That thread on the Wii being a threat to hardcore gaming is, I think, close to the mark but not accurate. The real danger is that since Nintendo is already a dominant company in the handheld market, they will with a dominant Wii procede to dominate the entire gaming industry in way we haven't seen since the SNES days. With Nintendo in the drivers seat in nearly all gaming outside PC gaming, they can now force the majority of third parties to their will. If they don't like very violent games, developers of violent games will dramatically suffer. Since the Wii is underpowered, same thing will happen with games with great graphics as well. So will just about any other type of game happen that bucks the trend with Nintendo. It is very likely that the diversity of existing gaming will drop dramatically due to this, and surprisingly enough innovating future games that innovate in a manner different from Nintendo will suffer too.
So the question is, do we really want a Nintendo hegemony, where the majority of the gaming industry is forced to go through Nintendo's HQ? It is quite possible that the Wii will hurt the industry simply because of the position Nintendo is in. It may seem weird that "innovation" and "expanding the market" can hurt an industry, but that is very similar what natural monopolies are. If one company can simply overpower its competitors with a better or cheaper product to the point where its competitors cannot compete, like in a natural monopoly, then the industry will suffer. For instance, Microsoft Windows is a natural monopoly, and very few argue that is good for the OS industry. The simple act of concentrating that kind of power in a single company is the danger, and how the company achieved that power is nearly irrelevant. This is the danger of the Wii, and it may be good for the industry if either the Wii or the DS fails.
EDIT: Bad spelling corrected.
So the question is, do we really want a Nintendo hegemony, where the majority of the gaming industry is forced to go through Nintendo's HQ? It is quite possible that the Wii will hurt the industry simply because of the position Nintendo is in. It may seem weird that "innovation" and "expanding the market" can hurt an industry, but that is very similar what natural monopolies are. If one company can simply overpower its competitors with a better or cheaper product to the point where its competitors cannot compete, like in a natural monopoly, then the industry will suffer. For instance, Microsoft Windows is a natural monopoly, and very few argue that is good for the OS industry. The simple act of concentrating that kind of power in a single company is the danger, and how the company achieved that power is nearly irrelevant. This is the danger of the Wii, and it may be good for the industry if either the Wii or the DS fails.
EDIT: Bad spelling corrected.
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Except of course MS is sswimming in money and doesn't have to care that people feel they're arrogant. They can do things the way they please regardless and developers flock around them because they're MS; the company's rich and stable and dependable. And their platform is well balanced.