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Video game Sales Numbers! Triforces, Slimes, and Super Mushrooms
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A piece of equipment that is $600 is not a mass marketed anything. And have you seen the commercials for the thing? it is not being marketed to the masses as a 'mass market' anything. It is being marketed as 'the best thing', 'an expensive thing which willl do everything', 'something which is worth $600'.
Also, things are not 'luxury items' and 'mass market' items, they are one or the other. A luxury item is something which someone wants simply because of the cost/status/rarity invovled to some extent. luxury items are status symbols -- like a rolax, an HDTV (though this is losing it's luxury status), a cellphone in the early 90s. Expensive cars. Two high end video cards. a 20 inch monitor 3 years ago.
Look at the Neo-geo -- that was not a mass marketed anything. It was a piece of luxury electornics and it did very well despite selling 'poorly'.
edit: sidenote, i do not have a ps3 and will not buy one. I have no need for a luxury piece of electronics. I do, however, have a xbox360, and want a wii
You don't spend millions of dollars on advertising a status symbol. The Neo Geo was produced in small amounts for the gamers who wanted games exactly like the ones at the arcade. The PS3 is produced in very large quantities. How many companies produce millions a status symbol? Status symbols are never expected to win a format war.
Possibly, though again there was a small budget Tetris title released recently for $30 on the 360, so even with normal media, it's still happening. It's also rumored that the marketplace will be used for episodic content like games such as Sam and Max, which could get past the size limit by releasing the game in parts like they do. Hard to tell which way that's going to go for now though.
Yeah, seriously. I mean, it's not like there are a bunch of sequels or ports on the Wi- oh, wait. That's right. It's become a home for PS2 and Gamecube ports, and the most anticipated games for the console in reverse order are Metroid Prime 3, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Mario Galaxy.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The PS3 ads don't set it apart as a 'luxury'. Those ads with crying dolls set it apart as a 'what the fuck am i looking at' item. they dont present a compelling brand or lifestyle, or however PR would phrase it.
The thing is, Sony needs as many people as humanly possible to buy a PS3, because they need them to buy games and movies to make any money. Any other 'luxury' item you can name doesn't rely on secondary income for anything. sorry, that dog just wont hunt.
When your product is a status symbol, and the other is unkown, it will very much win you a format war.
But they aren't losing money on sales of the console itself. Actually they're making a pretty hefty profit (Over $70 per console I believe).
The whole notion of a format war makes me shake my head a little. I suppose we all need to belong and it's better than gang warfare, but we take it a bit far sometimes.
Hell, half the reason I stand up for the system is because I'd like to see all three platforms succeed. Folks on this board in particular have motivated me from casual bystander to system owner to system advocate. I'd rather not see any system fail, flounder, founder or fall.
I suppose this is derivative of the competitive nature of most gamers that there has to be a "winner". Anything less than utter success can be seen as failure. I suppose Sony has taken the place of "The Last Boss" - the hero of the previous game, now set as the villain. Poetic, really.
Well, that's my morning musing. I've got a meeting. See you in a bit lads.
Um..... 'kay. What does that have to do with anything I wrote about?
A car is mass market because of the way our society works -- things are set at luxury prices based on what they do for us, and the ps3 is definately a luxury piece of equipment. laptops cost as much and often more than the ps3, but are not luxury pieces of equipment.... however, 5 years ago, a laptop was a luxury piece of equipment because it's price compared to what it did was quite high.
Sony needs as many people as humanly possible to buy the ps3 to make the most money, but they need far less than that to have a 'successful' system, and neither you or I know how much that is. Also, Sony doesn't need lots of people to buy the ps3 to make money off movies -- they just need enough to buy it to push blu-ray to suceed (and again, succeed here does not mean replace DVD, it means hit the threshold where they make tons of cash off of it which can be very different. Laserdisc for example was a SUCCESS despite most people on this forum having never seen one, I bet).
edit: also, luxury items which require other things to make money: laserdisc is the obvious one since I already stated it.
If the ps3 was designed and priced in such a way that they expected to sell 130k units in March, then they are doing very well. However, if the ps3 was designed in such a way that they expected to dominate the wii and xbox360....
I don't think they did it that way. I think the ps3 was designed to push blu-ray first, and I think it's doing damn well at this.
From a couple pages ago, but 3 of the top 10 software from January through March NPD is Wii -
Top US software first quarter 2007
1. PS2 GOD OF WAR II 833K
2. WII PLAY W/ REMOTE 644K
3. 360 LOST PLANET: EXTREME CONDITION 573K
4. 360 CRACKDOWN 540K
5. PS2 GUITAR HERO 2 W/GUITAR 497K
6. NDS DIDDY KONG RACING 475K
7. 360 GEARS OF WAR 426K
8. WII LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS 404K
9. 360 TOM CLANCY'S GHOST RECON: ADVANCED WARFIGHTER 394K
10. WII WARIOWARE: SMOOTH MOVES 387K
4 360, 0 PS3. So Wii software is doing pretty damn well.
I suspect a great many others would feel the same. That entry on the list feels artificial to me. It would kind of be like saying that Hexic HD (bundled with any 360 hard drive and premium system) was the best selling game in december, with 1.1 million copies sold.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
You're excluding the Wii from the "lack of originality/new IP" tirade in direct contradiction of its current and forecasted software library. Nintendo has built their company not on innovation, but on franchises and sequels. So far, the most original IP releasing in this console generation is for the 360, with the PS3 close behind. So your argument is null, basically. Developers are taking chances. They're just diversifying their portfolios by making sequels and new IP, in case the new IP goes tits up out of the gate. Companies like Capcom are taking chances (even when they're essentially guilted into it by developers, as was the case with Dead Rising), and they're paying off. Lost Planet and Dead Rising are already in their top 40 selling games of all time.
And not only is the Wii not a more diverse environment in regards to sequels and ports, looking at the charts, the highest ranking Wii games are Nintendo Games. I understand that those might be the better games on the system (with the exception of Wii Play), but developers don't see that. They see the 360 habitually owning the majority of game sales. And I'm surprised GoW II didn't sell better, given the penetration of the PS2.
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There's a practical side to wanting a console to fail, despite your efforts to classify it as overly-competitive or a "need to belong." In a world of finite money, buying three consoles may not be feasible. If all three are equally successful, there's a great chance that you won't be able to play as many of the great games as you could if only two were successful (due to exclusivity). Also, in a world of finite money, some people balk at the expense of the PS3 and would really hate it if that became the new standard for pricing consoles. If the PS3 succeeds despite its price point, that sends the companies making consoles the message that they can charge large amounts for new consoles, and it's okay, we'll buy them anyway.
You shouldn't paint all desire to see a console fail as rampant fanboyism. In the case of the PS3, there is economical reasons for wanting to see it marginalized.
If there's any psychological impetus for wanting the PS3 to fail, it's that the Sony execs have sounded like a bunch of arrogant assholes to some people, and people usually want arrogant assholes to get their just desserts, not make money hand of fist and "get away with it."
No. The PS3 is the Devil's temptation. So it's actually an apple - a rotten apple that causes God's scorn. Don't take that bite and be cast from God's favor. Praise Jesus.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
and a great many people probably wouldn't have bought Crackdown if it weren't for the Halo 3 beta (i'm not one, i loved the game, and hope anyone that bought it for the beta wound up enjoying it).
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
The PS2's sales are impressive as always. It's pretty obvious why, the value of that thing is ridiculous now. It's cheap as hell and its huge library of exclusives is cheaper still.
All he said is that the Wii was the exception where development cost was concerned. He didn't say it was "New Franchise Central!"
Besides, you have to admit, Wii Sports is a fresh and innovative new franchise, and if nothing else, the Wii Hardware itself is a fresh new take on things. Elebits use the Wiimote to immerse people into the game, and it's pretty damn fresh if not innovative in its gameplay, and is certainly a new IP. The same developer is working on another unique and innovative game in a similar vein to Elebits (not gameplay wise, I mean presentation wise).
Besides, Nintendo often innovates within series themselves. Mario64 may have been "another mario game," but it broke new grounds and set the standard for 3D platforming; it was hardly a remix of the original NES Super Mario Bros. gameplay. Mario Galaxy will probably be one of the most unique platformers at the time it comes out. Just because they're using the Mario franchise to sell the game doesn't mean that it lacks innovation or new gameplay.
But besides that, even old franchises feel fresh again. Look at Madden on the Wii; even people turned off by madden's yearly rehashes have found the Wii version fresh and exciting. Sonic the Hedgehog has seen its best game on a home console since the DreamCast, and it's damn good. Other games like SSX, WarioWare, Rayman, and others have benefitted greatly from the Wii controls in an interesting way, even if they aren't excessively 'zomg amazingly new ijnnnovative!' in the gameplay department.
But besides that, developers are just now turning their attention to the Wii. Before its release, devs/pubs were extremely skeptical of it, just like they were with the DS. Now that the thing is becoming a huge success story, they'll need time and money to bring new stuff to the Wii. In the meantime, they can experiment with the new hardware/interface by releasing what they can until that time.
But what about the other systems? Just because a game is an existing franchise doesn't mean that it cannot be innovative --- and by the same token, just because something is a NEW franchise doesn't mean that the gameplay cannot be cache, tired, rehashed, and boring.
Lastly, of course the 360 is getting new stuff. It's been out for a year, it has the lead on the userbase, and developers have had time to start their projects for it. You're going to hear about that stuff now that it's in the works rather than stuff developers are just now starting on.
To rephrase your statement, "Nintendo has built their company not on innovation or franchises, but on innovation and franchises."
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You'd have a point, except new IPs are selling exceedingly well on the 360. It's one of the reasons Capcom is so happy with developing for 360 (which lead to DMC4 being multiplatform): both Lost Planet and Dead Rising made some pretty big numbers. The 360 has seen some really great software penetration.
The Wii and PS3 are still relatively new and with the Wii seeing very little in the way of new original IPs and the PS3 struggling to gain market penetration, they aren't really seeing this kind of success. But it at least shows that new titles aren't teh doomed. Especially with Gears hitting the 3 million mark and Mass Effect and Bioshock hitting relatively soon.
And as someone who doesn't plan on buying a PS3 anytime soon, I still also see White Knight (Tales? I can never remember the full name), Heavenly Sword, Lair, Resistance, the new Naughty Dog IP, and a few others. The PS3 will be getting its fair share of new ips as well, so again, in the long run I don't think that's going to be any more of a problem than it was in the past gens.
Yes, exactly. I didn't mean to be so 360 biased in that post, it's just hard to gauge the success of future titles, while the 360 is seeing that success right now. But the PS3 is definitely seeing some promising new IPs, too. Just have to hope that it gets enough penetration by then to pull out some good numbers, since that's what will ultimately draw developers.
The PS3 while the "superior" system and one with a very high userbase, has the problem to do with when it comes to price. Now I hear all that stuff about how it's a luxury item and all that but remember the Sega CD was considered a luxury idea too. And that combined with the Saturn and the release of the PSone put Sega in a state of backruptcy(when they'd just been the market leader beforehand). Not to say this will happen to Sony(and I hope it doesn't)...but it will be a trial.
The 360's biggest weakness is at the moment it's weak Japanese market. Now that won't make or break the system(as it didn't with the Xbox), but it will be something for them to overcome. Now to mention the system failures. And while the 360 is doing well, it still has to get pass the sigma of being an "FPS console". It's seems to be doing that but we'll have to see I guess.
The Wii. The Wii has a simple market plan. Give people some cheap and fun...and how the Gamecube handled that was a pretty decent choice. I can see the Wii have a pretty decent market(because let's face it, they have the fanbase...and price and message is pretty important to parents buying their kids a console). However, I see Nintendo's biggest trial in the future being that they purposely removed themselves from the current market. If you look at it each generation the consoles have been pretty similar in terms of power, allowing for third parties to port and cross-develop a lot more easily. However, since the Wii doesn't follow this...their relationship with 3rd party developers may be in trouble depending on how well the console does(and let's face it...Nintendo's 3rd party relations have been that way for a while).
Really, I hope that all the consoles can get past these problems and come out pretty good, but only time will tell and we won't see how things turn out until around the 2nd or 3rd year.
No I didn't. All I did was list the exception to where development costs are going up (which is true and well-documented), but I didn't say it wouldn't affect the Wii. On the contrary, the rising costs in other places are affecting the Wii as well, hence stuff like The Godfather on Wii.
There are companies that will take risks on new IPs (like Capcom), but companies like EA and Activision, ever-concerned about profits, are going to increasingly play it safe.
All of the systems have been getting a fairly good spurt of new IP, so I agree that "increased development cost = automatic lack of innovation" is too broad of a generalization.
So no one knows why the US received less Wiis in March than Feb?
The theory going around is that they've hit their goal of 6 million Wii sold by the end of their fiscal year, and after that they held back the systems for the remaining time until April so that those extra ones could be applied to the next fiscal year (which started April 1).
I WILL NOT BE DOING 3DS FOR NWC THREAD. SOMEONE ELSE WILL HAVE TO TAKE OVER.
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Mario Kart Wii: 3136-6982-0286 Tetris Party: 2364 1569 4310
Guitar Hero: Metallica: 1032 7229 7191
TATSUNOKO VS CAPCOM: 1935-2070-9123
Nintendo DS:
Worms: Open Warfare 2: 1418-7870-1606 Space Bust-a-Move: 017398 403043
Scribblenauts: 1290-7509-5558
I thought I heard a quote somewhere from one of the higher ups in Gamestop that this is not what Nintendo is doing? I still don't see an abundance of Wii's on the shelves, let alone any.
Also, places that NPD don't track, like Wal-Mart, may have used their corporate muscle to get a few extra pallets of systems in their stores.
Wait a sec, NPD is the one that doesn't get Wal-Mart sales, right?
Yeah, but NPD probably doesn't account for Wal-Mart suits working over the Nintendo distribution guy with a sock of pennies until the distribution guy agrees to transfer additional units to Wal_Mart.
Those Wal-Mart guys don't play fair.
I'm yet to buy a Wii, but the VC, I could throw £100-£200 on it right now.
The 360 Live Arcade is where I spend most of my gaming time these days. Throwaway small chunks of time, cheap games, old school arcade fundamentals within gameplay, and a tonne of replayability.
Awesome. I love it.
I don't suppose it's occurred to you that the great number of previous "non-gamers" who've bought the thing -- you know, the demographic that Nintendo is specifically targeting -- are interested in precisely this sort of game.
Of course, it's impossible to know for certain, but I do think it's somewhat silly to assume that just because you as a self-styled hardcore gamer (or whatever) aren't interested in Wii Play, that the casual market isn't.
I am simply saying what a great many others have said. If it wasn't for the fact that it came with a remote, it wouldn't be worth the scratch. It's a collection of seriously unfleshed out tech demos, only two of which have any true redeeming value, and all of which can be rocked through in a very short period of time. It doesn't have the depth of golf, bowling or Tennis from Wii sports, and generally was reviewed in the median range of five out of ten. It was a subpar game that only got it's spot because people NEED more wiimotes for the other, more deserving titles.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
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