A year ago, Nintendo Co. looked like the videogame industry's biggest also-ran.

The Japanese company's new game console, due out in time for the holidays, was a technological laggard compared with more-powerful systems from Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp. And the machine's goofy name -- Wii (pronounced "we") -- earned it ridicule from some game fans and critics. Nintendo's dominance of the portable-game market, meanwhile, was under assault by a new product from Sony.