It’s official now: Nintendo Wii was judged the most popular of the big three consoles in 2007. But there is no time to celebrate as the company is facing a severe shortage of gaming consoles leading up to the New Year, and there is no sign of the demand being met in the near future. The award was given based on the feedback from genuine purchasers collated by independent review publishers.

 

While giving the award to Wii, its features, like exercise potential in verbatim comments, child friendliness and usability were given special praise. Wii also won the award for best games titles scoring 8.08 out of ten, with the Xbox 360 scoring 6.81 and the PlayStation 3 scoring 5.71.

 

Overall, the Wii achieved an overall score of 8.78 out of ten, compared with 8.25 for the PlayStation 3 and 7.65 for the Xbox 360. But the Sony’s PlayStation walked away with award for value for money, rating 7.96, versus 7.70 for the Wii and 7.15 for Microsoft (News - Alert). The reviews also praised the Sony console for the integration of a Blu-Ray player, contributing to its leading value for money score.

 

Richard Anson, CEO of Reevoo, said in a statement, “The Wii has been an absolute phenomenon this year and Nintendo would have cleaned up if availability had been better this Christmas.” But other consoles like Xbox fared well too, with Xbox scoring well for graphics and design. But the company failed to score significantly in other areas.

 

Yes, one aspect of the business which Nintendo would like to focus on right now is the huge gap in demand and availability. The severe shortage of Wii this Christmas left many children without their favorite gift. This holiday season saw some online shops a strange phenomenon where the online buyers had visited the web site, even before the stocks were available. They were ready to hit the buy button as soon as the button appeared on the page!

 

 

Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.