Console War V Part 3 September 3, 2013

A wise man once said, “Every bubble bursts.” That is precisely the most articulate way to describe the fall of Nintendo’s Wii around 2009. As we enter the third part of our history series on the fifth and most recent console war, the Nintendo Wii was sitting in first, the Xbox 360 was in second, and the Sony Playstation 3 was in the far third based upon console sales. After Nintendo was able to sell an exceptional number of Wiis, a larger number than any of the console makers could have hoped for, the wind started to fall away from Nintendo’s sails. By this point, Nintendo had started to reach the limit of just how many people were interested in obtaining a Wii. They had sold beyond the gamer demographic and entered into the casual market and beyond. Unfortunately, Nintendo was now hitting their threshold.

The third party publishers were not happy. While the Nintendo Wii had the largest installation base of that generation of consoles by far, most of the sales of multiplatform games went to Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 versions, not the console with the largest market share. With its lower powered graphics package and unique control system, Wii games were not easily ported and in most cases, games for the Wii had to be designed from the ground up to be on that console. While publishers were willing to take a chance on a system with such a large market share early on, third party publishers quickly learned that once a Wii owner had a copy of Wii Sports, that was about all they were interested in playing. Sales of third-party Wii games, including games specifically made to take advantage of the Wii, just weren’t selling. It was in this environment publishers were able to release some great Wii exclusives like No More Heroes and Dead Space: Extraction, which did well critically and garnered a devoted fanbase, but just could not sell anywhere near as well as the exclusives on the other platforms. On top of that, gamers were not happy either. HD televisions were getting more affordable, and people were upset at the fact that the Wii could not support high-definition resolutions like the PS3 and Xbox 360 could. Nintendo was still riding high on a much larger market share than any of their other competitors, but the Wii was in trouble.

The Playstation 3 was starting to gain traction. After a terrible first few years marred by a high price point and constricted library, Sony had finally started to right their path. By 2009, Sony made some very aggressive price drops to the PS3 and launched a series of phenomenal exclusive franchises for the platform, like Uncharted and inFAMOUS. While they were still sitting in third, their sales numbers were climbing. On top of that, with the death of HD-DVD, Blu-Ray Disc was taking off as the exclusive HD video format, and the most popular Blu-Ray Disc player by far was the Playstation 3, due to its ability to incorporate new Blu-Ray features on a regular basis alongside regular PS3 firmware updates.

Microsoft on the other hand may have been sitting in second with the Xbox 360, but they still considered themselves to be in first. They were sitting on superior monthly sales numbers for their console and believed that they could take the Xbox 360 into the market Nintendo had previously charted. Their strategy was to get all the third party games that normally would have launched exclusively on Sony’s hardware and get the developers to release them on the 360 as well, cutting Sony’s expected PS3 exclusive titles mostly to first-party releases. They were also making a ton of money on subscription fees from Xbox Live. While they had a great string of hit exclusive titles up to this point like Halo 3, Dead Rising, and the Gears of War series, the Xbox 360’s installation base was still nowhere near as high as the Wii was.

Sony and Microsoft believed the time was right to make a break for Nintendo’s crown and the battleground would be E3 2009. That was when both platforms would announce their own new unique control systems with the intention to strike at the novelty that Nintendo had so successfully capitalized on for the past three years.

At E3 2009, Microsoft would be the one to strike first. Microsoft’s development and management team stood together to announce Project Natal. Since a major part of the Wii’s success had been in its unique motion controller, Microsoft began working on a motion control system for the Xbox 360, and they believed what they had was truly revolutionary. Project Natal was a 3D camera system that had the ability to track a user’s gestures and voice so they could interact with their games completely without the need of a controller. By incorporating real-time 3D motion capture capabilities and voice control in the Natal, Microsoft promised it would be the most immersive control experience a gamer could ever have. The most crowd pleasing part of the Natal reveal was a short pre-recorded demo done by Game God Peter Molyneux called Milo, where a woman interacted in real-time with a virtually rendered child. She could pass him pictures, and he could make out her expressions, words and gestures. The gaming press went wild.

The next day, Sony announced what their plan was going to be for the future of the Playstation 3 and it would be called the Playstation Move. Building on the already available Playstation Eye camera, Sony showed off an entirely new type of controller called the Move Wand, which featured a glowing color ball in front of a button-equipped controller grip. The Playstation Eye worked in conjunction with gyroscopes inside the Move Wand to track the controller, and the player could use the Dual Shock 3 or a smaller navigation controller to function as an analog stick. Sony explicitly stated the best part of the Move was it would have buttons with tactile feedback for the player, unlike Natal’s purely gesture based control system, and existing Playstation 3 games could be patched to support the Move controller. The bad part was the Move looked and played nearly exactly like a Nintendo’s Wiimote and Nunchuck and everyone could tell.

Nintendo made their own announcements as well in the form of a slew of new games that would be coming exclusively for the Wii including Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M, but their real response to Sony and Microsoft’s motion control announcements would be releasing shortly after E3. While motion control had already been a built in feature of the Wii since launch, in June 2009, Nintendo released something for the Wiimote that would enhance the motion capability of the Wii and allow full 1:1 control between the player and the system. It was called the Wii MotionPlus and it would launch bundled with Wii Sports Resort, the sequel to the most successful game on the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo hoped that by bundling the latest Wii Sports game with the MotionPlus, it would give players the best opportunity to see what this new technology could do, and encourage more Wii owners to upgrade their Wiimotes. If enough players upgraded their Wiimotes, more games could be released that would take advantage of it.

The announcements had been made, and it was clear that Sony and Microsoft were actively going after Nintendo. Were they able to deliver on all their promises and overtake Nintendo, or was Nintendo’s dominance in the Console War too strong to give up their crown? We’ll talk about that next time!