Nintendo knows it’s got a winner on its hands with the Wii and now it looks like the company is starting to project some hubris. George Harrison, the head of marketing for Nintendo of America, says Sony screwed up by releasing a PlayStation 3 that’s simply too expensive for what it does. Hence, as Harrison points out, Sony is still selling a large number of PS2s.
Harrison also says that this video game cycle may well last more than the 5-6 years that’s been the norm for the past few cycles. The key to its broad success is focusing on non-typical gamers this generation. That’s fine, but I’ve seen my fair share of message board flame wars (here, too) where people complain that Nintendo is losing the traditional gamer audience by making so much mini-game-like games. That’s a shame since it was Nintendo’s hardcore faithful who helped it through the dry spells in the N64 and GameCube’s lifetimes.