Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Reuters has an interesting piece up where they analyze the current state of the console war, taking a look at all three major console's offerings. Most important, however, is the dominance the Wii is enjoying right now, as they take a look at the February NPD sales data, along with other factors including price and extra features of each console. Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research, who was interviewed for this piece we imagine, thinks that Nintendo has everything to lose.

"Their challenge going forward is to make sure this is not a passing fad by getting a stream of content into the market," he says. Continuing on that same thought, Gartenberg states "The game console purchase driver is still going to be first and foremost games. The secondary stuff is the icing on the cake." We couldn't agree more and, really, this is the reason we think Nintendo will continue to dominate in the long run.

What do you guys think?

Reuters recently published an article where they took a look at the Wii's position going into the holiday shopping season. They assume that Nintendo is banking on the novelty of the Wii's control scheme as being its primary point of appeal, however they state that they believe without the proper software line-up constantly raising the bar in utilizing the console's unique attributes, it is doomed to failure.

Isn't that the whole lesson learned from the GameCube, though? We look at Nintendo's launch window line-up, third party support and technological advancements of the new console and see plenty of selling points beyond the fact that movement in reality can be mimicked in-game and feel that if developers didn't have plenty of ideas, they wouldn't be pledging so much support to the console. Regardless of how you think Reuters comes off, it's an excellent piece comparing the three companies and provides an unbiased look at Nintendo's goals.

A report over at Reuters is quoting Reggie Fils-ass kicker, name takerAime as saying that the Wii "will make a profit on the entire Wii proposition out of the box -- hardware and software." This is good news for Nintendo, who are not adapting the business models of their competition. With Sony and Microsoft, initial units sold are at a loss, so in this manner Nintendo has already managed to win in the next-gen console wars.

Now that we have the pricing on the hardware, is this the reason the Wiimote and nunchuk attachment cost a ridiculous amount of money, to ensure profit immediately?

[Via Joystiq]

We've seen nothing but positive coverage of the Wii from media, and for good reason. As evidenced above, a local NBC news affiliate had a short feature on the console, showing gamers enjoying the Wii Sports' Tennis title. Another video report on the Wii may be found here courtesy of Reuters. While a bit longer than the local news feature, the Reuters video intersperses sections of the video that was presented at E3 2005.

[Thanks Nushio!]