Why I Sold our Wii

We’ve spent a year with an Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii. I just sold the Wii (and all the games and accessories). The Xbox 360 gets used quite often. The Wii didn’t. In the year we had it, we used it about 6 times: When we first got it, three times when people from out of state came to visit and wanted a demo, and two times when we got a new game and wanted to try it out. I think we might have turned it on a couple other times to vote on the voting channel (which, as it turns out, was the only thing we actually enjoyed doing on the Wii).

The more I read about the Wii (and look at the large number of Wii ads on Craigslist), the more I’m convinced of the following: The Wii is outselling the competition to be the number one selling console. The Wii does not sell as much software (read: “as many games”) as the competition. After a few weeks or months, many, many Wiis are just sitting, gathering dust.

This article (here), explains Nintendo’s problem with the Wii very well. “E3″ is an industry expo where video game companies will announce new hardware and new games. From the article:

And now, our E3 headliners? Instead of leveraging its market share for equally innovative and expressive gaming experiences, we get air guitar with less plastic, and Wii Sports, again.
…
Wii Sports Resort is not mainstream acceptance. Animal Crossing: City Folk is not pushing boundaries. These games are the easy sell, getting the little console that potentially could into a slew of living rooms, where people will giggle once or twice at the novelty of tossing yet another Frisbee at yet another dog. Of shaking fruit trees and leaving notes for friends. And then they’ll dismiss it all, once again, as child’s play.

These “games” are the reason the Microsoft and Sony camps can dismiss the Wii as a fad.

Explore posts in the same categories: Games