Unless you’ve been under a very large rock (or an Xbox 1, natch), no doubt you will have noticed that the Next Generation of game console wars is well underway. The aggressors? The Sony PS3, the Microsoft XBox 360, and the last entrant to the market, the Nintendo Wii. Let me tell you why we should all rejoice; the Nintendo Wii may well have saved the home games console market.
So the launches are over - we’ve had full on riots, drive-by’s with bibi guns, and a whole host of weird and wonderful tales from the brave soles who got their respective systems on launch day. The hype is finally over, the veils swished back, and the real battle for home console domination has begun.
One could argue that the battle has been already won - after all, the XBox 360 has been out for almost a year, and it has clocked up something close to 7 million units sold. But lets be realistic; the 360 hasn’t capitalised at all well on the console market, given the lone position it has held as the only Next Gen console on the market for 12 months - its done pretty decent business in the US, but European and especially Asian sales have been disappointing. It has lacked any kind of punch or pulling power…it has lacked that “killer app” that we so often hear about that draws in the non-hardcore gamer.
Because after all, its the dozing masses, not the hardcore gamers, that the manufacturers need to win the hearts and minds of to shift units. And that’s where the XBox 360 has failed - the most likely buyer for one is probably an ex-Xbox 1 owner. And so we wake up, at the tail end of November 2006, and there are now three Next Gen consoles on the market, each vying for your cash and loyalty.
So, what IS a Next Generation console? Is a Next Gen console one that does HiDef graphics, larger gaming area’s, more sophisticated artificial intelligence? Microsoft and Sony certainly think so. Both manufacturers have sunk vast amounts of money and resources into building consoles that are at the bleeding edge of audio and visual technology, with processing power that dwarfs their predesessors. In particular, Sony has gone all out with the “Cell”, a highly complex and no doubt highly powerful processing architecture developed with IBM. Microsoft’s machine is a little ways behind with its mostly standardised components, albeit running at high clock speeds to give it the oomph.
And then, there’s the Nintendo Wii.
Sitting far behind the PS3 and XBox360 in terms of processing power and graphical oomph, the Wii sidles into third place on the “power” front. But, thats exactly what Nintendo wanted - they didn’t plough all their resources into making a Gamecube-On-Steroids machine that could fling HiDef graphics on the 50″ LCD HD tv that few of us have, or are likely to have in the near future. No, Nintendo did something incredibly clever and yet incredibly simple in concept - from the outset, they created a console everyone wants to play. Mom’s, Grannies, you name it - give them an XBox controller and they’ll look bored instantly…give them a WiiMote however, and there will be howls of laughter as they try bowling and tennis.
The Wii is accessible to the non-hardcore gamer.
This is the key - this is why the Wii doesn’t need fancy HiDef graphics to pull you in. The clever control system that does away with the need to remember 20 key combinations, and instead allows you to mimic the movements you are trying to do. Anyone can do it! By removing the speciality involved in getting into home gaming, they have removed the obstacle that stopped the non-hardcore fan getting into it.
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