The former maker of playing cards, Nintendo, caused a revolution in the days when Apollo and Starbuck flew their fighters in and out of Battlestar Galactica with its original NES gaming console. The market has since evolved into the monstrous beast it is now. We have witnessed the rise and fall of Sega, the fumbling and stumbling of 3DO, the rise of the Playstation and the quality-challenged antics of Microsoft which have given gamers worldwide a slew of new platforms.

Sony gave the old overlords of gaming Sega and Nintendo more than just a headache when it itself revolutionized gaming with an affordable gaming console, which offered state of the art 3D graphics in the mid-nineties. The Playstation served young adults with games like Resident Evil and quickly rose to dominate, whereas Sega had to withdraw from the console business and Nintendo somehow survived. Microsoft entered the picture and was only modestly successful with the original Xbox.

Microsoft and Sony wound up engaged in a power battle pitting Xbox 360 against Playstation 3. Everyone expected wondrous things from both the 360 and the cell-equipped Playstation 3 - near photo realistic graphics and totally new games to behold with awe. Nintendo meanwhile was mocked, having presented its new mobile console DS with two screens and mediocre graphical performance. The old console didn't even use CD ROMs as did the Playstation 2 and the Xbox and rumours abounded considering the performance weaknesses of the up and coming next gen console, which was dubbed Revolution.

A few years later things have turned around once again and everything went the way Nintendo had planned all along. Microsoft and Sony kept on about the raw power of their consoles, Nintendo did something entirely different – it went back to making interesting games and gaming interesting once more. The Wii was initially laughed at, yet the stock price has made investors happy and the console is market leader. Microsoft and Sony were basically taken by surprise and have since been in a choke hold. The Xbox 360 is getting more popular thanks to its low price, however sales of the Playstation 3 still have to pick up, as punters worldwide didn't want to shell out the high price Sony was asking.

What happened?
Let's face it – the market for ego shooters is horribly oversaturated, it's nigh impossible for developers to come up with anything which makes their shooter stand out from the competition. The amount of games with an innovative approach to game play is ridiculously low on existing platforms. Adults, pensioners, girls and women don't play games. This is all true - except for Nintendo. The last few years can be summed up quite easily - gameocrats beat technocrats.

Nintendo has done everything right. The company took the console market to a whole new level by opening it up and developing games for target audiences which had previously never laid a sweaty paw on a console or even a PC before. It has supplied people of all ages and from every walk of life with a relatively cheap platform and simple, yet enticing casual games which are fun to play with the whole family and friends. Whilst Sony and Microsoft run ads for the usual suspects, Nintendo went into people's homes.

However, that isn't the only thing Nintendo did. It also thought about developing as such and decided it would be a good thing to keep costs for developers low and things easy, which has proved especially important for the DS. The Nintendo DS is not only fun for people who play Sudoku and play with virtual pets, but also for homebrew developers.
For better proof, just take a look at the huge selection of music software being conjured up by homebrew developers for the Nintendo DS. The most productive homebrew developers can be found in the realms of MIDI sequencing and the products on offer are good enough for professional use.

The question everyone out there has to answer is how on earth the Wii and DS can be beaten. The relatively open nature of the platforms, especially the DS, have made them popular with both young adults with a high affinity for technological shenanigans and grumpy old people, even though they do not offer the raw power of competing products.

Yet what Nintendo offers is not only games to play with alone or in social groups, but also consoles which people can play around with – the console not only plays games, it's a game itself. That's a neat trick and also the reason why Nintendo will dominate the market in the long-term.

Analysts think the Wii will sell less and less and the PS3 will start picking up, however just don't expect things to turn around. Instead, just wait for Nintendo to release a new, cheap console to succeed the Wii which will turn a profit from day one, whilst deepening its position right across the demographic, from developers and DJs to pensioners.

Beat that. X