I’m mainly posting this because I lost an office bet and have to come clean about it.

Many months ago, we were sitting around arguing about how successful the Wii would be (we called doing this “work”). Brendan was rather optimistic about the whole enterprise, pointing out (among other things) that the innovative new controller was pretty remarkable, that it would be attractive to a much broader audience than other consoles, the games were fun, and that basically it would probably beat the tar out of the PS III for quite awhile.

I, on the other hand, thought he was nuts. In fact, I recall thinking that the PS III would quickly crush the Wii after the initial infatuation period wore off, pointing out that (among other things) that the Wii graphics were truly awful when you got right down to it, the games seemed limited, and the “innovative controller” had a lot of limitations built into it as well.

For example, think about all the neat things you can get sports teams, armies, and other “regulars” in popular games to do with a combination of buttons that you can’t make happen by waving your hand around like a fool. Besides, non-gamers didn’t run out and by the Nintendo because of the Duck Hunt gun… would they really run out and by this Wii thing because you could wave around a wand? Of course not! That would be ridiculous!

Oops. It appears that I, um, was a wee (pardon the pun) bit off - the Wii has been a runaway hit, Nintendo’s making money hand over fist, and the wii has shown few signs of going away anytime soon. Sure, I didn’t count on the PS III coming out of the gate at $6 trillion per console and having so many supply chain issues, but it’s become really hard to argue that the Wii is still purely in infatuation mode. It’s been a fairly long time now, I still like playing that pesky Wii for goodness sake, so basically I’m totally out of ammunition for my short-fad argument.

So I have to declare that I’ve lost. Well played Brendan – and since I’m such a good sport, I won’t even mention the excuse that I hadn’t tried the wii yet when we made the bet. Too many times. But I will keep monitoring this situation because I find the competitive battle fascinating. As I posted awhile back, Japan seems to be a pretty good predictor of the technological future, and last month – for the first time – the PS III outsold the Wii., and not by an insignificant amount. Interesting.

So the battle looks like it’s still just getting warmed up, as Sony’s more traditional gaming-focused strategy collides with a company rolling out a balance board to play Wii yoga and virtual skiing. While the latter may seem kind of silly, and it tempts me to go double or nothing… I recall pretend bowling seemed rather silly once as well, so I will refrain. For now.