GWiinius
As you probably already know, yesterday morning Nintendo held a press conference where they revealed the price and release date of the Wii ($250 and November 19th). The price and release date were the big news, but a few news outlets also mentioned something called “channels” that would let users do things like browse the web. Looking for more information about the channels, I found the a video of the press conference, and subsequently discovered that the price point and the release date paled in comparison to the rest of the conference.
From the outset of the Wii, Nintendo has been saying over and over again that it’s about escaping the console wars into “bluer waters”, and finding new customers in people who have never even considered playing video games before. Up until this press conference, however, they’ve been presenting the Wii to “hardcore gamers” (at events like E3 and the Tokyo Game Show), so the focus has been on what sorts of awesome new gameplay innovations the controller presents, and what well-loved franchises will look like on the system. Yesterday, however, was a “mainstream press” event, so while Nintendo did present a montage of their launch titles, they spent most of the time focussing on their fiendish plan for converting “non-gamers”, and I have to say that it’s even smarter than I imagined it would be.
To the hardcore gamer, the Wii is another console, albeit one with a very unusual controller. To the hardcore gamer’s grandmother, however, the Wii is a simple little $250 device that plugs into the TV and instantaneously delivers news and weather reports without commercials. And it can also be used to easily view the photos she took that afternoon at the rose garden on the TV screen. And since her grandson swung by and downloaded that web browser for it, she can finally check out that “internet” thing that all the girls in the sewing circle have been talking about, without having to futz with a keyboard or a mouse, or sit at a desk and feel like she’s working. And since it came with that free sports thing, she might as well get her daily exercise from playing some low-impact virtual golf or tennis. The appeal is designed to start out very small and very simple, presenting options with zero interactivity (weather and news reports) and slowly snowballing through more and more activity (photo viewing, web browsing, and creating “Mii”s), into full-blown videogames (Wii Sports). Maybe she’ll stop at Wii Sports, and decide that that’s just enough “game” for her, or maybe she’ll continue to snowball, gaining more and more confidence in videogaming as her Wii activities become more and more interactive, and go on to collect every single star in Mario Galaxy. Probably somewhere in between.
Of course, other consoles have included non-game features like CD and DVD playback for years, but those have been afterthoughts — nobody bought an XBox 360 just to play DVDs — whereas it’s a perfectly reasonable presumption that some people will buy the Wii primarily as a way to browse the web on their TV and slowly adapt to playing games on it as well.
More than the controller, more than the fact that the system’s online features will be free, and hundreds of NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, and TG-16 games will be available to download cheaply, more than the super-low $250 price tag (especially compared to the XBox 360 and the PS3), the thing that impresses me the most about the Wii is the brilliant methodology of seducing non-gamers with increasing levels of interactivity.
Now I know what to get my mom for Christmas.