Amazon.co.uk’s console and videogames manager James Schall has pronounced Nintendo’s new Wii games console was the most wanted present of Christmas 2006, according to a report in the Daily Express.

Wii: the “must have” gift of Christmas 2006

“We sold out of our entire initial stock in just seven minutes. It was definitely the must-have gift of Christmas 2006,” Schall was quoted as saying.

Despite problems with weak wrist straps, the Nintendo Wii seems to have also won the battle for buzz during the Christmas period. 

A search of Google News brings up 5840 stories about the Playstation 3 (launched around the same time as the Wii), compared to 11,200 about the Wii. By comparison a search of Technorati bring brings up almost the same level of blog posts relating to the two platforms - 510,328 and 565,476 for Wii.

This tends to suggest that while both consoles similar levels of grassroots support (ie bloggers), it’s really been the mainstream media that has given the Wii a kick along in terms of pre-Christmas buzz.

Both consoles attracted negative media. In the case of the Playstation 3 it was related to Sony’s problems supplying enough consoles to meet demand. In the case of Wii it was related to breaking wrist straps that led to controllers flying out of the hands of gamers and into people’s heads.

I’ve argued in previous a post that the wrist strap issue could actually be a blessing in disguise. The “problem”, which was widely written about, actually highlighted one of the coolest features of the Wii — the motion-sensitive controller. Given that Nintendo is replacing the defective wrist straps, the negative publicity generated by the weak wrist straps was hardly going to stop games from buying the console. In fact, it was only going to encourage them!

While the Wii started to get a bit more difficult to buy in the lead up to Christmas, it was certainly much easier to get a Wii than a Playstation 3, which has been pretty hard to obtain since launch. This certainly meant that more Wii’s were sold in the early days, which may have meant that there was more word-of-mouth buzz out there as well.

Nintendo has done what many people considered impossible: positioned Wii so that it has a chance of becoming a  mainstream console, rather than just a successful niche player.

Part of this has been good planning (good product and good initial supplies),  but part of it has also been luck — Sony’s fumbling of the PS3 launch, as well as the problem of the wrist strap (which it seems to be a blessing in disguise for Nintendo).

While Nintendo has won the battle for Christmas 2006, it will be interesting to see whether it can maintain the momentum as we head into 2007; Sony may be down, but I sincerely doubt it is out of the game.

---

Related:

The best (and worst) Christmas displays on the web

BBC to launch iPlayer for Windows-based users on Christmas Day

Is the PS3 shortage an opportunity for Wii?

Sony Confirms: Playstation phone coming to town by Christmas

Wii just a novelty says Sony?

Stumble It!

Entry was posted on Monday, December 25th, 2006 at 4:50 pm under Gaming.  Print This Post

Read more entries by John Pospisil.