The Little Wii That Could

August 1st, 2007 • Business, Design, Gaming

According to Japanese games magazine publisher Enterbrain, the Wii is pounding the PS3 four to one in Japan.

Nintendo sold 396,752 units of the Wii in the five weeks ended July 29, compared with 91,987 units of the PS3.

Nintendo Wii outsells Sony’s PS3 in Japan in July - Yahoo! News

This should come as no shock, and there’s a lesson in the Wii’s success that other product manufacturers and marketers should heed. The Wii is not a product - it is delightful. Yes, you buy it as you would any product, and you take it out of its box as you would any other product. But from there on in, the Wii becomes something else.

In its own small way, the Wii has changed how we deal with each other as a family. We all have our own Mii characters (yep, that includes 44-year-old me). The Wii sees more action in a week than our XBox360 sees in a month. Yes, it’s usually the kids that switch it on, but there’s invariably an adult in on the action with two minutes.

The graphics are poor compared with the 360 (and the PS3, from what I’m told), but that fact was only mentioned once by me, and has never been mentioned again.

From the Bisto ads to the Facebook boom, I reckon we’re seeing a steady shift from solo digital to social analogue. The 360 is bulky, powerful and cutting edge - but for all its multiplayer capabilties, I’d wager that most games are played alone. The Wii is intensely social: if it had a noise naturally associated with it, it would be laughter.

A copy of Resident Evil 5 for the Wii recently made its way into the house. It was wrong: a zombie thrasher had no place alongside Mario and bowling. You kill zombies alone, getting something off your chest that - if we’re honest - probably shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Trackback URI.