Gamers Should Battle Out their Choices

Nintendo Co's Wii has finally hit the road as it’s getting its wings polished for a year end launch, despite the postponement of its European launch. The launch has been officially declared as a reason to combat the growing fever spread across by the already launched Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The numbers for now would appear disappointing for Wii fans: a whopping 8.9 million individuals in the USA "are prepared" to pay full price (the 20GB or the 60GB model) for the PlayStation 3 this fall. Nintendo Wii, on the other hand, has 5.7 million people. And lastly, 800,000 folks are willing to pay full price for Xbox 360, Premium or Core.

However, Interpret (a leading game analyzing company) CEO Michael Dowling feels that Nintendo's console could be the spoiler in the race. His logic is that there are two "high end" consoles battling each other, while Wii has no competition at the "low end".

Japan's top magazine publisher, Enterbrain, says Sony could fall behind rivals in the initial phase of competition, but it will clean up in the end.

Enterbrain President Hirokazu Hamamura says PS3's "overwhelmingly realistic graphics will give it a long life span. It will stay competitive even when a game console battle breaks out among a newer generation of machines in 2010. Sales should grow every time Sony cuts prices."

Hamamura says cost will come down for manufacturing as demand increases, and it will outsell both Wii and Xbox 360 in the long run because of graphics and "rich pool of potentially popular games."

PS3 sales are seen topping the Wii's by the end of 2006 as more software becomes available and because further price reductions are expected.

Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360, released in late 2005, is not very popular in Japan, the report said, although its sales are growing in the US and Europe, and its cumulative sales are predicted to reach 17.46 mln units by the end of 2007.

Nintendo’s marketed Wii as a pick-up-and-play type of device and it seems to be resonating with consumers. It isn’t just older hardcore gamer or younger player, Wii had a pretty wide distribution across age and gender.

Sony went further and bet on revolution: the game console wasn’t going to be for games only, it would also be a promoter of the Blu-Ray revolution. The Japanese producers’ decision proved to be questionable, as the Blu-Ray unit has already turned into a disadvantage rather than a reason for gamers to take stores by storm in order to buy PlayStation 3.

Quite differently from these two, Nintendo has chosen to come forward with a more modest console as far as technical specifications go, featuring neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD, offering, however, an unbeatable price: only $250.

Considering Xbox 360 can’t manage to go below $400, and the Blu-Ray unit is forcing PlayStation 3 to cost about $600, Nintendo is the cheapest console a gamer can possibly dream of having.

Price is once again an advantage. In accordance with GameStop’s (a game analyzing company) policy, placing an order for a Nintendo Wii will only cost the gamer $50, while those who desire a PlayStation 3 will have to cash out $100. Considering this GameStop has announced that processing pre-orders will go by the ‘first come, first served’ motto, neither group has any guarantee of acquiring their console of choice. It would be interesting if GameStop made public the number of pre-orders each console receives, as an indicator of their popularity.

For almost one year, Microsoft and Sony have considered that the dispute concerning game consoles is theirs entirely. During the past few months, ever since the former Revolution became Wii and received a price, Nintendo has proven that technology is not the only answer to a gamer’s wishes.

The end of the confrontation is yet to be seen and November, when Sony as well as Nintendo will finally give Microsoft the reply everybody’s been waiting for all year, will only mark another stage in the war of the consoles.