The WiiDS Phenomenon

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(WiiDS pronounced “WEEDS”)

February 19, 2007 marked the three month anniversary of the Wii’s release. That day was President’s Day and Nintendo has been raking in the dead presidents as surely as a surly Shirley. The little console that could has been proving the doubters wrong at every turn with each sell-out, with each market expansion, with each good press release. The good news just doesn’t end with the foundation of the modern-day videogame industry.

The shock of this success is STILL sending electrical impulses through the bodies of the ones who dared to count out the hanafuda company from across the sea. So many are waiting for the “novelty” to “wear off”, for the “hype” to “die down”, waiting for people to “come back to their senses” and for things to “get back to normal”. Much like the fabled dinosaurs of legend, little do these individuals realize that the world they once knew is gone.

The boys’ clubhouse atmosphere, the proverbial No-Homers club, dies a little more each time Grand ’maw wakes up in the morning to work out with a little Wii Tennis. The exclusive ‘nerdcore & proud’ clique erodes a bit more when middle-aged Uncle Lloyd with the knee high black socks & Aunt Jan with the loud flower dress plan Wii parties for the weekend cookout. The hardcore elite who reign as Caesar over what is “game” (thumbs up) & “non-game” (thumbs down), over what is “real” (he lives) & “casual” (he dies), over what is “mature” (to glory) & “kiddie” (to the lions)…they witness their own personal Fall of the Empire every time 5-year old little Katie KO’s 22-year old gamer veteran Antoine in Wii Boxing. Each time the office workers ask for information on that Wii thing they heard about on TV. Your girlfriend, who always nagged about spending quality time together to get you away from your game machine NOW hogging your Wii to improve her skill “just a li’l bit more” on Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. Each time reports of Wiis in retirement homes and Wiis used for weight-loss are broadcast across the media wires. Each time Conan O’Brien challenges a professional tennis all-star like Serena Williams to a session of Wii Tennis live on his show.

Each and every instance of happenings like these make certain that the way things had been and the way things were done were No More Forevermore. Did they not hear them say that a REVOLUTION was to come? Did they not think it would be televised? Were they awaiting a gamer’s Paul Revere, Toussaint L’Ouverture, & Bolsheviks to legitimize the lofty claims? Is it fear or denial? Was it beggar’s hope that Nintendo not succeed? Or did they think it was all merely a bluff?

According to the latest figures from VGCharts.org, Wii has already sold (not shipped) 5 million units worldwide. 5 million in 3 months. It has ALREADY approached and surpassed the halfway mark of XBOX 360’s sales (9.28 mil at the time of this writing), a system that has been on the market for 15 months - a year and a quarter. At this rate Wii will catch XBOX 360 before the summer! If so, it will have done in 6 months what it took Microsoft's machine well over a year to do. And all of this happened, despite the Wii’s high demand which is still suffering from rampant supply shortages worldwide. This demand not seeming to ebb anytime soon as shipments get snapped up within minutes of unpacking. All of this with a game library that hasn’t changed very much since launch 3 months ago (not counting Virtual Console titles of course). Why should it change so much when most people haven’t been able to even get their hands on one? The scary part about all of this is that we really haven’t seen anything yet. Those big games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the full unveiling of their online play service through the Wi-Fi Connection, and the upcoming Wii to DS connectivity plan…whew. All I can say is those who still somehow think this thing is a “fad” you’d better stay away from the game blogs and forums for awhile. Much like what happened with the DS naysayers, people of this mindset are in for quite the rude awakening.

The Long Road Towards Heaven or Hell

Ah, the famous DS - the litmus test for the Wii concept. When it succeeded it basically guaranteed the success of the Wii. Both consoles were cut from the same philosophy: concentrating on EVERYONE, from price, content, to interface. The DS Lite consistently, uncannily, and dumb-foundingly rocks the sales-charts each and every week, especially at home-base in Japan, where it manages to move (on average) a million units every month. It's already become a cultural phenomenon over there, and it's becoming that way in other parts of the world with each passing day. But the system didn't ascend the mountain unchallenged: Sony's PSP was heralded to be the final Nintendo destroyer. The ultimate portable machine that would uproot the old company from its last stronghold, the handheld market, finally evicting them from the mountain which they had grown quite comfortable. Give it credit. The PSP was the best contender yet, but when Yamauchi defiantly declared that the DS either "raises Nintendo up to heaven, or sinks them to hell", it turned out that once again luck was left to heaven. The comeback trail was blazing, and the tone was set. Nintendo was poised to rule the game-world in full once again as in days long past.

The doubters didn’t believe it and still don’t believe it but the current generation of consoles was won before the race ever started. It was won on September 16, 2005, when out of the darkness Satoru Iwata pointed a remote-control shaped device toward a conference screen at the Tokyo Game Show. Everything afterwards was elementary. The omen was shown at 2006’s E3 show with the insane lines & insatiable hunger to see the system in action. As a result the hype was snowballs down the hill. Ever gathering momentum feeding & building upon itself. By the time the system actually launched it was a foregone conclusion that what we’re now seeing here would happen. The promise & hype of the system was ‘water’ you held inside anxiously waiting to find your way to the bathroom. The purchase was relief at the release.

Just think of the infamous Nintendo business model, where every sale is profit. No loss/leading here. The system sells, the accessories sell, the games sell. Each time money is made. Only the company logo is in the red; those sales keep them more in the black than Wesley Snipes! The Wii is even selling older Gamecube merchandise for some extra pick-up funds. Nintendo’s making money on BOTH halves of the videogaming market - home console & handheld. Lots of it. By now they probably know each and every detail on old Ben Franklin’s weathered face they’ve seen it so much. On the Virtual Console alone: every Wii owner buys a 2000 Wii Points card for $20 - $20 X 5,000,000 owners = $100,000,000. One hundred MILLION dollar [Cue Dr. Evil and his million-dollar pinky]. Of course, chances are good that half of those points will be bought by fellow Popzara editor Mr. Universal. The guy is crazy, but he knows what he likes!

Of course that's not just in the United States, as they've got a virtual stranglehold on Japan these days. The entire region is basically Nintendo-country now. As a result the developers will have no choice but to follow the green paper trail and that can only strengthen their profit margins made through the support. For the next 5 years the sales charts and top ten lists will basically be saying nothing but Wii & DS.

Wii & DS. Back and to the left. Back and to the left. Wii & DS.

This is The WiiDS Phenomenon

A phenomenon that the world of videogaming has never seen before. Twin powerhouses working and feeding into each other reciprocally, each strengthening the other. Cross-pollinating audiences. Two industry rocking machines running concurrently, gathering gameplayers and gaining green on a scale nearly unfathomable before. Let's have some fun with the possibilities for just a second, and imagine if things were a little more green.

Green like weeds. Just imagine the pun-filled slogans that could come from this unprecedented success:

Growing like WiiDS

Invasion of the WiiDS

WiiDS running wild in the Garden (for New Yorkers)

WiiDS: DiSrUpTiNg the ecosystem

WiiDS Damage

Next on Discovery: Beneficial WiiDS?

WiiDS and the $Greenhouse$ Effect

WiiDS: The seed was planted

UnWackable WiiDS

Priority WiiDS

The Horde-iculture of WiiDS

Noxious WiiDS

WiiDS: Globally Herbal

WiiDS Turf

WiiDS Management

WiiDS Resistance

The Immulchable WiiDS

The Wild Wild WiiDS

WiiDS Control

WiiDS: Just say NO to PSticides

WiiDS: Organically Original

WiiDS planted firmly

WiiDS for a good buzz

The NEW Tetras: Only on WiiDS

WiiDS: Smoking the competition

WiiDS: Legalize it

WiiDS: Yes, Clinton inhaled

Low Expectations

It is that much more remarkable because Nintendo employed the dark horse, disruptive strategy with BOTH products. Coming in under the radar, having been dismissed on sight by many and relegated to afterthought. Then blowing the roof off the house making the callow dismissers take notice. The beauty of Low Expectations. Nintendo had an image of being merely for children and simply old hat. The Gamecube looked like a purple lunchbox for goodness sake! The rumblings of people predicting the inevitability of old Nintendo ending up a 3rd party developer (like Sega had become) became a sort of conventional wisdom among gameplayers. When discussing the competition usually the subject matter only concerned the fates of Sony and Microsoft. You'd think there were only two game companies in the business! It didn’t matter that Nintendo had never relinquished the majority of market share of all game products even when their own products underperformed against expectations. Reality never beats perception in the human mind.

So Nintendo ran with this sentiment and played the lamb role, all the while covertly Big Bad Wolf. Everything from the “underpowered graphics” to the announcements that they “weren’t competing” with Sony & Microsoft to even the aesthetics & naming of the products (the pearl white, tiny system called “Weeeee”???). Nintendo played their role perfectly, and watched as execs from the other companies foolishly considered these efforts cute. Laughing off any suggestive threat, they suggested customers buy a Wii as a supplemental secondary system to their (spiting the other powerhouse competitor).

The smell of condescension was in the air, like older boys rubbing the head of the younger boy who wants to play with them. To the big boys Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo was a junior. The reality of their dismissal didn’t really dawn on them until they understood the depth, the ramifications of Nintendo’s buzz. Any lingering doubts have been destroyed in the past 3 months since launch, and now they don’t have to wonder anymore if the threat is real.

At the end of this gaming generation many lessons will have been learned:

• The “HD era” talk will be known to have been a marketing ploy.

• Price matters. Low price matters.

• The execs will know quite well that rock group & Prince song: KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)

• The hardcore of a peach is the pits. Try to get the WHOLE fruit.

• The Japanese market is STILL important if not essential.

• Hype must ALWAYS be backed up with substance.

• Being “kiddie” pays off when those kids grow up with your system/systems.

• Consoles have now become the secondary systems.

• Handhelds have become the first.

• People are fickle and their opinions will change on a dime; stick to your guns when you’ve found a good idea.

• Much like Pac-Man & The Sims, any gaming product that is accessible to females automatically wins the males.

• Money talks and “brown stuff” walks. (old lesson really)

• Once worldwide launches become the norm, it’s not wise to operate under old launch rules.

• Connectivity between handheld and console will FINALLY take off due to the wireless state.

• No matter what else is put into a game system it is always important to keep ‘gaming’ the focus point.

• PR DOES have some influence on your product’s ability to sell.

• Brand name is not immortal.

• Some traditions were meant to be broken.

• A game is a game is a game regardless of whether or not it meets your criteria for gamehood.

• Dismissing the competition is a no-no under any circumstance.

• The videogame industry is one that depends on taking chances.

When this is all over the thinking behind The WiiDS Phenomenon will be looked back upon as one of inspired brilliance and ingenious forethought. They’ll never underestimate them again. And unlike most out there, I'm not just blowing smoke rings!