India Broadband Forum

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Nintendo is due to launch their Wii gaming console in the US market this coming Sunday. Nintendo Wii would be taking on Sony’s Playstation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming console in the market.

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said in a statement on this launch: “It’s the same roughly 35 percent of households that are playing games. So our focus truly is on growing the industry — getting more women to play, getting older consumers to play. To do that we needed to have the remote be easy…and second we needed to have the games.”

Wii comes with less computing power than a PS3 or an Xbox 360 but offers intuitive exciting game play through its unique, motion-sensitive remote that lets players simulate swinging a tennis racquet, hitting a golf ball or wielding a sword.

Nintendo has said that they would have on offer 20 new titles available for the Wii at launch and 13 more by year-end. In comparison, Sony Playstation 3 would just have around 22 gaming titles by the end of the year.

Fils-Aime added on the Wii gaming console: “We think that’s in part why the industry has become so insular — very expensive machines, machines that arguably do more than you need them to do. We took a pause to say ‘We’re not going to do high definition. We’re not going to include a DVD because consumers already have two or three different DVD playback machines in their household. We wanted to bring it back to a core gaming machine.”