Why the Wii is doing so well

If you're pretty new to the whole Wii vs. PS3 vs. XBox 360 debate, there's a pretty gentle explanation to why the Wii is doing unexpectedly well in this early stage of this generation of games consoles, called An Underdog Story: How the Wii Became Number One, mainly at Sony's expense.

I think the explanation seriously underplays two areas.   Firstly, that the Wii is probably doing so well because it delivered something unexpected - a feeling of something new and something fun.  And secondly, the impact of the positive word-of-mouth and collective dreaming about what it would be like to have such a new and exciting interface into games - both in terms of playing games, but also getting people thinking about new sorts of games that would be possible.

Of course, none of this is good for me.  It's hard enough living in a backwater that hasn't got a functioning distributor (yet), but the continued success of the Wii means it's hard to import them, as few consoles spend long on the shelves of the country they were distributed to...