We all know Microsoft hates to lose. With Windows serving as the primary operating system for a majority of the world, the company sees it as almost a birthright to be at the top of whatever field they choose to enter. That’s why, when they surveyed the landscape of next-gen consoles and saw their competition to be an overpriced hulk of a machine and a weak little white block, the suits all kicked back and starting lighting cigars with $100 bills, sure they were about to squash the competition.

Cut to a couple years later and the Nintendo Wii, not the Xbox 360, is the belle of the ball, and Microsoft is left fuming, forced to marry not Prince Charming, but rather Prince Charming’s so-so cousin Duke Polite. Of course one of the stages of grief is denial, which is where Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg seems to be at this moment.

When talking about the Wii, particularly in regards to its success among the casual gaming crowd, Greenberg stated that, "They’re not really buying it for the games, they’re just buying it as a novelty."

"You see they’re not buying games on it, right?" he asked. "They’re buying it, it’s like something they break out when people come over, and it’s maybe a fun thing, but it’s almost like the same people that buy a karaoke machine, you know? I think that there’s a difference in the type of customer that is buying the Wii. When you think about it, there’s a difference between trying to be the number one console with nine year old gamers, and being the console that offers the most experiences from 13 to 33."

Greenberg may be right about the Wii’s target audience, but when the console aimed at nine-year olds is kicking your ass up and down the street, maybe it’s not that they’re console is a novelty: perhaps your console is a niche. The line on the Xbox 360 is that it’s all about "macho" games (shooters and sports), so it’s not like that console is right for everyone, either.

Ultimately, it just comes down to Greenberg and others not being willing to admit that Nintendo was on to something when they made the Wii, and their decision to build a simpler, more user-friendly machine at a lower cost may have just been the most shrewd decision of this console generation. But since we live in a world of constant corporate posturing, don’t expect such a common-sense statement to come anytime soon.