As I sit counting the hours until my beloved, long-awaited Wii arrives from the depths of eBay eCheck hell, I can’t help but notice the Wii’s Thanksgiving aftermath. From all corners of the gaming world, I hear stories of gamers who brought their brand new Wii’s to their family gatherings, and the majority of those stories are sounding like resounding successes.
I’m not marveling at how universally fun the Wii genuinely seems to be for people; for me, at least, that was already apparent, and it was the reason why waiting in front of a Wal-Mart for 18+ hours was starting to sound like fun idea. More than just the Wii, I’m impressed with Nintendo’s brilliant strategy for its launch date.

The Wii has been marketed as the console that anyone can play, and the one that everyone will want to. It’s n00b-friendly. What is the perfect time of year to launch the console that your whole family will love? Right before the holidays.

Think about it. The Wii’s North American launch was followed just a few days later by Thanksgiving. Knowing that all the excited gamers would be reticent to leave their shiny new Nintendo toys at home, Nintendo used the holiday to help bring Wii’s into contact with the grandmothers and football-loving dads who probably wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to Wii’s at all, let alone play them. This, I think, is brilliant. Granted, I’m probably revealing how naïve I am when it comes marketing campaign techniques, but nonetheless, Nintendo’s thinking on the matter was quite inspired.

One could argue that the PS3 peeps also considered all this when deciding a launch date, but seeing as how its launch was riddled with shootings, thefts, and a lack of appealing games–not to mention that their console resembled the same kind of system that non-gaming relatives have kept a distance from–I can’t really credit Sony with the same sort of ingenuity.

And now, back to counting the hours until I have one of those precious white boxes in my hands. Two days and counting!