Microsoft: Wii Is Still Just Fad
Apparently analysts’ opinions and research aren’t enough to keep Microsoft down. During an interview
Microsoft’s director of product management, Aaron Greenberg, used the topic of appealing to casual gamers as an opportunity to state that the Wii is still just a toy, and that the novelty will wear off eventually.
Everyone says that eventually the novelty will wear off, right? I think that a lot of the people that are buying that console today are not people that have generally bought consoles in the past, right?
You see they’re not buying games on it, right? They’re buying it, it’s like something they break out when people come over, and it’s maybe a fun thing, but it’s almost like the same people that buy a karaoke machine, you know? They’re not really buying it for games, they’re just buying it as a novelty.
One thing he fails to mention is the viral effect that “breaking” the Wii out in company has. Regardless of the tie-in ratio, the Wii is still selling completely out, although it is, admittedly, a lot easier to find one now. Now, one could assume from that statement that Mr.Greenberg doesn’t think that the Wii should be taken too seriously, right? That’s odd, because early in the interview he was actually speculating that the Xbox 360 “complements” the Wii.
I think for us, we don’t really see the Wii as a direct competitor, we actually very much complement the Wii experience. It’s obviously clear that we’re going head-to-head with the PS3 in this generation. I think what Xbox will be able to do as well as the Wii is grow the market.
I’m pretty sure Nintendo doesn’t see Microsoft as competition either. To be fair, Aaron Greenberg doesn’t actively go out of his way to bash the Wii. All the same, when it comes down to it, this is still him, on behalf of Microsoft, try to brush off the fact that the Wii is outselling the Xbox 360, despite being released significantly later.