Now I don’t want to speak too soon here, but it appears that Nintendo’s business strategy is working in light of recent DS sales success. If Wii can execute on what has made the DS successful as a portable (namely games over technology), will Sony and Microsoft continue to dismiss them as a home console player? A recent Nintendo press release states: “‘Nintendo DS is the only game system available a year ago that showed growth over the same period, and it did so in overwhelming fashion, with a leap of 426 percent,’ says George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. ‘What we’re seeing is realization of our promise that Nintendo will bring gaming to the masses–?whatever your taste or level of experience, we’ve got a system and a game for you.'”
Are we seeing the realization of Nintendo’s new marketing promise? Granted, I know there are still a lot of questions in the air for Wii, namely ported games, third-party use of the Wiimote, how Nintendo might address the issue of whether motion controls can be usable and effective for every type of game genre in existence either new or old, price, launch date, and the full monte of information. At what point, if ever, will MS and Sony return to publicly seeing Nintendo as a threat to their games profit business?
