Still Not Enough Wiis

Today I discovered that the Nintendo Wii is definitively the best-selling game console of this generation, far outselling the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

As of June 30, 2008, over 29.62 million Wii systems have been sold. That’s huge – Apple’s goal for the iPhone is 10 million by the end of this year – and everyone knows how big the iPhone is.

That’s big news, in my opinion. Yet I haven’t seen this in the news. I guess that’s fine – Nintendo’s doing well enough without the extra coverage. There still around enough Wii consoles to go around, according to this article from Forbes – which means it will be still tough to find a Wii this Christmas. That probably just drives demand higher, much like it did with the Wii Fit.

We’ve had a Wii for a long time. And we also got Wii Fit. We’re very happy with it, but I’m not so sure we would have definitely bought it if it wasn’t so rare. The prestige of owning it is definitely upped by the fact that it’s hard to find.

Nintendo simply makes amazing products. They deserve the profits coming to them.

One interesting thing from the article – Nintendo’s  global president and CEO, Satoru Iwata, uses an Apple iPhone. “I use the iPhone myself,” he says. Many people consider it to be a threat to the Nintendo DS, as it’s becoming very clear that it’s a great gaming platform. Yet I have to agree with Iwata… the markets are quite separate. My sisters each have a Nintendo DS. I probably would not buy one. I’d hardly play it. Yet I have an iPhone because I need to be connected to the net at all times – not just for games, but for email, chat, news, Wikpedia, Google, and so forth. That’s not Nintendo’s target market. Nintendo does well partly because they do one thing and they do it well. Games. That’s it.

Apple is not a gaming company. Neither is Microsoft nor Sony for that matter. And that’s the bottom line. Nintendo makes the best games. The most fun, the most innovative, the most creative. Let’s see if they can keep it that way.

The rumble pack (vibrations to make games more immersive), accelerometer, touch screen, wireless (wi-fi), rotatable display (book mode for DS, as in Brain Age), microphone – all innovations in gaming pioneered by Nintendo. The iPhone has all of these things, but Nintendo did it first.