The Nintendo Wii remains a force to be reckoned with in the video game world and new survey statistics along with new revenue streams suggest that Nintendo has still has something up it's sleeve.
New survey data from Lottay, an online wish-list and gift giving site, shows that the Wii and its associated accessories will regain momentum during this year's holiday season.
The Wii and Wii-related gear were wished for twice as much as the Sony PS3 and Xbox 360 combined though 38 percent of people wanted something other than products--namely cash, and in one case, Satan (I assume for a visit, not as a full-time family member.)
And while a wish, or a request for a gift, is no guarantee that a product will actually sell, there is a dearth of exciting gifts for this holiday season, leaving room for the Wii and other less-new products to be successful.
Just a few weeks ago, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello commented that the "Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had anticipated" but Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing Cammie Dunaway was extremely positive about the current sales and the future growth.
But, the focus in the U.S. remains on selling more titles and accessories, not branching out into additional services such as we've seen with Microsoft's Xbox Live, which provides access to Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm through the console.
Services supporting the Wii are much more sophisticated in Nintendo's home country of Japan, where the company previously launched an advertising program to turn family time into a commercial endeavor and a catering channel that lets users order food from a variety of vendors directly through the console, delivered directly to their front door.
This weekend Nintendo added to the Wii's variety of interactive offerings, with a paid video download service for Japan. "Theater no Ma" will offer a range of movies, anime and other paid content from providers including Walt Disney and Sesame Workshop.
Downloading rental content onto game consoles and set-top boxes has been common in the U.S for awhile, but the reason this service could prove meaningful in Japan is because Nintendo researchers previously found that 87 percent of Wii users use the console on the biggest screen in the house, which is still the one in the living room.
As market research firm NPD Group prepares to release sales data data for the U.S. game market next Thursday, other analysts have predicted a return to double-digit growth after six months of decline.
According to Edge Online, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter and Electronic Entertainment Design and Research's Jesse Divnich expect monthly software sales of $750 million (up 21 percent year over year) and $715 million (up 16 percent), respectively. And while these are still just estimates, it shows that consumers are still willing to spend on high-quality new games.
EEDAR's top 10 forecast:
Halo 3: ODST (360, Microsoft) - 1,800,000
Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) - 500,000
The Beatles: Rock Band (Wii, EA) - 350,000
The Beatles: Rock Band (360, EA) - 325,000
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 (360, Activision) - 300,000
Madden NFL 10 (360, EA) - 275,000
Batman: Arkham Asylum (360, Eidos) - 250,000
Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3, Eidos) - 250,000
Guitar Hero 5 (360, Activision) - 250,000
Guitar Hero 5 (Wii, Activision) - 200,000
One interesting note on the top 10 list is that it contains only seven titles, which shows the importance of supporting multiple consoles.
Despite some recent troubles, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has predicted that Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii could each sell 10 million copies this fiscal year. Considering estimates that more than 2 million copies of Wii Sports Resort have already sold, the company should be able to achieve those targets without too much difficulty.
What's less clear is if Nintendo can maintain margins to meet sales goals, or if it will resort to dropping prices to hit the big numbers.
Nintendo has consistently introduced good games and interesting accessories and kept both at price points that feel acceptable to pay even in the down economy.
But Nintendo's pricing strategy won't necessarily continue to work as consoles like the Xbox 360 move heavily into digital distribution, allowing for on-demand, variable pricing that can easily shift sales in real time.
The new Xbox 360 Games On Demand service is set to launch on Tuesday and will offer a library of downloadable older-title games. The big issue is not about consumer acceptance, but of disk space--as most players don't have the available hard drive room to accommodate a huge number of new games.
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Studies that look at the effects of video games on kids have been mostly positive of late, with a focus on safe virtual worlds, and devices such as the Nintendo Wii that encourage physical activity.
The new report "Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children's Learning and Health" (PDF) urges educators as well as government and the health care industry to look beyond the stereotype of video games as harmful.
Video games have been shown to help children learn vital foundational and 21st-century skills, including:
- Content (from rich vocabulary to science to history)
- Skills (from literacy to math to complex problem-solving)
- Creation of artifacts (from videos to software code)
- Systems thinking (how changing one element affects relationships as a whole)
The Nintendo Wii has already changed the face of video games and recently started breaking new ground in advertising and social gaming. With the recent launch of the Wii-no-ma service in Japan, Nintendo has figured out how to make gaming a family event.
According to Cyber Media Japan, Nintendo researchers found that 87 percent of Wii users use it on the biggest screen in the house, which is still the one in the living room.
Accordingly, Nintendo believes that new forms of advertising--especially those encouraging togetherness in viewing ads and watching videos on the Wii--are bound to make money.
I didn't think much of the initial announcements, but after talking to a friend in Japan, I realized that Nintendo may have figured out how to become the entertainment consolidator that so many other companies have been gunning for.
Cable companies, Tivo, Yahoo, and AOL all come to mind as groups that have tried to consolidate content and games, but the diversity of user experiences along with the way people choose to consume content has proven to be difficult to manage.
Nintendo is looking to broaden the variety of things you can do with a single gaming device by establishing the Wii as the machine that provides more options than those available from a handheld device like the DSi, or a more gamer-oriented product such as the Xbox. (I wrote about the Wii catering channel here.)
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The new Japanese Wii Catering Channel (Demae Channel) lets you point and click your way to food delivery right from your Nintendo Wii.
Take a break from Wii Fit to order a pizza!
(Credit: Wii Demae Channel)There are categories for pizza, noodles, sandwiches, curry, burgers, chicken, and many other snacks, complete with visual menus that let you select toppings and save your orders for next time.
Food is a national obsession in Japan, but as far as I know delivery isn't as common as in other big cities, such as New York. I suspect Wii players will be able to easily rationalize ordering a meal to augment all the calories they burn off in a rousing game of Tennis.
These type of tie-ins seem like logical extensions to gameplay (even if they aren't necessarily the healthiest) now that most consoles have Internet connectivity. Sadly, most console manufacturers maintain the walled-garden approach and it will be awhile before we see an ecosystem of third-party providers crop up.
(Via Destructoid)
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Microsoft recently started recruiting women to throw Xbox soirees as part of a branding effort to get women to start playing the Xbox, according to the Gannett news service.
They got an Xbox party pack of freebies that included microwaveable popcorn, Xbox trivia game "Scene It? Box Office Smash," an Xbox universal media remote control, a three-month subscription to Xbox Live, and 1,600 Xbox Live points (used for game, movie and TV show purchases).
I do think this is a great marketing strategy but as with all Microsoft marketing efforts it feels a bit off. Women have proven to be huge consumers of casual games, and heavily interested in the Wii (Nintendo has been advertising heavily to the ladies for quite a while) but the Xbox feels like a stretch. And, there aren't a ton of Xbox games that are appealing to women--at least not from my informal survey (I asked my wife and a woman in the hotel lobby.)
"We've sold 20 million consoles to date globally since we launched three years ago," says Heather Snavely, Microsoft's director of interactive entertainment business global platforms. "In order to get to the next 20 million, we need to get a new audience of women and teens. We're going after them in ways that are different than ways we've done before."
Good for Microsoft on this attempt and good for the women who want get involved with playing video games.
Of course, the main thing that comes to mind for me with this program is a free episode I downloaded of The Real Housewives of Orange County, where all the snake-skinned ladies got together for a cocktail and lingerie party. Somehow, I just can't see that crew getting together for a rousing game of Fallout 3 or Grand Theft Auto. Maybe if there was a Botox game or something where you drink until you irreparably insult your husband and isolate your children? (Zing!)
The big shocker in the 2008 numbers is the fact that Nintendo sold nearly as many DS units as Wii units. DS sales accounted for nearly triple the amount of PS3 units sold. Who would have thought that Nintendo would become a dominant force again?
Total U.S. hardware sales for 2008
- Wii - 10,224,400
- Nintendo DS - 9,951,500
- Xbox 360 - 4,735,200
- PlayStation Portable - 3,829,300
- PlayStation 3 - 3,685,000
- PlayStation 2 - 2,106,100*
Lifetime U.S. hardware sales, as of December 2008:
- PlayStation 2 - 43.22 million
- Nintendo DS - 27.60 million
- Wii - 17.60 million
- PlayStation Portable 14.30 million
- Xbox 360 - 13.89 million
- PlayStation 3 - 6.94 million
Via Shacknews.
Finally, we're seeing a bit of a fight from the Sony PR team in response to the brutal lambasting the PlayStation 3 has been taking for its poor showing against Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's Wii, as well as the fact that it costs more to make than it sells for.
Edge Online reports on a Sony press release called "Keeping Gaming and Entertainment Simple," in which the Japanese consumer electronics giant emphasizes out-of-the-box features of the game console:
- Blu-ray functionality
- Built-in Wi-Fi
- Huge hard drives
- Free online gaming
- "Ten years of value with a future-proof system via firmware updates that offer new services and features."
It's good to see Sony finally saying something about the competition, but this is fairly weak stuff--not all that compelling. It's effectively saying, "don't forget about us" instead of showing why the PS3 is a great platform.
From the release:
"The Xbox 360 requires additional money, multiple upgrades, and additional external devices, putting a burden on the wallet, and (it) adds clutter to the entertainment center.
"And the Wii's lack of enhanced features comes at the expense of a comprehensive entertainment solution."
Wow. Harsh stuff! Seriously though, the PS3 is a really good gaming platform. It's pretty bizarre that Sony hasn't figured out a better marketing strategy over the last few months, including reducing the price to gain market momentum.
The PlayStation 2 received 30.2 percent of all console-gaming minutes in 2008 (January to October), according to the Nielsen Media Research.
(Credit:
Sony)
That statistic is a bit surprising, until you consider that Sony has sold more than 140 million PS2s since its launch. With the largest footprint, the PS2 should have the largest usage base.
- Top Console Usage (by percent of minutes played)
- PlayStation 2 (30.2 percent)
- Xbox 360 (18.3 percent)
- Wii (13.5 percent)
- Xbox (9.1 percent)
- PlayStation 3 (7.7 percent)
- GameCube (4.4 percent)
- Other (16.9 percent)
Admittedly, these PS2 numbers are surprising and very impressive. The PS3 is still struggling against the Wii and Xbox, and this data certainly doesn't let the PS3 off the hook, but it does show that there might be a long-tail effect in place for console games.
Even more impressive data from Nielsen is the fact that World of Warcraft, or WoW, players average 671 minutes (more than 11 hours) per week. In any given minute, "almost 1 percent (0.723 percent) of all PC gamers are playing WoW."
