How could this happen?  Nintendo has always had a loyal fan base, but several console blunders over the past decade had made them into the red headed stepchild of the gaming industry, taking beatings of Mommie Dearest proportions at the hands of Microsoft, Sony, and a gaming public which had grown up without the Japanese giant who seemed intent on continuing to make consoles for kids.  In a surprising series of events Nintendo did a lot of things right this past year while Sony did a lot of things wrong, effectively turning the tides in Mario's favor and leaving... well Sony really doesn't have a mascot... leaving Sony scratching its head.

Brand new video game consoles are expensive, there's no denying it.  They tend to launch at an insane price of three to four hundred dollars and then gradually come down over the next few years.  Microsoft launched the 360 at two price points last year.  The brainless core system cost about $300.00 while the fully loaded (in video game terms anyway) Pro System was about $400.00.  Sony shocked the world when they announced a similar strategy of two price points, $500.00 and $600.00.  The last console in recent memory to cost that much in actual dollars was the Neo Geo system.  Guess what? No one bought that either.

Nintendo claimed early on that its new baby would cost a fraction of the other consoles' prices and the $250.00 figure was floating around even while the Wii was still the Revolution.  In October that amount was made official and gamers who had balked at the 360's price and choked when they heard Sony's suddenly perked up a bit, realizing there would be a console that, you know, real people could afford.

The Hardware

Sony's machine is, without a doubt, impressive.  As painful as it is to admit, there's a reason the PS3 costs what it does.  Even with the more than halfway to a grand sticker price the company is losing money on every unit it sells.  A big part of that comes from the fact that the PS3 is a Blu-Ray player and still supports traditional DVD, CD and a large number of old PS One and PS2 games (although it was revealed pre-launch that the console would not be fully backwards compatible as Sony originally claimed).

The problem with this is that Sony is banking on Blu-Ray to become the format of choice for the next generation.  They're up against HD-DVD which may well win out. The entire porn industry is behind HD-DVD, after all.  Those old enough to remember Betamax will take note that Sony has traveled this road before and the results were not pretty.  We've all seen the technical stats of the PS3 already, so we won't rehash them here.  Just know that they are indeed impressive - and expensive.

Nintendo kept things a little simpler with the Wii.  It doesn't boast visuals as impressive as either competitor and it doesn't have anywhere near the bells and whistles of the PS3 (at launch and to this day it still doesn't have multiplayer online, that will come later), but it is also less costly to produce and therefore sell.  A lot less costly.

Nintendo also scored big with gamers by including an actual game in the North American Wii packaging, something that hasn't been done in the industry for many years.  Sony included a Blu-Ray copy of a pretty bad Will Ferrell movie in only some (the first 500,000) PS3's.  Who wins there?  If you have only the scratch for a console and no new games would you rather drop $600 and get Will Ferrell as a redneck NASCAR driver or $250 and get a game you can actually play on your new system?

Legal issues with the rumble technology used in DualShock and DualShock 2 controllers also caused Sony woes.  The company was forced to leave the technology out of the otherwise impressive Sixaxis controller.  Additionally, the seemingly added-at-the-last-minute tilt functionality (which the upcoming and severly-delayed game Lair apparently relies upon) served more to show that Sony was suddenly worried about the Wii than act as an indication of an advanced controller.