“Project Cafe” / Wii 2 – Nintendo’s new console

Nintendo is officially releasing a new console to the market, entitled ‘Project Cafe’. While not officially announced to be a successor to the Wii, it’s more or less a Wii 2.

The console is being rumoured to surpass the capabilities of the Playstation 3, the most advanced console available. While Sony has done this themselves in the NGP, for it to be released on a console means that Nintendo is obviously now seriously trying to compete with the 360 and PS3 for supremacy of the 7th Generation. Considering the success of the Wii, it won’t be hard for Nintendo to squeeze out a big initial launch sale.

With the graphical specs to surpass the PS3, does it mean that it will be kick-starting the 8th Generation, as the Wii did to the 7th? Probably not. Both Sony and Microsoft have promised that their respective consoles are having fairly extended life cycles to that seen in the 6th Generation.

So, is it necessarily wise of Nintendo to release a major competitor half-way into the shelf life of the other consoles? Probably not. While Nintendo’s family-oriented focus will bring in the sales as it always does, the PS3 and 360 being ahead in sales over the Wii should be telling Nintendo that they are selling poorly in the console market because of the fact that the generation belongs to the serious/hardcore gamers. Gamers who don’t want to stick around and play family games- although with the release of Kinect and Move, it’s becoming less and less clear what we gamers actually do want- there is a chance that unless Nintendo is really offering something with Project Cafe, that it’s not going to be surpassing the sales of the Wii. 84.64 million units since 2006 is a significant amount of sales over the other consoles, but when taking into consideration that the majority of the world’s population are still in financial insecurity after the crash of 2008, the sales of a new console like this might not be as desirable, and this price of the console will no doubt be affected by this GFC, but more importantly- the japan disasters. With the price of hardware no doubt rising in Japan, the technological capital of the world, Nintendo might be making a risky decision.

And then you need to look at whether or not gamers want a new console, and whether or not developers want to develop for it. Nintendo does have some strong IP’s, but it’s limited to the basic 3 franchises of Mario, Zelda and Pokémon; all of which have had recent (or even very near future) releases. Plus, with 84.64 million Wii sales, and 50 Million sales for both 360 and PS3, You’ve got to wonder if there is even a need for a new console.