The ever-vociferous Aaron Greenberg has labeled the Nintendo Wii as a novelty that will eventually die off while 360 ascends to glory. Oh yes he did.

Speaking to Gamasutra, the director of product management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live suggested that Wii is little more than a party piece that owners will soon get bored with.

“We’re seeing more people buying and playing games than ever before, and the Wii is definitely part of that. And as they grow that pie that benefits us too, because those customers are eventually going to want to graduate to an Xbox 360 experience.”

Why the devil would he assume they would want to do that? Ah, the old novelty chestnut.

“Everyone says that eventually the novelty will wear off, right? I think that a lot of the people that are buying that console today are not people that have generally bought consoles in the past, right?” says Greenberg, apparently ignoring the fact this argument has been in circulation since Wii launched in 2006.

“You see they’re not buying games on it, right? They’re buying it, it’s like something they break out when people come over, and it’s maybe a fun thing, but it’s almost like the same people that buy a karaoke machine, you know? They’re not really buying it for games, they’re just buying it as a novelty.”

Sony have been guilty of making this prediction too. Which essentially makes Sony and Microsoft a pair of squabbling siblings fighting over their uncle’s inheritance. All while he’s still in fine fettle.

Problem is, if the casual market ever flatlines, it could easily be the other half of Greenberg’s prediction that rings true — a bunch of people who haven’t gamed before getting bored of that novelty. Or rather, the uncle flicked a V and donated all the money to his cat.

Source: Gamasutra

Tags: aaron-greenberg, console race, novelty, predictions

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2 Comments » madpuppy on July 7, 2008 3:08 pm I don’t know the Wii to me is really not much of a game system. I really don’t see the allure, besides people who hate games and the casual gamer the only thing that the machine does well is what the n64 and gamecube did well, the platformer. Mario, Zelda stuff like that. not saying that the 360 or the PS3 don’t have platform games, ratchet and clank and Cameo are decent games. but the 2 machines shine with more complex, visually stunning and mature games. I think after a while the desire for meat and wine rather than whipped cream and lemonaid will decide the fate of the Wii. LC on July 7, 2008 3:16 pm whats the attache rate for wii games? 3rd parties still struggle to sell games, online is still crippled and even the vc and wii ware are crippled by poor storage design. I guess nintendo still has the whole imprecise control for casual games thing on there side. RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.