BigShinyThing

The games company is second only to Toyota in terms of market capitalisation. Shares in Nintendo closed up 3.1 per cent to ¥59,200 bringing its market value to ¥8,390bn ($73.2bn), surpassing Canon’s market cap of ¥8,120bn.

The Japanese games maker’s shares have more than quadrupled over the past two years as the family-friendly Wii console has trounced Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 to become the best-selling next-generation games machine in the world.

The surge in Ninteno’s market cap comes as Microsoft eagerly awaits the results of the much-hyped launch of Halo 3, the latest version of its blockbuster video game. Microsoft last month cut the price of its most popular Xbox 360 model by $50, following a similar move by Sony, which had cut the price of its PS3 console in the US to boost sales.

Nintendo is now back at the top of the console market, a position it last held 17 years ago with the Nintendo and Super Nintendo consoles. Observers attribute Nintendo’s success to Satoru Iwata, the company’s president, who joined the games maker in 2002. Mr Iwata is credited with forcing Nintendo to revamp its strategy by not trying to compete directly with Sony or Microsoft. Instead, the games maker has created a market in so-called ‘casual gaming’ by trying to woo adults as well as children.

Nintendo’s reclaimed supremacy was underlined in July when it leapfrogged Sony, the consumer electronics group, in terms of market capitalisation for the first time.

Sony disappointed gamers last week when it said the launch of Home, its virtual reality world, would be delayed until the spring.

The Wii costs $249 compared with $300-$400 for the Xbox 360 and $599 for the PS3. Anlaysts say prices of all three consoles are expected to drop by the crucial holiday shopping season.

Source: Financial Times

According to a report in The Times, the Nintendo Wii – which is currently outselling Sony’s PlayStation 3 by three to one – has begun to “steal” prime-time television audiences in Japan.

The Nintendo machine, which was specifically designed to repackage video gaming as a family-oriented affair - otherwise known as ‘casual gaming’, is believed by media insiders to be responsible for an unprecedented decline in early-evening viewing figures for Japan’s top-rated shows.

According to one senior executive of the country’s largest commercial television channel, Fuji TV, families who used to tune in to its colourful diet of soap operas, panel games and comedy variety shows may, instead, be drifting away and choosing to spend the same, economically-critical “golden hour” time playing on their Wii.

His comments come as Japanese television executives are reeling in horror at recent figures from Japan’s audience-tracking firms: last week was the first in nearly two decades where no single show on any commercial station attracted more than a 9 per cent audience share.

“The quality of programming has always been a little cyclical in Japan, but there has never been a period of decline like the one we are seeing now. There are outside factors at work. One is people watching TV on their cell phones where we can’t track them, but the really big factor is the time people are spending on the Wii,” an executive of TBS, another major commercial channel, said. He added that the “theft” of audiences was taking place because television producers and programming directors were used only to the idea of competing for time with other channels.

Parents – the critical decision-makers of family entertainment between 7pm and 9pm – were being wooed by something more interactive than television offers at present.

Investors have already shown their excitement over the Wii, despite the fact that it has yet to produce a range of titles that appeal to so-called “hard-core” games enthusiasts (you could say that it doesn’t need to). Nintendo’s stock has soared of late and the company now commands a greater market capitalisation than Sony – a rival that has a massive portfolio of businesses and eight times the global revenues of Nintendo. Sony has however encountered massive problems with the launch of its much-anticipated Sony Playstation 3 and a raft of PR blunders. By contrast, the Wii has even managed to turn negative PR to its advantage, with reports of Wii-related injuries just proving how compelling (and compulsive) the user experience is.

The Wii console, which is controlled by a motion-sensitive baton, has introduced a range of new experiences to the $30 billion (£15 billion)-a-year games industry. Because the controller can be used to simulate everything from a bowling ball to a battle-axe, software designers have come up with a range of titles that encourage gaming in a wider target audience than Nintendo’s old constituency of eight-to-16-year-olds. It has also put paid to the image of the coach-potato gamer.

Analysts at Nomura, for example, pin high hopes on a forthcoming Wii game with the working title of “Wii Health”. The game is expected to offer its users a full range of workouts and fitness activities using the motion-sensitive controller; it is also expected to snatch market share from the many fitness and health shows that dominate the daytime television schedules. Given the versatility of the Wii controller – it could simulate any kitchen utensil from a fish slice to an egg whisk – the Wii might also stage an assault on that bastion of prime-time Japanese television, the celebrity chef cookery show.

We are clearly witnessing the advent of a new type of leisure activity - the rise of ‘casual gaming’. Traditional TV has even more problems than we thought …

How many times do we have to say it: there is nowhere to hide on the Internet. This time last year we were talking about how Sony had attempted to exploit street art to market the PSP and now the company has been caught astro-turfing on behalf of the brand. According to Brandrepublic:

Sony Computer Entertainment has been exposed as being behind an embarrassing online viral campaign intended to boost sales of its PlayStation Portable handheld console at Christmas.

A website appeared last month, at alliwantforxmasisapsp.com, intended to look like a genuine fan site unaffiliated to the brand. The site, which included a video clip of a “Cousin Pete” performing a rap asking for a PSP for Christmas, triggered suspicion among the gaming community about its creators’ impartiality.

Speculation that the website was a Sony creation was initially dismissed by the site administrators, who wrote: “We don’t work for Sony. And for all you dissin’ my skillz I’m down for a one on one rap off or settling it street stylez if you feel me playa.” [Quite].

It has since emerged that the site was created by Sony Computer Entertainment US.

Contrast this with the launch of the Wii. Now we don’t think that all of those pictures of Wii-related black-eyes and customised wrist straps are necessarily a Bad Thing. And recalls also have a tendency to make the heart grow fonder. At least it demonstrates that people are actually playing with the damn things… as The Mirror headline notes:

Wii-OWW! THE new Nintendo Wii games console is causing mayhem — as over-excited players hurl themselves around.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen a grand total of three PSPs this year. Another gauge? Flickr is already hosting nearly 21,000 photos relating to Wii to PSP’s 23,000.