Outside of some rapid (and likely impossible) rush to market by Sony and Microsoft that would most certainly end in certain doom, it looks like Nintendo is set to accomplish a feat never before seen in their history: Nintendo’s new console will be first to market.
Think back in time to Nintendo’s release schedules. The Atari 7800′s first release was in 1984. The NES was test-marketed during Holiday 1985. The Genesis hit America in 1989. The Super NES took its sweet time and arrived late Summer 1991. PlayStation and Saturn? Both arrived in 1995. The Nintendo 64 in September 1996. GameCube was last out the gate following the Xbox in 2001, and the PS2 in 2000. Ironically, the Wii would suffer this same tardiness in 2006 slipping behind the PS3 by a few days and the Xbox 360 by a whole year.
Now we are reeling from the unveiling of the Nintendo Wiiu, successor to the underpowered, under-supported, yet massive selling Wii. It’s funny looking back at Nintendo’s market history and realizing they’ve never been first to market. Sometimes they came out ahead (NES, SNES), and sometimes they didn’t (Nintendo 64, GameCube). The Wii was an anomaly in many ways. Though designed as a non-threatening device to capture the non-gamer, the media saw it as nothing more than a weak, budget system made to appeal to HD owners as a secondary system to play Nintendo games. Yet the Wii exploded into a casual phenomenom that even Nintendo couldn’t believe at first. Yet after five long years, the core market has all but left, and the casuals have lost interest and moved to the sleeker (yet core game inhibited) iPad/iPhone for the same reasons they originally went to the Wii. Simply put, it’s the current, non-threatening cool toy of the moment.
Yet over in core gamer land, the PS3 and (more so) Xbox 360 are starting to show their age. We’re getting close to time for new consoles. Sony probably won’t bite the proverbial bullet until 2013 at the earliest because their machine was built to be more future-proof than anything else out now. The Xbox 360 is still selling fast, but it’s hardware is running on a seven year old chipset that has been bled of every single drop of performance available. Tech whores are getting antsy. This generation is one of, if not “the” longest on record. Maybe it’s because Microsoft aimed so high out of the gate, or because the recession has manufacturers afraid to launch new hardware, but things aren’t changing for the next couple of years when it comes to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Nintendo, however, is following the old console cycle. Wii launched in 2006. Now roughly five years later in 2011, it’s being put out to pasture following the release of Skyward Sword. It was actually amazing watching Nintendo throw the Wii under the bus at E3 like they did. This is a strange time for a Nintendo fan. We just saw Nintendo announce new hardware and promise to be out the gate late next year. For comparison, Microsoft only started hiring designers for their next machine back in March. With Sony committed to a ten year cycle, this confirms Nintendo will have the next-gen console market to themselves. It could last a year, or maybe all the way to 2013.
But will this move serve their best interests? It’s hard to know without a point of comparison. Launching later in the past assured that Nintendo had better tech, however running the same tech that powered the “Watson” computer on Jeopardy! shouldn’t leave people worrying about that. Plus, hardware jumps are less noticeable now. 1080p is still 1080p no matter how big the hardware in the box is. Nintendo’s bigger problem will be assuring those burned on the Wii that core games will continue to flow like water after launch.
Nintendo’s stock dropped 10% after the unveiling as well. Tech analysts (largely Apple fanboys) predict the eventual death of the console market at the hands of tablets. Firstly, let’s consider the fact that these “experts” are generally old men who don’t play games anymore. They like things simple, and “no buttons” appeals to them, so obviously it should appeal to us. Nintendo on the other hand, is making a hybrid controller including a touch screen and full traditional layout combined into an awesome all-in-one controller. Nintendo knows what they’re doing. Their stock price plunged after the unveiling of the Wii. It also plunged after the unveiling of the DS. “Sony will beat the DS based on coolness factor!”, they said. “Xbox has an insurmountable one year lead on the underpowered Wii!” was the consensus. Turned out a little differently, didn’t it.
The point here is, Nintendo doesn’t care what the competition is doing. Nintendo has never followed trends, but has managed to set them for decades, even if analysts and historians won’t acknowledge it until years after the fact. Decades worth of Nintendo innovation and evolution are embedded in the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. By 2013, touch screens will probably be embedded in the competitions next-gen systems since they’ll have Nintendo’s old advantage – launching second and one-upping the early bird’s tech. Then again, Sony might not want to put a 1080p screen on the controller. Sony will want to sell you a $5,000 3D enabled Bravia to go with that PlayStation 4. They are a consumer electronics manufacturer first after all. All the mid-western families who can’t afford an HDTV are going to seriously take a look at Wiiu with its built-in HD display and think for a minute. Ever wanted to pause your console game and take it to bed? We core gamers are thinking of the cool secondary display designs that this device will bring (and those possibilities are awesome). Nintendo is thinking of the everyman gamer/kid in middle America who is going to want to keep playing while his Dad takes the TV for a football game. It’s the same as the Wii, but this time we’re not left out, hence the “u”.
But imitating Nintendo’s ideas might not help Microsoft and Sony much since Nintendo is launching first. For the first time, Nintendo has the best tech, the coolest controller, and a two year head start. Nintendo has the high ground. Who only knows what they’ll manage to do with that kind of advantage.
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