How the Wii has changed gaming, one year later

Giant killer

In just a year, a games market hierachy established for two generations has been flipped on its head, taking the traditional idea of how to make a successful console with it. Where once Sony was the undoubted giant of the industry, the PlayStation 3 is still playing catch-up twelve months after launch. The two generation rule is no secret of course. It’s long been gaming folklore that no company ever stays on top for more than two console launches in a row (See Nintendo itself for evidence of that), but no-one could ever have imagined a toppling of Sony given the status it had built with the first two PlayStations.

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But topple the PlayStation empire did, and while many gamers blame Sony itself, the Wii certainly had a hand in it. For the first time in years, a console came along which was so radically different that there was no way to compete directly without a complete concept change. Of course, many took Nintendo’s ‘We’re sidestepping the competition’ line to be an excuse for the Wii’s lack of horsepower, but it now seems that the house of Mario knew exactly what it was doing.

By releasing a low-cost, big fun console that offered things the competition just physically couldn’t provide (barring the sudden appearance of the Sixasis quickly after the Wii’s announcement, of course), Nintendo avoided the fight altogether, leaving the more similar 360 and PS3 to slug it out. With Microsoft’s machine having a one year head start on Sony’s, and already well-supported by developers, those looking for a second console began gazing towards the interesting new direction of the Wii. The sales figures tell the rest of the story.