The Nintendo Wii just crossed the 8 million mark worldwide. It is sold out everywhere. Lines continue to form when a fresh stock is coming. So why should Nintendo worry about a successor to the Wii?
The Wii does for Nintendo exactly what it wanted. It expanded the market to people of all ages, both male and female. It may look like smooth sailing from here on out, but that is simply not the case. Nintendo will continue dominance in the console market as it is doing with the Nintendo DS in the handheld market. The problem comes from the Wii running out of gas in the race against the competition. I know the Nintendo has the revolutionary remote interface, but Microsoft and Sony have the resources to counter this very easily. So far Microsoft and Sony have brushed the Wiimote off as a fad - this will not last forever. I’m actually pretty sure they are already cooking something up behind the scenes.
The Wii still has a lot going for it with upcoming titles like Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Metroid Prime 3 Corruption, Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, and so on. Games like this will fuel the Wii for a long time - at least two more years. Obviously Nintendo has plenty up its sleeves when it comes to the Wii itself, so I expect more innovative and revived games to sustain the Wii past 2008. So when we get to mid-2009 we have to ask: What should Nintendo do at that point?
With the announcement of Safari on Windows at the WWDC yesterday, I thought I would take some time and talk a little about “the world’s best browser.” I have used a lot of browsers over the years including: Safari, Firefox, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Opera. So, are Apple and Steve Jobs right when they say Safari is the “world’s best”? First, some background…
I started browsing the net in 1996 with whatever was built into AOL. I used Internet Explorer for (the still very painful and very complicated) Windows Updates. I switched to Internet Explorer in 1998 thanks to the US Navy’s exclusive use of the browser, though at home I would use AOL. After cable internet removed AOL from my life in 2002, I switched exclusively to IE. I left the Navy in 2003 to attend the Art Institute of Dallas. That is where I jumped off the Internet Explorer bandwagon after 5 years, and started using Firefox. Life was good. My time spent browsing the net really took a positive turn after encountering such a great - and free - product. Within months all of my friends and family members were running version 0.? of Firefox. Then in October of 2005 I made the switch from PC to Mac. I started using Safari. Everything is so smooth looking, and so “latest-n-greatest” on the Mac, Safari shouldn’t have been any different… right?
This is a spoof on the “I’m a Mac” campaign Apple has been running. The jokes don’t really hit the whole time, but the concept is great. There are more of these on YouTube if you like this one.
Most of the people I know use online banking in some form. They also have eBay and PayPal accounts. Those that don’t are either non-internetters, or they have been burned by phishing e-mails.
Foreign Policy has come up with a great (and so simple I kind of feel stupid for not coming up with it) solution to a problem that is quickly getting out of control. The solution: create a new top level domain such as “.bank”. The main catch would be to price “.bank” domains at $50,000 a pop, and offer them only to true financial institutes. This would prevent most of these scammers from registering fraudulent domain names.
