According to Nintendo, gamers have been bored untill the Wii showed up–heck of a bold claim, right? Perrin Kaplan, vice president of marketing for Nintendo of America, laid down the law when it came to the impact the Wii has made since its launch in November 2006.
"A major insight that Nintendo had early on was that they saw that gamers were getting bored, even though they didn’t know it yet," Kaplan said. The Wii’s easily approachable appearance and its appeal to the casual market has certainly helped the console get a leg up during the ongoing console war.
George Harrison, fellow main man at Nintendo, echoed Kaplan’s statements by saying part of the Wii’s success is due to Nintendo’s aggressive marketing campaign. He also noted that whenever a little or unintentional story involving the Wii appeared, marketing tended to explode them into giant stories.
"It was one of your biggest [campaigns] in terms of impact, although the actual spending was about the same as the year before… In our PR, we’ve always done outreach, but in this case, when we noticed something interesting happening online – like the weight loss using Wii Sports, we would draw it to the media’s attention."
In the end, while the Wii may be huge right now, it may even challenge the popularity of the PS2 one day.
[Via Next Generation]
