Wednesday, July 25, 2007

just how far apple has come in cornering the concept of cool electronica

cambridge wii party screenshot
(Cambridge Wii party. Not my arm. I did win the resulting match.)

The Wii party here in Cambridge was a rousing success despite having only six attendees. So much so, in fact, that the party was broken up by an annoyed knock from my downstairs neighbor at an hour I will not disclose here because as it would undermine my public presentation as a basically considerate human being. Eek.

The women did not dominate boxing as was the predicted and actual experience at the Madison Wii party. Also, strangely, while 19 out of the 20 fights in the Madison Wii tournament ended by knockout, only 1 out of the first 6 fights at the Cambridge party did.

Anyway, one attendee at the party who was very impressed by the Wii insisted on looking at the box before believing me when I said the Wii was not manufactured by Apple. And, after acknowledging this, the person did take the view that the Nintendo was basically copying "style" from Apple. As far as I can tell, the reasoning for why the Wii was copying from Apple was that it was (1) white and (2) cool. You know a company has really accomplished something when they lay an intellectual property claim in some people's minds to "products that are cool" and "the color white."

BTW, I bought the Wii trauma surgery game, although that'll have to wait to be a post of its own sometime.

BTW-BTW, I have a headache, as would be predicted from my effort to go tepid turkey on Coke Zero (tepid, not cold, because I'm just cutting back to one a day). I will persevere. I think.

5 comments:

Brock#20 said...

Nintendo has done something similar to Apple in that it has made a product that has escaped the targeted demographic and broke out into other age groups. That I find really impressive.

Looking forward to the review. I recommend Brain Academy and Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, for its highly addictive and great for parties side games.

jeremy said...

I think a more accurate way of putting it would be that Nintendo made a product that targeted a different demographic than the demographic everyone thought they needed (but wouldn't be able to get) to survive.

Brock#20 said...

I don't think we are saying very different things. The video game demogrpahic is what, 12-35 year old males mostly? That would be the target for video game consoles. Nintendo you might be able to flub a little on the low end because they have always marketed towards kids.

I think the unrealized market that Nintendo tapped into are people on the high end of my range who want to play video games again and get intimiated or dislike the fact that you can no longer just pick up a video game and play it. You NEED the instruction book and for half the games you need to shell out another 15 bucks for the companion guide to tell you what you need to do.

Sorry, didn't mean to be that long winded. In sum, I think we agree.

erika d. said...

I recommend emotionally preparing yourself for your first Trauma Center casualty in case you have yet to encounter one. It felt strangely awful the first time. Good luck :)

Gwen said...

I made it all yesterday without a Diet Coke and managed to go to the store this morning and not buy one. So far so good.