The remarkable Wii game console from Nintendo was something of a godsend to the gaming industry for the simple reason that it opened up new ways of thinking regarding both games and controllers. It's quite likely that if it were not for the Wii, the entire industry would be in a tailspin, headed towards a second complete collapse.
While the current market has enough competition to keep it from going down in flames, you have to admit that the main two players, Sony and Microsoft, seem stuck in a time warp. The way things are going there wouldn't be any business left if the public became tired of the few tent pole offerings that come out a couple of times a year.
The first collapse happened from 1982 to1983 and was called the Great North American Video Game Crash and has since been described as the Atari debacle because Atari was at the center of it.
The market was saturated with "me-too" products that could not have been more boring. The world was passing by the old-fashioned graphics, and Atari, the game console company that evolved from the Pong game, had all sorts of difficulty protecting its turf while encouraging innovation.
Nintendo saved the entire game console industry after the 1983 debacle when it rolled out the NES in 1985 and introduced the Mario Brothers to the world.
Later, the company had also snuck into the market an entire handheld business beginning with the Game Boy, which has now evolved into the Nintendo 3DS.
Nintendo went off script when they were written off because of the lackluster 2001 offering, the Nintendo Game Cube. The company brought out the Wii which was widely ridiculed by all the Game magazines, columnists, and everyone who followed the industry. The name was dumb, and, oh the horror, there was no HDTV.
The fact that the Wii has a crackpot controller and no HD was the death knell, according to most of the magazine and specialist writers who were missing the point about game play. This is somewhat ironic in hindsight.
Now we are told that we can expect something new from Nintendo in one year. The question remains whether it will be a radical change or whether Nintendo will milk the platform?
If you look at the progress of the Nintendo DS evolution, I think you'll have the answer. The Wii is not broken and does not need fixing. It just needs to be upgraded. Nintendo followed this pattern with the NES, until it finally died a natural death. Curiously, you can still play most old NES games on a Wii. I don't think anybody plays those old games, but you can if you want to.
The new Wii will obviously incorporate modern 3D technologies, which may or may not sell new games. You can be sure HD will be standard—finally! Most importantly compelling new games will appear, as Nintendo has never lost sight of the fact that its games play well and are fun for everyone.
The classic Wii, which is now on sale, will fade in a couple of years, but everyone in the game industry should thank Nintendo for re-conceptualizing the game controller and keeping the entire industry viable and open to new ideas.(pcmag)
