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.
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)
Wii Fit has already sold more than 8.7 million units worldwide and has maintained a shockingly high sales run rate of about 225,000 units per week for the last few months.
At the same time, Take-Two Interactive Software's Grand Theft Auto IV has dropped off the best seller lists with about 10.6 million copies sold, which means that Nintendo's Wii Fit should surpass it in sales.
What's driving this? Women. Nintendo realized that there was an untapped audience of "women and moms" (their words, not mine) that would allow it to expand the brand. This is counter to the traditionally male-dominated world of video games.
Wagner James Au nails the irony of Wii Fit versus GTA:
A blockbuster franchise for nearly a decade, Grand Theft Auto's fantasy world of antisocial behavior has helped solidify a stereotype of gamers as 18-34 males, but the market has expanded far beyond that sector. Wii Fit's success is the most prominent, emblematic example of that shift. And an ironic one at that: Every edition of GTA has aroused complaints over its portrayal of women. Yet this year, it's women consumers who will help steal Grand Theft Auto IV's thunder.
A number of casual game makers I have spoken with told me that their audience is primarily women. Maybe Nintendo has cracked the code for an emerging market.
Link to GigaOm: Wii Fit on track to outsell GTA IV this year
I wrote recently about the need for violent video games on the Nintendo Wii and, for clarity, the main point of my message is that the Wii is a great platform for a game that has physical interaction.
It could be where you can pull a street sign from the ground and shove it into your enemy's head, or it could be a cooking game where you have to assemble a Gordon Ramsay-esque 10-course meal. The point is, the Wii has unique features that are well suited to violent games.
As to whether or not game developers will make violent games for the Wii and if they will be big sellers is not my area of expertise. It's the underlying possibilities of the technology that I find interesting.
Violent video games on the Wii address two specific points:
1. Nintendo wants to sell more Wiis and games. Hardcore gamers are not buying Wiis
a. I could make a couch-jockey/carpal tunnel joke, but the Wii doesn't have the graphics horsepower of other consoles or PCs. What it does have is the ability to use more than your thumbs to play a game.
2. The Wii brings a whole new level of human/game interaction that would be well suited to more adult/violent games
a. Wii baseball has a batting game. I'm not suggesting this is the same social context as hitting some in-game enemy in the head, but I am saying it's pretty fun to hit stuff.
b. We all need more exercise
I figure if you can do one thing (hit a baseball) then you can do more things (hit an in-game enemy in the head). How that gets manifested into the game is a whole different story.
The comments and arguments around my previous post (in which I assert violent video games are cool) remind me of the Simpsons episode when Marge campaigns against Itchy and Scratchy.
I don't know if video game violence has an effect on children, and I'm not sure if I care. I write about software disruption, not social issues.
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