come dangerously close to becoming a troll on here, if I'm not already. My posts have been lame and not well thought out. I haven't put a lot of effort into my posts or have really even had reasonable things to say in my posts for awhile now. I'm going to attempt to change that with this post though. I made a promiseinanother topic that I was going to make a well-constructed, well thought outtopic for my next post. I am not going to flame anyconsole or gameat all this time. I am going to give legitimate reasons why I believe the Wii has been a huge success thus far.
Reasons why Wii has been so successful so far
1.MoreMarketing than Gamecube by far. I honestly think the marketing for Wii has been phenomenal. I have seen ads for Wii on some of the biggest networks on television on a fairly regular basis. It seems like Nintendo is marketing this console much more than they did Gamecube. This can only do nothing but help it. Yes, Gamecube had ads too, but from my experience, it seems Wii advertising is more prevalent than Gamecube.
2. The type of Marketing. Marketing alone usually doesn't help a product unless the marketing has some sort of impact on the consumer. Wii's marketing campaign has done just that. It has been simple but effective. "Wii would like to play" ads have been more of an eye grabber than most of the Gamecube marketing.The GC's "Who are you?" ads didn't really show how or in what way the GC stood out from the Xbox or PS2. Wii's marketing has shown exactly what Wii is all about.
3. The broad audience Wii is marketed towards.Laugh if you will, but one of the very 1st Wii ads appeared during "Dancing with the Stars". I remember reading posts on here saying how ridiculous it was for Nintendo to advertiseduring a "heavily female watched" show. It turns out this was ingenious. "Dancing with the Stars" aside, Nintendo is truly adverting its hearts out to all sorts of gamers and non-gamers alike.
4. The buildup of hype over a long period of time. The hype surrounding the Wii began in E305 when it was still codenamed "Revolution". There was mystery surrounding the console. Nintendo had let on that they were working on a vastly different controller, but no one (other than Nintendo)had any clue exactly what the controller would entail or what it would be like. There was a lot of speculation and talk about "Revolution". Nintendo began the hype machine with its subtle approach to keep the "Revolution" controller a mystery. Then at TGS that year, Nintendo finally decided to show the controller for the 1st time. Nintendo only showed off a few minigame type games (which laterbasically transformed into the Wii controller game"Wii play").There was just enough shown to excite gamingjounalists.Therewas a lot of controversy on how the controller looked or how anyone could use such a device to play games with.
But most of the feedback from journalists was positive innature. The slow buildup of hype over the months began to rise much faster now that the controller was shown.Other than gaming journalists, the gaming public still didn't have aclue how the controller really worked in a gaming environment. So, other than how the controller and nunchuck looked, there was still great mystery about how it worked. Sure, gaming journalists attempted to explainhow it worked, and the public knew it was going to be motion-sensitive at this point, butgamersweren'table to see it in action to really get the entire idea down. Therewas still much speculation. And becauseof this, the hype just grew and grew and grew.
Then before E306, there was an announcement that stunned everyone. The codename "Revolution" was changed permanently to "Wii". That caused a flood of controversy, and many jokes arose from the name. Nintendo knew exactly what they were doing though. They wanted a unique name to go with a unique consolecontroller. Most people seemed to hate the name (and several people thought Nintendo had completely gone off of their rockers), but even so, this name change sparked more hype about what "Wii" was going to be like. It got people talking, which is exactly what Nintendo wanted. Nintendo wanted as much focus on Wii as they could. They succeeded in getting more people to talk about Wii than Xbox 360 and PS3.
Then E306 happened. Nintendo succeeded. There was a huge line of people wanted to try out Wii. Nintendo had accomplished what it had set out to do before E306...
A. Build up hype over a long period of time.
B.Keep some mystery behind the Wii controller up until E306.
C. Change the name to Wii to get people talking more about Wii than the other 2 consoles.
After E306, the hype machine exploded on the internet. Since a heck of a lot more people tried out Wii than Xbox 360 and PS3 at E306, those experiences with Wii were relayed back to friends, family, etc. Word spread about Wii faster than Xbox 360 and PS3 as a result.
5. The Price. The $249.99 price tag for Wii seemed to sit well with most people because it included a free game to show off the Wii remote's capabilities. Even though this price was higher than earlier Nintendo consoles, it seemed legitimately fair to many people after seeing $399.99 and $599.99 for the other 2 consoles. Wii was 150$ cheaper than the other 2 consoles. Couple this with there being more hype for Wii in general. Sure, there was still some controversy that the Wii price was still too high, but it was short-lived for the most part.
6.The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess at launch. Nintendo wasn't going to allow the same marketing mistakes that Gamecube had this go round. Gamecube had "Luigi's Mansion" at launch. That sold fairly well, but it is definitely not nearly aspopular a game as the Zelda series. Nintendo had to make a decision that would tick off Gamecube owners. They knew it was only going to help Wii sales though. Nintendo made the decision to delay Twilight Princess on Gamecube and have it release a few weeks after its Wii counterpart.Nintendo also touted that Twilight Princess was a more engaging experience on Wii.Also, Nintendo said that Twilight Princess was the biggest and best Zelda game by far. This got the hype machine really rolling on that game. Also, showing how the game worked with the Wii remote and nunchuk also helped peak gamer interest.
7. The Wii remote and nunchuk. Many people welcomed a new way to play console games. Wii Sports being a free game with a Wii purchase helped show gamers what Wii was all about. For console gaming, it was a new, unique way of playing games. Nintendo has touted The Wii remote and nunchuk to be an "easier" way to play games. This has helped get non-gamers into gaming as well.
8. The Virtual Console and backwards compatability. When Nintendo announced that over 20 years of Nintendo games would be available to play on Wii, this sparked even more hype. Then Nintendo annouced that other games from other older consoles would be available for VC downloadsas well. GC games are backwards compatible. And with Super Smash Bros. Melee being the most popular Gamecube game, this helped fuel the fire even more.
9. Mii.I've read posts on here that make fun of Miis and the limited creation system of making them. Well, as it turns out, Miis are a popular part of Wii. A lot of people havemade caricatures of their favorite celebrities, family, themselves, etc. And being able to port your own Miis into certain Wii games didn't hurt the hype.
10.The size of Wii. Now, in America, this may not make much of a difference to gamers. But in Japan, this does make a difference to an extent. A lot of the living quarters in Japan have a lot less space than in America. This is just a fact. Wii being much, much smaller than PS3 is only helpful in Japan.
11. Many people were ready for a different game controlling mechanism. Nintendo has been innovative in creating control devices for consoles.A lot of what they have created has been utilized by other companies. Whether it is the D-pad, analog (yes, I know they did not create analog, but it was the 1st well-controlled analog console controller), shoulder buttons, etc, they have sought to innovate the industry. Gamecube controller did not distinguish itself from the N64 controller. This sure did not help Nintendo in any way. The GC controller really didn't distinguish itself from the PS2 or Xbox controller. In fact, many people seemed to believe it was worse than the PS2 controller. This was unexpected for Nintendo, who had previously innovated its controllers each gen. They really didn't do this with Gamecube.They more than made up for this with Wii. And this only helps. Xbox 360 controller is comfortable and has a better button layout than the Xbox controller, but it is not a different controlling mechanism. PS3 controller lost rumble and is basically the same as the PS2 controller (except for tilt control).
Before Wii, controlling games on consoles was basically the same process ever since dual-shock. And before dual-shock, the N64 controller had everything the Xbox and PS2 controllers had except for the extra analog stick. So, for the past several years before Wii, the controllers themselves might have had different button layouts and such. But the controlling mechanism was basically the same. People were ready for a change. That is where Wii comes in. The drastic change was at the right time and right place.
12. Online gaming. Nintendo has been saying online is coming to Wii games. It is here. The hype for online has helped fuel the Wii sales. And now that it is here, this helps all that much more.
13. The continued success of 1st party games fuels the hype. The success of 1st party Nintendo games has always been a factor. Even with the tame sales of Gamecube, the 1st party software was a huge success for the console. The hype for SSBB is enormous, as is the announcement of an online Mario Kart title coming. Super Mario Galaxy as well.
Ok, there are the reasons. One can argue that the Wii graphics are poor. Graphics havenever mattered. Look at Nintendo's handhelds. They have beaten all other handhelds on the market throughout the years. And throughout the years, there have been handhelds that are far superior graphically than Nintendo handhelds. It doesn't matter. Gameplay is what is important.
One can argue that Wii's success doesn't make sense because "good" games are not here. I guess it is all a matter of opinion. Some can argue that the games aren't great. And others can argue that Wii has plenty of good games if you know where to look. Then there is the Virtual Console which is a big success. There is always something to play on Wii.
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