GameBrain: December 2007 Archives

You've heard it all year but now's the testing time.  Is the Wii going to sell well this Christmas?  Our Canadian friends are finding out the answer harshly at the moment, with a report just released stating that the Nintendo Wii is topping the 'sold out at Christmas' charts already.  If you want a Wii, you'd better get your credit card out and go to a site like Ebay, because the shops are sold out almost where ever you go. CBC.ca had this to say ten minutes ago:

'For the second straight year, electronics stores around Metro Vancouver are out of stock of the innovative game system heading into Christmas, said Rick Lee, assistant manager at EB Games in Burnaby.

"They're just the most popular item in the video-game market this year. They're really hard to come by because any time we get them, they just fly right out the door," Lee told CBC News on Wednesday.

Shoppers like Natalie Boucher and her whole family have scoured the Lower Mainland in a last-minute attempt to get their hands on one.

"We've called as far away as Kamloops and Bellingham in the U.S. to try and find one of these Wii's, but so far no luck," Boucher said.'

Everyone's got an opinion on what you should get this Christmas, haven't you noticed?  It's on every single web portal.  What does that tell you?  Gaming is now BIG business, and we're not even just talking now about entertainment industry niches.  We're talking bigger than Hollywood (DVD and cinema sales, essentially) and we're also talking non gamers.  Families and grannies, aunts and uncles, God parents and 'friends of the family'.  Heck, even your ex might show up over the holidays with a DS Lite in his pocket, and why?

Because now games really are for everyone.  As fangirlish as it may sound, we have Nintendo to thank for that. As annoying as it is that they 'forgot' about HD, large hard drives or DVD playing, the truth is that they have opened gaming up into a global book that everyone can read, without feeling 'geeky' or 'childish'.  The niche carved out by the Gameboy has erupted in the form of the popular DS/DS Lite, splattering one in four Japanese so far with its charm.  Owning a DS is like owning a book - nobody is going to diss you for learning how to spell, speak or do maths, are they? Nobody is going to accuse you of being a geek for breaking out into a bit of Trauma Center or Phoenix Wright on a train, because what else is there to do?  Gaming finally makes sense to the non gamer, and soon the very term 'non gamer' may become a thing of the distant past.