The Nintendo Wii is on the march

The Nintendo Wii is on the march

An army of casual gamers is helping Nintendo win the console war, says Steve Boxer
Nintendo's Wii has achieved the status of a full-blown phenomenon: by some distance the fastest selling of the new generation of games consoles both in the UK and globally, it is poised to become the biggest seller, too, having notched up global sales of 10.1 million to the Xbox 360's 10.32 million. Impressive stuff, given that the Xbox 360 has been on sale for a year longer than the Wii. Sony's stunning but pricey PlayStation 3, meanwhile, straggles with cumulative sales of 4.11 million units, although it has only been on sale in Europe since March. In Japan, where the Wii has achieved cult status, it outsells the PS3 by a factor of between four and six to one.

The Wii has done a rare thing - it's encouraged people who normally wouldn't even consider playing a computer game to pick up a Wiimote (the motion-sensitive remote control) and give it a go. Many experts - including the Telegraph's Digital Life team - predicted that this might be the case back in December last year, when the Wii went on sale in Europe. But few foresaw the gusto with which the wider public would take to Nintendo's console. The simplicity of the Wii and its motion-sensitive control gives it an ageless, intuitive feel, and Nintendo's clever selection of titles, such as the ever-popular Wii Sports suite and mental agility titles such as Big Brain Academy, has made it a popular choice for families. A new kind of player has been born - the "casual gamer" - and even some of the most traditional games makers are starting to sit up and take notice.
When the Wii, and its touch-screen handheld sibling the DS (which has sold a staggering 46.83 million units worldwide) were unveiled, Nintendo's chief designer Shigeru Miyamoto - a man held to be one of the deepest thinkers in the games industry, and accorded almost God-like status in Japan - and chief executive officer Satoru Iwata spoke about how they would "disrupt" the games industry, and they have certainly achieved that aim. All of a sudden, everyone wants a slice of the burgeoning "casual" games scene the Wii and DS have spawned.
In his keynote at the recent Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer of game publisher Ubisoft said that one of the three factors behind the anticipated growth of the gaming market by 50 per cent in the next three years, was, he said, "user-friendly consoles, which are attracting completely new audiences. There are so many people who played games when they were young, but find them too complex and time-consuming now, as well as people who have never played games." Guillemot has established an autonomous casual games division at Ubisoft, concentrating on the Wii and DS, which will produce games such as My Word Coach, designed to increase users' vocabularies, the Petz series and party favourite Rayman Raving Rabbids.
The new target audience for such games are people like the O'Callaghan family, from south London. Parents Sarah and Greg have two Wii-playing youngsters, seven-year-old Caitlin and four-year-old Harry (as well as a one-year-old yet to discover the joys of gaming). "We got the Wii six to seven months ago, and the kids love it," says Sarah. "Now we never play games on the PlayStation and so on, where they sit on their own and tune out. Sometimes all four of us play together - and you do also run around somewhat when you play it, which is good. It's a treat for them: we say they can play it if they behave themselves. It has even reduced the amount of TV they watch.
"They particularly like to play Wii Sports, and it has sparked an interest in the real sports - my four-year-old is now interested in taking up golf properly."
Seven-year-old Caitlin agrees: "I like the fact that anyone in the family can play it," she says. Caitlin can't wait to get her hands on Big Brain Academy, which combines colourful exercises with a mental workout. Even dad Greg, who considers himself a more hardcore gamer, has been impressed by the Wii. "When something comes out, I like to get hold of it when it's new, but I had no interest in the Wii - it looked too childish," he says. "But when it wasn't available" - demand in the UK far outstripped supply until the last few months - "that sparked my interest.
"I've been very impressed: the whole control system amazes me. It's an easy thing to have in the front room, so that you can all jump in and play, and some people can then drop out if they want. It's for all the family."

And it's not just a means of engaging with and pacifying the kids, welcome though that may be. Adam Billingham, the owner and manager of Brixton Bar and Grill in south London, has created a special Wii night at his establishment. "I've been a gamer as long as I can remember," he says, "and we've got a back arch that we use at the weekend for DJs, but not in the week. So I installed a projector and screen and thought: 'Why not get a Wii in?' I've promoted it as 'Wii Love Wednesdays', and we've been getting loads of people and groups in - quite a lot of girls have been coming to play. We've got Wii Sports on it, because it's such a sociable game to play. I know at least three people who went and bought a Wii the next day."
Nintendo is aware of the growth of interest in the casual games sector among its competitors, and is not resting on its laurels. It hopes the scheduled Christmas launch of Wii Fit, which will come with a "balance board", will consolidate its position as market leader in the casual games sector, and give console sales a further boost. Electronic Arts, the biggest of the industry's publishers, which constantly attracts criticism for churning out yearly versions of expensively licensed games, has also gratefully embraced the Wii, with new intellectual properties such as Boogie, in which you guide a character through a virtual pop career, and EA Playground, in which up to four people take each other on in school playground games. And it is creating Wii-specific versions of established games, such as football title FIFA 08.
If there is a criticism of the Wii, it is that it lacks "grown-up" games, and particularly those featuring Nintendo's much-loved franchises from the past. But it's perfectly capable of running "hardcore" games such as first-person shooters, in which the Wiimote is augmented by a "nunchuk" add-on - as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess showed. Indeed, titles such as Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime: Corruption and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles should arrive in time for Christmas, keeping old Nintendo fans happy. Guillemot admitted at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival that there's an element of the Trojan horse to the casual games initiative - suck non-gamers in, then wean them on to hardcore games.
So far, Nintendo's rivals have mainly paid lip service to the casual gaming boom, although both Microsoft and Sony have begun to place greater emphasis on the retro and retro-style games downloadable from Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Although Sony came out with a new version of the EyeToy (a camera which can sense hand movements, and thus operates as a controller), and added motion-sensing to the PlayStation 3's controller (in a nod to the Wii), it has created precious few casual games to go with either, although a PS3 version of the popular karaoke game SingStar is imminent.
In short, if the thought of spending hours playing virtual golf fills you with horror, make sure you never even pick up a Wiimote. You'll find the charms it unlocks impossible to resist.