Memo to parents: better clear out some more room in the house for skateboards, gimmicky motion-detecting toys and even more plastic guitars — and get ready to fork out over $200 for many video-game set-ups.
And if that brings pain to your wallet — and household — Wall Street analysts say you can “Blame Nintendo.”
“What the Wii showed was that instead of the [Sony] PlayStation 3 — with its 17 buttons — gamers wanted to wave a Wii remote,” said Forrester Research Principal Analyst Paul Jackson. “There have been peripherals in the past, but they generally have been hit or miss.”
The popularity of the Nintendo Wii, coupled with better-than-expected revenues garnered by the mock instrument-based games like Activision’s Guitar Hero and MTV’s Rock Band, has companies gunning for the additional peripheral dollars.
Next week’s trend-setting Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, where video-game producers and hardware manufacturers unveil their best products for the fall and holiday seasons, will feature at least five high-profile equipment games:
* Activision’s Tony Hawk: RIDE, with its electronic toy skateboard
* Electronic Arts’ EA Sports Active, inspired by Nintendo’s Wii Fit
* MTV Games’ The Beatles: Rock Band, an exclusive Fab Four music game
* Two competing DJ-ing games, Nu-Mark’s Scratch and Activision’s DJ Hero — both with plastic record-player controllers. All are expected to cost between $100 and $200.
“When it launched [in 2005], Guitar Hero was a traditional game with an unusual controller, but then it quickly transformed into a platform of its own — buy the game and then [buy] lots of content later,” said Kotaku.com Editor-in-Chief Brian Crecente.
Analysts don’t believe the market will support every peripheral-based game, especially since the prices are at least double the standard $60 game-only price and some device-run titles, like Tony Hawk: RIDE, may be a one-trick pony. “[RIDE creator] Robomoto has hinted that other games will use [the skateboard], but of course that’s based on how well RIDE does — so you need to buy this peripheral and there is no guarantee you will use it again,” Crecente says.
Peripherals aside, Nintendo and, to a lesser degree, Apple are clearly the companies to beat this year. Microsoft is expected to announce an XBox 360 motion-sensitive device similar to the Wii controllers, while both Microsoft and Sony are going for the iPhone and Nintendo DS gaming markets with their new user-friendly Zune HD and PSP Go! portables.
Microsoft and Sony devices have traditionally been for hardcore enthusiasts, but are now aiming squarely at Nintendo and Apple’s casual, non-traditional gaming audience.
The Nintendo Wii is still the biggest selling home console, selling 50 million worldwide compared to Microsoft’s 28 million, XBox 360s and Sony’s 23 million PlayStation 3s.
However, Wii sales, once growing explosively year-on-year, causing shortages at retail, are now cooling, along with the video-game category overall.
In April, Wii sales dropped 52 percent compared to April 2008 — although the Nintendo system is still the top seller. NPR Group analyst Anita Frazier attributed part of the decline this year to the release last April of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart — which helped move 714,000 units that month.
Experts say that, unless Nintendo brings something amazing to E3, the race between Wii, PS3 and XBox will even out.
“Barring the extraordinary, the Wii will still be the top brand in 2009,” Forrester’s Jackson said.
And families will still be clearing space for extra plastic guitars and strangely-shaped controllers.