13th July 2007, 1:15 AM
Nikkei : Nintendo Won E3
Quote:The E3 opened in a smaller Form in Santamonica this week. Every major Platformholder had a press conference. I want to talk about this E3 and how it represents the direction of the industry. E3 has gotten smaller then last year but it is still a place to show what the strategy is.Source:NeoGAF
We saw what the three major companies had in mind. And this time around, Nintendo stood out.
Nintendo succeeded to create a market that SCE and MS cant compete in. Looking at the announcements we can easily see that the DS as well as the Wii is going to sell this holiday season just like it is dominating now.
The Wii is having a bigger success then many were anticipating. Right now the 360 has a shipped install base of about 12 Million but it is not selling greatly outside of the North American market. The Wii is selling all over the world. Even in the stronghold of the 360 it crossed 3 Million units in only 6 month and is going to outsell the 360 soon.
The current strategy of Nintendo is stabil and cannot be beaten. That the other two companies didnt have anything to counter the current Wii strategy is evidence. 360 will have a simple controller for a quiz game. But compared to that what the Wii does it cannot be called a valid counter measure.
Nintendos presentation showed a variation of You Tube videos that showed how fans were enjoying Nintendo DS and Wii. They wanted to appeal how much of a social phenomenon they have become. Those videos had one thing in common. They all focused on the expression of the Player. Back at GDC Miyamoto Shigeru claimed that he watched closely on the expression of the player.
The Wii and the DS share the common advantage that the Player becomes Advertisement as he is playing. The other platforms did not show anything that can at least mimick this advantage. And Nintendo is using this strategy as we can see on their advertisements that are focusing on the people playing the games.
Nintendo wanted to appeal to a new, broader audience. And this is paying off. Especially the Wii did not have strong software in Japan. Yet the hardware sells on the launch titles alone. Square Enix and EA as well as other thirdparties are starting to shift their development resources.
Nintendos announcement was 1. Guarantee the upcomming scedule 2. Hype their products. As an evidence, Nintendo announced the concrete release dates of Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros. While they didnt go in detail about Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit as well as Wii ware.
The biggest news of this conference was of course the Wii Fit game. Wii fit is a strategy that cannot be mimicked by the other companies. The device alone will cost quite some money and with a steep hardware price it is impossible to sell peripherals that cost over 100 dollars (estimates). The advantage that the wii has lies also in its cheap price. Even if it costs 100 dollars the combined price is lower then the competition .
This Wii Fit presentation was geared towards the thirdparties and was much of a test marketing. Nintendo will look at the effect and deterimine the price. Probably many third parties will think about dancing games. There arent many peripherals that sold well in the past. The Eyetoy was only successful in Europe and the Xbox Live Vision Camera did not have much impact.
The Problem of Nintendo is its strength in first party titles. The 360 has many of the high hitting thirdparty titles and is stressing them. Many Thirdparties will feel threatened by the overly strong Nintendo first party titles. Ofcourse the Wii was a Hit that nobody saw comming. So the thirdparties will show their titles at the TGS this year after they had enough preperation time.
Yet it still remains unclear if Thirdparties can compete with Nintendo and make profits. This will determine wether Nintendo can remain the leader of this generation. Ofcourse that Nintendo changed the market this much on their own without many partners is once again showing the power that Nintendo has these days
[Nikkei Business]