Wii is here, now where are all the fish?

Stop the clocks and rewrite the history books... Nintendo Wii has launched. With it, a new era of gaming will be ushered in. An era of gaming that prioritizes fun and friends over pixels and polygons. One where videogaming once more becomes an inclusive experience for families and people of all ages, rather than create a distinct subculture that divides societies, bitter people on each side.

At least, that is the idea.

Prior to launch, almost every sign has been a positive one for Nintendo. The current leader in the home console market, Sony, has suffered some very unfortunate setbacks. Never before was dominance in this market so much within Nintendo´s grasp, since losing it more than ten years ago.

Now, the company must deliver, though.

Where just a day ago words were the only weapon of choice, the company now must carry on fighting with nothing but production and shipment numbers, sell-through data and software tie-ratios.

Where the presidents and marketing people were sitting until yesterday, the production line managers, technicians and factory workers take the helm.

And where Nintendo has claimed the direction to be, which they wanted to move in, people need to populate the roads leading there and tread on what up until now were untrodden paths.

There undoubtedly is a blue ocean out there. Now all it takes for Nintendo is to have plenty of fish in that sea.

EDIT You can follow the numbers game over at NexGen Wars. This is what things look like at this very moment:





EDIT And here is the first footage of the Wii launch, courtesy of CNN. The footage is from New York City.



EDIT It has happened: According to NexGen Wars, Nintendo Wii is now the second console, leaving Sony in third place (pun intended).