The Wii, with motion control and a fresh image, turned the gaming industry on its head. Now grandmas sit with their grandchildren and play a few round of Wii Sports Bowling. The console is, without doubt, a global phenomenon, drawing in new audiences like none could before it. In attempts to recapture market share, Sony’s own motion controller, the ‘wand’, arrives next spring and Microsoft’s Project Natal camera, offering controller-free input via body and facial recognition, launches winter 2010. But why was Nintendo’s Wii so successful in the first place? And can Sony or Microsoft ever hope to make a significant dent in the Wii’s dominance?

Nintendo’s Wii success stems from a long learning process beginning with their handheld platforms. When Nintendo released the successor to their hugely successful Gameboy devices in 2004, the DS (short for Dual Screen) became an instant hit. To some its design was unsightly but it supported updated graphics, big first party franchises and, in addition to a standard button configuration, it implemented a stylus which could be used to tap and draw on the lower screen. This addition paved the way for what may in retrospect be one of the most significant games in recent history, Brain Age: Train your Brain in Minutes!, which involved the player using their voice and the stylus’s functionality to complete sums and other aptitude tests.

Educational games had been developed before and never met with any commercial success. However, Brain Age’s international release one year after its debut in Japan was an instant hit, riding the wave of a newly health-conscious population. Health and fitness were at the top of the political and public agenda after films like Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, which released just months after the DS’s launch in 2004 and divulged the shocking consequences of a fast food diet, and the Channel 4 documentary on healthy eating, Jamie’s School Dinners, broadcast in the UK in early 2005.

This was arguably the turning point for Nintendo. The public image of video gaming was still vastly negative (lazy couch potatoes in their mum’s basement sniffling over Warcraft) but games like Brain Age proved it could in fact be life-enhancing. What other ways could a video game console improve a person’s lifestyle? Nintendo had struck gold with its DS device and was about to explore this avenue further, to even greater commercial success.

Nintendo’s first step toward conquering a new market was the industrial redesign of their portable device. The DS Lite hit shelves in March 2006 and eliminated any complaints one could make about its aesthetics. Nintendo replaced the metallic and clunky tech-head design of the old model with cleaner lines and a neutral white colour scheme (the unit was also available in black but white was the core model). This sleek unit was clearly targeting the new market it had discovered in 2005. White suggested an association with health or purity and was intended to be more pleasing to a female audience, while the design was also much smaller than its predecessor, meaning it could be more easily carried (in a woman’s handbag for example). The system’s game library began to expand rapidly, including more and more titles relating to new consumers of both sexes and all age groups. Brain training games and pet simulations like Nintendogs became staple franchises for the company and gradually the public image of video games began to soften. It was now acceptable to enjoy games. Nintendo was paving the way for a new device.

In late 2006 Nintendo revealed its hand.

At launch the Wii was the only available system to offer motion control as its primary user interface – ditching the increasingly complex layout of buttons and analogue sticks for simpler, more intuitive gesture based interactions coupled with pointer tracking from an IR sensor bar. The combination initially gave optimism to video game enthusiasts, who touted the Wii as the only system that could finally match and perhaps outperform the precision of a mouse and keyboard or dual-analogue stick controller configuration. More accurately, of course, the Wii’s motion controller was designed as a stylus with buttons on it that you could wave in the air. The idea was simple: if you could use a DS, you could use the Wii, and it was so popular that finding a retailer with the system in stock was near impossible for months after release. The DS had readied the general public for video games and when the Wii launched just before the Christmas holiday it was on everybody’s gift list.

The system’s technical specifications were almost a step backward when compared to the graphical powerhouses of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, whose high manufacturing costs and use of cutting edge components like Blu-ray disc drives forced Microsoft and Sony to initially sell systems at a loss in the hope of recouping the costs through high attach rates. On the other hand, Nintendo’s machine was so cheap to produce they have continued to make a profit on every unit sold since its release date in the winter of 2006, adding up to incredible profits without the dependence on software sales. The hardware’s lower price point was a major trump card. It debuted at just £179 ($249) making it the lowest price of admission to the next-generation of gaming. Supporting only standard definition resolutions of up to 480p, it also did not rely on the market penetration of HD television sets which were required to enjoy the full experience of the rival consoles. It was, at its heart, a simple machine and one that resonated with a casual audience.

The Wii’s simplicity and resulting success reminds us of video games that first breached the mass market, like Space Invaders or even Pong. As other game systems drive forward with technical innovation, new generations of players are left facing the barrier of mastering what has become the modern controller, with all its complexities. Project Natal identifies this problem and removes the barrier altogether, allowing players to use their body and gestures as input devices. Yet the experience associated with the Xbox 360 (online shooters, etc.) does not match this product, which brings us to the problem of brand identity. Project Natal’s launch is being described by Microsoft as similar to a ‘console launch’ but many are left questioning what this means if the camera remains a separate peripheral. Some have speculated that this statement means the device will in fact be integrated into the existing hardware. A more sophisticated interpretation, however, is that the system will receive a product rebranding equal to that of the DS/DS Lite, more closely associating the controller-free experience with the Xbox branding.

Recent polls conducted on kotaku.com confirmed 46% of respondents enjoy motion controlled games but ‘enjoy standard-control games more’, while 42% agreed motion control wasn’t relevant to the games they play. So, as the maker of the technologically superior HD console, where is Sony’s slice of the motion control pie? Andrew House, head of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), has stated he feels Wii owners would be ‘happy to upgrade to a more powerful machine later in the lifecycle when the price point was right for them’ in the same way they did from the Nintendo 64 to PlayStation 2 in the last generation (source: Kotaku). From this we can begin to understand the thinking behind Sony’s motion controller. The ‘wand’ very much resembles the Wii remote and this, far from playing copycat, serves a purpose: Sony wishes to eventually lure the younger crowd weaned on Wii titles to the PS3 with a similar control scheme they understand well, and then graduate them onto the more hardcore titles with time. The recent rebranding and industrial design overhaul of the PS3 reduced the geek-factor of the system considerably, and importantly reduces the price of admission by a significant amount, allowing Wii players and non-gamers to more easily make this transitional step up.

Nintendo, moving early, recognised the synergy between motion and health could be advantageous to their industry right when the public was growing concerned about diet and exercise. Their entire hardware line communicates and embodies that synergy, making gaming on their system both acceptable and desirable. PlayStation and Xbox, as divisions within larger corporations, are tied to their manufacturer’s values and that does not allow them to commit to such a powerful ethos. However, their approaches show they understand the need to be different from Nintendo and capture the audience in new ways. The best they can hope for is to skim from the Wii and non-gamer crowds. But then, what happens when the Wii HD arrives?