Wii could be the answer

In my last post I talked of the crash of the video game industry of late. As I look closely at sales figures besides the fact that the DS is dominating all sales in terms of consoles the Wii is just trouncing the other new generation systems. I also mentioned in my last post that the video game market is one that is nearly impossible to expand. Well, the Wii has managed to find a way around this. In fact, the Wii is growing so much in popularity amongst the elderly that a lot of retirement homes are investing in them. In the past the video game market has been realisticly limited to males in the age range from 10-35. With the Wii expanding into the older market they are gaining so many more customers than they could have through staying in the current market and developing more like-minded games. In all honestly there is no way that I thought a video game system would be able to enter the market for the elderly because they often don't want to bother with pressing these buttons to control characters that they don't really care about. But with games like Wii sports where they can experience virtual bowling where they actually have to imitate bowling motion there is a new type of virtuality. They can't and often won't want to go try and practice their golf swing but they will happily do it in the comfort of their own living room.
So how did the Wii complete this, they offered something sincerely new to the industry. Yes the Wii offers better graphics than the Gamecube and the Wii is more powerful than the Gamecube was. However, compared to what the other generation systems did, the Wii concentrated on creating a whole platform on which games can be based. They offered a new idea, where consumers were actually making movements to control their characters on the screen. They allowed their consumers to mock playing tennis or boxing or running mario around by moving their own arms. Rather than focusing on making our clothing look more real, they concentrated on allowing us to become part of the game. Rather than concentrating on how ridiculous the wii characters look playing Wii sports, we are concentrating on what our own movments are because thats what's making the difference. Working well enough that Microsoft is working on a wii-style controller. Wii has established their competitive advantage and now their competition is scrambling to keep up. So long that Wii concentrates on continuing to develop faster than competition it will continue to dominate the competitors. In the end we all already know we're controlling a character that doesn't exist, and I think most consumers would prefer something else rather than their clothing looking more real, like more control over the character. Something that Nintendo has realized and is making it's priority. In the end, if I'm visiting my grampa to go bowling together because of Nintendo they've done something that none of their competitors have come close to, expanding the market or providing something completely new to the industry.