Nintendo’s recent success with the Wii and DS brought surprise to a lot of people, including the gaming giant itself.
Innovation obviously played a big part in this success, and we should applaud Nintendo for its creativty and willingness to try something new. However, the company’s under-estimation of the market demand for a Wii also created a massive markeing benefit although for the wrong reason. The result was unexpectedly amasing; everyone started talking about it and rushing to get one wherever and whenever the Wii was available.
This is no exaggeration - some of the shops on Oxford Street would get a limited number of units during the week in the morning and they would be gone in a record of an hour or two. Web serivces were created to alert buyers of the location and stock levels each shop had. This continued to happen for more than six months until Nintendo sorted out its production line to support the huge demand. During this period, impatient and crazy gamers were willing to pay up to double on eBay or Amazon Marketplace to get their hands on a Wii.
Good news carried on coming to Nintendo, as its Wii Sports has also won the prestigious Bafta awards for video games whilst it was also named best sports game, best game for more than one player and best game for casual or social play.
However, Wii is not the only product that has been doing well - its DS has also been gaining momentum in the UK. It is now not unusual to see communters doing their brain training in the morning or after work. In fact, it made me smile to see two guys frantically moving the stylus on the DS screen and another one scratching his head over the brain training game in the same tube train carriage. I just love seeing Brits getting more into technology!
