Nintendo Wii Gaming Console India
How Nintendo took on the world And won
The latest version of Nintendo’s handheld console has hit the shops in the UK and Europe. But should you buy one.As first reported in The Times in February, Nintendo’s new DSi handheld console launched in the UK and Europe on Friday, April 3. The new console builds on the success of the DS brand by adding a host of multimedia functions.
For the moment, the DSi is available in black or white. The white is shiny and sleek to the touch, the matt black has a slightly rougher finish, which makes it more pleasingly tactile.
Owners of the existing DS Lite may be momentarily thrown by the changes to the volume and power buttons, but otherwise the DSi is pretty much business as usual. So, should you buy one? Here are ten facts that may help influence your decision.
1. The DSi is the third revision of the DS console, the biggest selling games console yet made, with global sales of over 100 million, 9 million of these in the UK alone.
2. Although it looks remarkably similar to the existing DS Lite, the DSi represents a bigger jump forward than that from the chunky original DS to the DS Lite. The new machine is slimmer, with slightly bigger screens and a faster processor, and is packed with new features.
3. New feature one: the DSi has its own built-in operating system, modelled on the Wii system. The OS is stored on the DSi’s built-in memory. One of the practical upshots of this is that games are now “hot-swappable”, meaning you no longer need to power off and on your console when changing game cartridges.
4. New feature two: the DSi comes with two low-resolution cameras, one facing inwards and one outwards. The cameras are complemented by a built-in application that allows you to distort the photos you take for humorous effect. They can also be used for video-chatting.
5. New feature three: the DSi comes with an SD card slot, where photos, music and digital media can be stored. Don’t get too excited by the music playback. The DSi only plays AAC files, not the more popular MP3. Why? Read our interview with Nintendo’s UK boss to find out.
6. New feature four: if you want to play your old Gameboy Advance games, forget it. There is no longer a slot at the front. This is also bad news for fans of Guitar Hero, which uses the slot for its fretboard.
7. New feature five: the DSiWare store, modelled on the Wii store, will offer games for download in exchange for Nintendo points. A web browser will be offered for free.
8. New feature six: the improved internet connectivity means that the DSi firmware can be updated by Nintendo. This is bad news for game pirates, who are thought to have cost the company millions in lost revenue by making DS games available for download on to cards such as the notorious R4. The DSi will not recognise an R4 card.
9. In its native Japan, the DSi sells for around 20,000 yen. One year ago, when the pound was worth 200 yen, this would have suggested a UK price of ￡100. Now the pound is worth 139 yen, which has bumped up the UK price to ￡149. Ouch.
10. Nintendo has opted for a quiet launch for the DSi, perhaps in recognition of the fact that no DSi-only games exist yet, and the DSiWare store is poorly stocked. Still, the company reports pre-orders for the console at ten times the level of the DS Lite.
Four years ago, many observers thought that Nintendo was dead and buried. Then the company staged a remarkable comeback with its DS and Wii consoles.
It’s almost like the storyline of a videogame. The one-time champion, brought low by a powerful new rival, finally rediscovers his strength and stages a dazzling comeback.
Yet that’s exactly what has happened to Nintendo in the past three years. Having helped to create the videogames industry in the 1980s, the company’s name was synonymous with games – but that was little consolation when it spent ten years on the fringes of the industry, outclassed and outgunned by Sony’s PlayStation.
Once, Nintendo was firmly in command of both the home console and handheld markets – but it lost out to the PlayStation in the home console category, allowing Sony to press its advantage into the handheld sector. When Sony announced the PlayStation Portable in 2003, Nintendo’s share price promptly collapsed, analysts and shareholders alike fearing that the ship was finally sinking.
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear just how severely the business world underestimated Nintendo. Today, its most recent handheld console, the DS, is on the verge of selling 100 million units – twice as many as Sony’s PSP. In the home console market, too, Nintendo is back at the helm. The Wii is approaching 50 million units sold, while rivals Sony and Microsoft struggle to reach the 30 million mark.
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Both the DS and the Wii have achieved something that the videogames industry has talked about longingly for years – true crossover into the mass market. Nintendo’s consoles have not found success by selling to boys and men in their twenties and thirties. Instead they have carved out a new market – young girls, middle-aged women, pensioners, businessmen and everything in between.
The number of people playing videogames has skyrocketed in recent years, as people who have no interest in shooting aliens or crashing cars discover the new breadth of experiences and possibilities which the Wii and DS have introduced.
It would be easy to characterise this success as a stroke of luck. Certainly, Nintendo hedged its bets; company president Satoru Iwata admitted to me in 2005 that the development and launch of the Wii would cost only 10 per cent of the firm’s cash reserves. Unlike Sony or Microsoft, for whom the failure of a console launch would be catastrophic, Iwata wasn’t prepared to “bet the farm” on the Wii or the DS – if they failed, the company would simply go back to the drawing board.
In some markets, such as Japan, the DS has now probably reached a peak. The DSi, far from being revolutionary, is simply Nintendo cementing its position in the market. But despite this, the most exciting times for the console are yet to come. The growth of gaming is strong enough that even a deep recession will leave it unbowed – and huge markets such as India and China remain untapped. With component costs for the DS already low and continuing to fall, those emerging markets will become attractive fairly soon – giving Nintendo billions more consumers with whom to repeat its gaming miracle.
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Nintendo Wii Gaming Console
