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In the land of console gaming the leader of the pack for this generation for now of course is the Nintendo Wii. This generation of gaming consoles was billed as a battle between the titans of gaming the 360 and the PS3. No gaming expert or gaming analyst would have told you three years ago that between the 360 and the PS3 that the winner would be this under powered system by Nintendo called the Wii with it’s cute graphics and gimmicky waggle control system would absolutely dominate the competition for years.

Fast forward to 2009 and the Nintendo Wii is still the king of gaming console mountain. There do appear to be a few cracks in the foundation that the Nintendo Wii was built upon that is showing the pressure of holding up the Nintendo Wii and the Wii empire it has built in a relatively short period of time.

The key part to and probably the most vital part to being in the gaming console business are the games. The games are what is going to keep the gaming console active and important to the gaming consumer for years to come. Proof of that would be the long term success of the PS 2 and it’s massive gaming library. The Nintendo DS and it’s huge gaming library and even the Apple App store and all the games they have on there that has made the iPhone and iPod popular gaming devices in the last year. People love games and they love to have a large variety of choices for their gaming console of choice.

It has been the first party titles of the Nintendo gaming library that have helped the Nintendo Wii rise to the top. Unfortunately for Nintendo this has been their strength but has also proven to be the weakness that may in the long run be the downfall of the Nintendo Wii also. A quick look at the top five selling games for the Nintendo Wii and all five of the games are from Nintendo and what is even worse in terms of variety for the customer is that four of the five have been on the market for a year or more

Games like Wii Sports, Fit, Play, Mario Kart Wii and Mario Tennis which is the last of the top five and has only been out for eleven weeks. Now take for example some third party games that have been recently released on the Wii. I will point out the  PES 2009 game which is a great soccer game that has sold well over a million for both the PS3 and 360 but on the Wii in only two weeks is down the sales chart at 22 in just two weeks with a total sales of about 24,000??? That is just terrible! The other game is Madworld which like PES 2009 has gotten great reviews across the board as a great game for the Nintendo Wii and MadWorld is an exclusive game for the Nintendo Wii. It’s a hardcore violent game that should absolutely appeal to the hardcore gamers. How are the sales though? It’s done a little better in the three weeks that it has been out selling over 90,000 but weekly sales have it crashing down the chart at #17 in weekly sales? These third party games are getting destroyed on the sales chart by games that have been out in some cases for years now and I have to ask what is wrong with this picture?

I will put this very simply and that is Nintendo made a conscience choice to cater to the “casual non de-script gamer”. I really hate that term because the people that are buying the Wii are not even gamers at all they are people that have “bought into” the latest gadget fad. They buy those standard five Nintendo branded games if Nintendo is lucky and that’s it. The Nintendo Wii is not a game seller and the developers know this to be true which is why they spend very little time, money and resources in developing games for the Nintendo Wii.

The developers that do take a chance and make a real effort to create innovative games for the Wii like Sega did with the Madworld game  are unfortunately not being rewarded for their efforts. MadWorld is not a game that these “casual non de-script gamer” Wii owners are going to spend money on. The Madworld game is a game for hardcore gamers of which there are hardly any left for Nintendo as they have all abandoned the Nintendo Wii for the most part. The Nintendo hardcore gamers that were once a very large and proud group have been reduced to getting their gaming fix from the other gaming console competitors.

More evidence that the Wii system is starting to show it’s weak spots are the sales numbers in Japan. The Nintendo Wii has dominated hardware sales since opening day up until this year. The PS3 is leading the gaming hardware sales chart as the market in Japan has reached it’s saturation point and sales are dropping significantly in Japan from month to month. With no real gaming support from third party developers the hardware will be left to stand out there on it’s own and like I said before it’s the games that sell the hardware without the games eventually the hardware will come tumbling down.

For those of you that are curious about my gaming history I presently own a Nintendo Wii, PS3, DS Lite and a PSP. I had a 360 that was used frequently until the red ring of death took it out for a second time. So most of my home gaming time involves the PS3. The only time the Wii gets turned on now is when family comes over and they want to bowl! Sorry Nintendo I am one of the many gamers that you have abandoned and I have done the same to you in return