SEGA Exec calls Wii "The Most Expensive Board Game"

Darren Williams labels the Wii as a board game.

At the London Games festival recently, gamesindustry.biz caught up with SEGA A&R’s head of content Darren Williams. In this interview Williams labeled the Nintendo Wii as the most expensive board game around!

“I think on one hand the Wii has become the most expensive board game on Earth – it’s the kind of thing that families will play at Christmas, and probably won’t play again throughout the remainder of the year. So things like Wii Sports, Wii Fit to a certain extent, that’s great.”

Yikes! Pretty strong words from an exec from SEGA! Over on The Sonic Stadium message boards a few people have been saying that SEGA and their Exec’s should just keep their mouths shut rather than slamming other companies’ products. However, in my opinion Williams wasn’t too out of line in what he had to say. To be fair to him he was answering the question:

What do you think will happen to the new audiences that have come in via the Wii… is there a danger that – when Miyamoto’s software vision ends after Wii Music – that the audience falls away?

In my view, I like that fact that more and more people in high places are realizing that the Wii catalog of games is neglecting the hardcore gamer market. I even read somewhere that Nintendo agreed on this point! In addition, SEGA have more authority than most to point this out as they are currently publishing some pretty ‘hardcore’ looking games themselves (Mad World, The Conduit).
A exert from this interview that G4TV have not commented on that I found interesting was Darren Williams final comment:

But it will be interesting to see what Nintendo does with the Wii 2…

Wii wah?! Does Mr Williams know something we don’t? Or is he just speculating.
Source: gamesindustry.biz [via AdventChild @ SSMB via G4TV]