How the Wii Won

Nintendo is certainly selling more consoles than anyone else right now. And hand over fist they are raking in the dough.

But has Nintendo won the console war? I think it has, and here's why.

It sort of has something to do with why I feel like I'm the only person not to 'get' Pokemon. There is a sea of average people out there, and though I may have thought it before, I am not in that ocean. I'm a gamer. I want games. I read about games. I almost ended up making games for a living. I read tech gadget blogs. I have wireless internet at home and a 37" HDTV entertainment center. We own four computers, three normal televisions, two motorcycles and don't have any kids.

I'm pretty sure that's not average.

Nope. I am one of a handful of people that want slick, pretty, speedy, complex, integrated things. If you compare me to my older sister of five years, we are opposite ends of the spectrum. She has two kids, a largely used 27" tubevision, and about 10 minutes in her spare time. Her family, not mine, is in the bigger pool of potential customers of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. My parents will never pick up a 360 controller and don a headset to go on Live. Nor will they ever walk around Sony's virtual Home and oogle their friends awards trophies.

But they will pick up a Wii controller and swing at baseballs and tennis balls. They don't care about having online friends and downloading HD movies. They don't want to chat with people on Messenger. Their non-existent PSP doesn't have to connect to their non-existent PS3.

Microsoft and Sony are doing well at going after the Gen X'ers and Y'ers and TXTers. But Nintendo is better going after all of their parents, their parent's parents and younger siblings. My mom stood next to my 5 year-old-neice and got out-bowled. It was fun because bowling is fun, not because she didn't get shown up by a 5-year-old that knew more about the game.

So what people, which I mean to say 'gamers', have to ask themselves is this: When you go to Wal-Mart to shop for games, who is in the electronics section? 16-25-year-olds or mom and pops with kids in tow. And don't think this is just a flash in the pan. Nintendo is going to succeed like it has since it started making playing cards (and not the Pokemon ones). Appealing to the mass market by making games the majority of the people like to play.

We should really just consider ourselves lucky for Zelda, Metroid, and Mario. They are the expensive icing on the made from a box cake.