News.com.au have released an article highlighting the Nintendo Wii’s release come December 7th, and what this may mean for gamers – pro and amateur alike.
The interactive method of game-play is said to bridge the gap between the generations, making the Wii an ideal system for the hardcore gamers, their friends, their parents, and even their grandparents who might never have picked up a game controller in their life.
Swinburne University media and communications lecturer Dr Mark Finn, who heads the university's computer games courses, had the following to say about how the controlling system of the Wii will make it stand out from the more mainstream consoles, the Xbox and the Playstation.
I think Nintendo will be on a winner here. Nintendo always does something a little different and with this they really are changing the way we interact with games. Wireless technology had to get to a point where it's quite seamless before we could use anything like this but the games industry has been pretty conservative and it really takes a company like Nintendo to introduce this type of interactivity to the masses.
However, some doubt has been cast on the Wii truly being able to compete on the scale with the Xbox and Playstation, with their already immense followings. The question comes down to marketing. Will the Wii be able to appeal to the non-gamers which it is designed to be able to please? Or the more experienced gamers who are already well attuned to the playing style of the mainstream consoles on the market? GfK games analyst Daniel Morse indicates that the Wii will need to sell significantly more consoles to successfully rival the other consoles on the market.
The user base (for PlayStation) is already quite large and people are quite familiar with the Xbox brand and now its second incarnation. In this current generation of PlayStation 2 and Xbox, the Nintendo GameCube really didn't figure into the race. It will be down to how Nintendo market the Wii, but Nintendo has gone on the record saying they are targeting a different audience.
The full story can be found at the Courier Mail section of News.com.au at the following link.