A big early focus for Nintendo

The upcoming arrival of Wii U, and its inevitable push to be a big Holiday success, is naturally something for Nintendo's rivals to worry about. Sony, for its part, is introducing a new 'super slim' version of PS3 with just 12GB of memory, much lower than standard for the system, along with titles to attract younger children and their parents to the console.

This is an area, undoubtedly, where Wii was particularly strong for Nintendo. It'll hope to continue its strong record attracting families and less experienced gamers with Wii U, with Nintendo Land being an obvious first title to do that, as well as attracting a core audience with other titles. In a recent interview with Eurogamer, meanwhile, Sony UK boss Fergal Gara explained that Sony was keen to seize a big share of the family market this Holiday season, and why he believes this can be done up against Wii U.

We respect Nintendo as a highly successful competitor. Of course we will watch what they're doing with interest. It's a very interesting product they're bringing to market. I don't have a clear view on how successful it will be. And to a large extent it doesn't matter what I think. It matters what the great British public think. So we will see.

They certainly laid a broad church in terms of the list of features hopefully trying to have a broad appeal in the device. I don't think there will be huge volumes in the market this side of Christmas. I think they will pull in early adopters. It's probably one to be concerned about far more and watch more carefully into next year. But we feel very confident that in the PlayStation and we won't be going after the same niche early adopter market they'll be going after this Christmas. I think we're sitting in separate camps at this stage, so it won't be head to head.

If they gain real traction next year it becomes a more important factor in the mix. They've been a very key player in the market overall as you well know in recent years. So we have to respect that, watch that and do our best to compete with that.

It's interesting that Gara refers to Nintendo targeting a "niche" early adopter market in Wii U's first Holiday season, as we'd imagine that Nintendo is working to achieve the exact opposite. The early troubles of 3DS showed that failing to successfully appeal to a big audience, whether that's because of games, price or anything else, can lead to a difficult period where sales crash. There's no doubt that Nintendo will hope to establish loyalty from more than the early-adopting crowd when the console hits.

What do you think? Is PS3 going to succeed in targeting a large demographic of families and less experienced gamers this Holiday, or will Wii U be an attractive option to these consumers? Let us know in the comments below.

[source eurogamer.net]