George Harrison interview (Wii, DS talk)

A portion of a Motley Fool interview with Nintendo’s George Harrison…

The Fool: The Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Xbox 360 or the Sony PS3: Which is the bigger threat to the Wii?

Harrison: Neither. Consider three 30-something suburbanites. On a Saturday morning, two of them drive their big SUVs into a tire shop to buy big new chrome rims. The third is home online, doing product comparisons to figure out which hybrid he wants to buy.

You can say that all three are involved in the “auto improvement” business at that moment … but it’s unlikely the interests of the first two and the hybrid shopper are ever going to overlap. That’s how we see the “video game business” right now. Two companies are going in one direction, and we’re headed in another.

The Fool: A Nielsen study shows that Wii usage peaked at 5 p.m. during the spring but is now peaking at 8 p.m. during the summer. Does this mean that despite the hubbub this is still a system played mostly by kids and teens?

Harrison: There’s no question that the most enthusiastic users of the Wii are also the core players in the overall game industry. What differs is the number of people playing Wii who haven’t recently — or even ever — played another game system. I think 8 p.m. seems like a time that captures the whole family achieving our core business strategy. Our internal research shows that the Wii is just as popular with the core market as any other home console, so our advantage is in supplementing the core with added players who aren’t interested in any other home system.

The Fool: One of the coolest things about the Wii is the process of creating your own Mii. Since the Wii’s launch, several toy brands like Bratz and Mattel (NYSE: MAT) have launched online communities where young kids create their own avatars. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but are these companies posing a threat to Nintendo?