Editorial: Nintendo Wii, Harbinger For The Death Of Gaming

[quest55720]

Wii is selling a million units a month?

I don't have exact totals but 300+k a month in NA and 225k-275k a month in japan I would think europe would get atleast as much as japan so another 225-275k a month. That is getting pretty close to a million a month and the system is badly supply limited.

 

[Corwin_B]

To be honest I havent specifically playied SSX blur. Its natural that there will always be exceptions.
Still, the hard difficulty of SSX may not be a result of a controller's advandage, but perhaps a not so good implementation or an implementation that doesnt work as well on Wii. Just saying though. I may be wrong on that possibility.

The implementation of controls on SSX Blur are top notch. There is a steep learning curve, though, which is really different.

About the last part, well I believe that Wii can sell all kinds of games just with the motion sensing alone and not the actual quality of the games. People get crazed solely with that idea.

While nobody ever, ever bought a crappy game because it had good graphics.

A great deal of people I know who own wii dont even know its games. They are excited with anything Wii offers especially party games.

Does not compute here. If people don't know its games, how can they be excited by its party games ? Which are, you know, a sub-genre of "games" ?

I still fail to see a third party game on Wii that excites me as much as some of the big titles planned for PS3 or 360.

That's ok, as long as you remember there are many people thinking differently, even as far as 3rd party games are concerned.

Despite that many Wii owners will buy these 3rd party games. Even if they arent all that great.

Once again, either you are similarly worried by the exact same phenomenom on countless other consoles (people buying shovelware that you would not touch with a pole), or you are displaying a huge double standard here.

If that didnt happen I dont think the author of the above article would have been worried

Sorry, but that's nonsense. There has always been shovelware outselling great games on every platform, that's the rule of the game. High sales require more than a great game, they require a game appealing to a huge demographic (so kiss those strategy RPGs, turn-based strategy games, submarine sims, and point&click adventure games good-bye), and huge marketing budget. That's one of the reasons why shovelware based on movies and yearly sport licences sell so well. How well did "Ice Age 2 the Game" sell ? How well did Okami ?

 

[scooby_dooby]

anyone seriously writing :


needs to look at the sales of 3rd party software on the PS3 both in US and Japan.

Except Playstation has a 10 year history of being a 3rd party goldmine. They get the benefit of the doubt from publishers, Wii obviously did not.

 

[scooby_dooby]

That's ok, as long as you remember there are many people thinking differently, even as far as 3rd party games are concerned.

As long as YOU acknowledge the 3rd party offerings for Wii are not even in the same ballpark as the titles coming for 360/PS3.

Virtually all the biggest new 3rd party franchises are being released on 360/PS3/PC, not Wii.

Sitting there and pretending that Wii has equal support doesn't do much for your credibility imo. It doesn't, not even close. The discussion to be had is whether that will change, it certainly is not the case right now.

 

[Corwin_B]

Sitting there and pretending that Wii has equal support doesn't do much for your credibility imo.

And it doesn't do your credibility any good to put words in other people's mouth. Could you please quote me where I say that the Wii has "equal support" (whatever that means) ?

 

[scooby_dooby]

And it doesn't do your credibility any good to put words in other people's mouth. Could you please quote me where I say that the Wii has "equal support" (whatever that means) ?

Nesh's pointed out that the 3rd party support isn't there in the same magnitude, to which you replied:

That's ok, as long as you remember there are many people thinking differently, even as far as 3rd party games are concerned.

As if it's somehow a matter of opinion, rather than a fact.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Who is buying the nearly a million Wiis a month world wide then? If it is not hardcore gamers or non-gamers who is buying it then?

If you don't think that if Wii sales continue like they are that big name franchises like FF and GTA won't appear on the Wii then you are mistaken.

I don't think graphics will affect the Wii for years. Most people put the console in the kids play room or secondary room. It is going to be years and year before people are buying a HD-tv as a secondary TV.

But it remains to be seen whether or not this will happen. Who's buying Wii's? It's difficult to say for sure, but there are certainly 10 million hardcore Nintendo fans out there so it's not surprising that a strong Nintendo-style offering is drawing those fans to purchase. My own evidence suggests that at least half of the Wii buyers are Nintendo fans. At the $250 price point they can pretty much buy it right away instead of waiting for price drops. That doesn't mean that Nintendo will sell more Wii's than Cubes, they just might sell them earlier.

For the record though, I'm sticking with my original prediction of 35-50 million Wii sold over the next 5 years. Nintendo will do great, but I seriously doubt they'll take over the market.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Why would any one person here need to know boatloads of these people? There are billions of people on this planet Johhny. I've seen many posts on forum contradicting your post, but just like your anecdote, they're pretty pointless on there own.

Also the games you mention not currently being announced for Wii is utterly beside the point, do I really need to explain why?

You do need to explain why. There is no evidence of huge publisher support for Wii until the games actually get announced. Claims that Nintendo now has huge publishing support are not verifiable at this time.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

The Wii has the big guy - Mario. The Wii also has Zelda, Metroid and the potential for DS connectivity which no other console has. I'm willing to bet if things continue as they are, the killer 3rd party apps will have Wii(ified) versions and maybe eventually Wii exclusives. The Wii by default already forces 3rd parties to make exclusive titles and if momentum continues to build there maybe some loss of what "hardcore gamers" (aka the techno illuminati ) consider killer app franchises. Note that SE decided to ditch cutting edge tech and throw DQ9 on the DS.

Yet there's no evidence of this. Only speculation.

 

[Corwin_B]

Nesh's pointed out that the 3rd party support isn't there in the same magnitude, to which you replied:

As if it's somehow a matter of opinion, rather than a fact.

So you put words in Nesh's mouth too ? His words were :

I still fail to see a third party game on Wii that excites me as much as some of the big titles planned for PS3 or 360.

Keyword here : me. Which tends to imply that Nesh was expressing his opinion of the compared upcoming games for the Wii and the PS3/360. That's twice in a row, in this thread that you deform people's posts in order to further your p(r)etty transparent bias. Could you please stop doing that, and actually debate what was said ?

 

[LogisticX]

I think if the userbase is there, there will be a shift of support toward the Wii and by all accounts it looks like that is starting to happen.


The notion that Wii will destroy gaming I find is a bit ridiculous. Sales for 360 and PS3 are not flat, there is support and publishers will support the platform regardless. Nintendo may make Sony and Microsoft think twice about their strategies but thats it.

For instance, what if one of Sony or Microsoft choose to compete with Nintendo next gen by using a low cost but "innovative" approach to the control scheme?

That would leave the market wide open for the other competitor to come in and release a console that offers something completely different from the other two by showing off great tech. So that leaves a huge possibility for some kind of competitive advantage right off the bat for whichever companies sticks to their guns and continues to up the ante on system power.


This doom and gloom stuff is purely media garbage.

 

[Dunchan25]

He's Right

Because super nintendo was the last console I bought from them. Plus i'm way pass their gamers profile. I want content for people my age - 32!

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Dividing the market into hardcore and casual gamers is oversimplification. I'm not a hardcore gamer as I don't have the time or the patience, and I probably won't get into deep strategy and simulation stuff any more. I'll also not really going to play for example Halo3 on legendary I guess, it'll be two play-throughs at most.

Yet I'm not a casual either, as I'm interested in the traditional genre games: RPG, FPS, and some RTS too (ignore the fact that I actually like mixed genres the most: Deus Ex, System Shock and the like were first person RPG-like whatevers . Things like cooking games, Sims, Pokemon or such I couldn't care less about. I consider them a waste of time, basically - for me a game should be a short, but intense experience.

So where does my kind fit then? Somewhere between the two, and I actually think that this is the biggest part of the market. The Wii approaches this from the casual end, and the X360/PS3 from the hardcore end. I think that a developer can IMHO aim for this large segment from the top down a bit more easily, adding extra depth for the hardcore audience through difficulty levels and unlockable content.

Then again a Mario kind of game could also have lots of depth, but we don't really see to many games like that on the Wii at this time. Zelda was one, Mario Galaxy will be another, but are there any others we know about?

 

[poopypoo]

My honest thoughts?

BRING IT ON.

the casual gamer isn't the enemy, the large game publishers are, for the most part. when the consoles all turn casual (although this happening seems debatable), there will be only one place for "hardcore" games to turn: the PC. ahh, the PC, beloved home of misfits and DIY-ers... I cheerfully look ahead to a day when I don't need a graphics adapter to play turds with nothing new to offer year in and year out. All I need is my doujin-soft, and maybe the odd release by niche gaming companies (Gal Civ 3... Armadillo Run 2... RotK 80 Billion...). I have the DS for lighter gaming and really, if the DS titles are supposed to be "LITE" as in "DEATH TO HARDCORE GAMING" then I'll happily accept that, too. The only thing lite about some of those titles is that you can pause them at any time by closing the DS. They're certainly not regressive wrt gameplay. So, eat your heart out, EA/Ubi/Whomever except Maxis I still love you even tho you're EA!! Just please, save us all a bunch of time and money, and don't release any titles for any systems which also have cool games out for them.

 

[Fafalada]

I don't see a rush of publishers moving to Wii.

IMO it's worse then just a rush from what I've seen - but it also demonstrates how publishers are more fickle then 15year old girls (at least in US).

They're certainly not regressive wrt gameplay.

That's a matter of opinion - I find certain genres on GBA/DS that have supposedly stellar titles (my prefered example of this is Advance Wars) to be exceptionally dumbed down compared to same genre games on other platforms.

 

[poopypoo]

[Editedit: I leave the text of my post here for posterity, but upon further meditation, please disregard the following. Fafalada is 100% accurate, and I just ranted like a frothing lunatic. However, I accept Fafalada's reality like a lemming, and leap willingly into the abyss. Again, I sincerely hope the hardcore market dies, so that hardcore games will be made only with love, by hardcore gamers, for truly hardcore gamers (and not all this "HARDKORE" poseur trash we see everywhere!).]

That's a matter of opinion - I find certain genres on GBA/DS that have supposedly stellar titles (my prefered example of this is Advance Wars) to be exceptionally dumbed down compared to same genre games on other platforms.

Certainly. The GBA Advance Wars game was a breath of fresh air, but at this point that franchise is stagnant and I kinda hope it dies. However, that's just opinion. Although I'm also a fan of hardcore strats -- from Romance of the Three Kingdoms (my favorite, I know, I'm a broken record) to the old SSI wargames -- these games have basically no graphics requirements and will run on any system, if the devs so choose. The best will probably continue to reside on PCs -- and the rest will get dumbed down. If strat wargaming (and probably also 4X) is your only genre, no question the consoles are pretty lame. However, are they getting dumber? My opinion is no -- they're getting better. Remember how awful most "strategy" games were on SNES, TG16, and Genesis? They're still not PC quality, but if you measure hardcore by these standards, then the PC has always been the only option. But for the most part, other hardcore sim genres have had support on consoles -- sports management games, racing sims, etc... They're never quite as good on consoles IMHO, but again, I don't think that anything Wii is doing is limiting that. And, again, if it does, great. Trash the graphics, bring over your hardcore sim whatever in Flash, and i'll play that shit with a humongous smile on my face.

[Edit: the DS may be a bad example -- some features are certainly stripped from a lot of these games. I assume it's due to a lack of space or money, not a lack of power -- hopefully it's a trend that doesn't continue, but I think on the non-portable side, some fairer comparisons abound. Some power deficiencies are also evident, like we won't be seeing Oblivion or G3 on a DS. There are also drawbacks in the RPG arena wrt to consoles, like Oblivion for PC felt a bit "consolified", and yadda yadda. Your point is solid, but I still await the doomsday with glee. ]

 

[thatdude90210]

IMO it's worse then just a rush from what I've seen - but it also demonstrates how publishers are more fickle then 15year old girls (at least in US).

Here's an article at Bloomberg taking about exactly that.

 

[_xxx_]

Because super nintendo was the last console I bought from them. Plus i'm way pass their gamers profile. I want content for people my age - 32!

My age too, but then we shouldn't play with consoles at all, rather produce some more children or so instead. Seen that way.

 

[Capeta]

The moment I found out the Wii was basically an overclocked GC selling for $250, half of my interest in it vanished. The fact the title I'm most interested in is a remake of a GC game (RE4 Wii) and only because it's going to sell for $30 to me is pretty sad. When I look at the Wii's game selection most of it is shovelware/ports. Conversely I could easily name at least 12 titles for X360 that I'm interested in compared to only about 3 for Wii. I'm glad Nintendo is making lots of money, but my days of cheering for them are over. If they had packed a little bit more processing power into the console, I would've been happy...the stupid thing can't even play DVD movies!!! The Panasonic Q could play DVD movies.

 

[Nesh]

There are two key words there: "I" and "me." See, there are lots of other people like you, and video game companies are still making money off you. They will continue to make machines and games targeted specifically at you. This panic-stricken "GAMING IS DOOMED!!!" from graphics geeks simply because there are people buying a product that they themselves would not choose is ridiculous.

Let's look at Wii and PSP. Is the PSP selling well? Yes. Is its software selling well? Outside of Japan, it's actually doing fine. But now look at one critical thing: Does its software library have much genre overlap with DS? No, not really, not outside of RPGs. The DS doesn't have much in the way of racing, sports, or action-violence, but it appears to be the chosen home of puzzlers, 2D games, strategy titles, Sims-like experiences, and kid games.

Nintendo's products are not really competitors to MS and Sony's, and neither are they "second consoles." They are alternative consoles catering to an alternative game audience with an alternative game library. Nintendo has determined that there are whole game genres, including potential genres, and whole market demographics that are not well-served by powerful, expensive machines. What you are witnessing is market expansion and segmentation, not the "death of gaming."

Well to tell the truth I am not as panicked as those geeks or tha author you mention. I will get a Wii eventually and to tell the truth after I posted that last post of mine, I thought again about the article and I ve noticed that he may actually be missing something. That the next gen consoles wont be a repetition of this gen. What I am trying to say is that, both Sony and MS will implement motion sensing next gen, both will offer next gen technology and both will try to keep their current users' interest and pull some of Wiis consumers too. So these casuals may try to see the other side of gaming and they wont necessarilly saphocate and "take over" that side with demand for shallow games.

Also the initial excitement may create more interest and thus they might want improvements next gen and Nintendo wont stay static in order to quarantee keeping their interest. Casuals arent static either.

About the PSP-DS analogy though, I dont think its a right one. DS is doing exactly what a handheld should be doing. Offer the games that are most appropriate for handhelds. PSP doesnt offer such games, and to be honest it may actually be offering a less hardcore handheld experience than DS. I own a PSP and I am struggling to find games. DS has more games that I find interesting.

Consoles are different though. I dont think I can enjoy MGS on PSP as much as I can enjoy it on PS2, and I dont think I can enjoy Super Mario Bros or Loco Roco on a console as much as I can enjoy them on handhelds.


Trying to see it from the author's perspective- (so dont take this as my perseption), now the industry may be expanding due to Wii (which is a good thing), the Wii may be satisfying those "casuals" (who also have a right to enjoy gaming and I agree with you), but at the same time, as a future byproduct, this trend may spread over as companies are thinking of quick cash and the best means of maximizing profits. And lets be honest now and dont over credit Nintendo. Nintendo saw the casual gamers/cheap price solution as the best way to increase their profits and dont have to deal with the 2 giants. Its not like they are humanitarians.
And indeed a great deal of Wii's games sell even if they are mediocre, only because of the cocnept. Especially third party devs do a crap job on it but they continue to sell. And we arent talking about bad graphics here as you suggest is the reason some people complain.

Ofcourse as I said earlier after rethinking of the article there should be no worries athough I reckognise his point and he does have a good one.

My opinion: How about giving more credit to casuals and try to offer them a more advanced but still friendly experience at a cheaper price without treating them even farther as easybuying consumers than what others used to treat them on other consoles before? Its not like the other consoles never offered games for casuals. I used to be a casual too!!!

Also when I ll get a Wii I d want to see the motion sensing being implemented better on better games. Serious gamers want to see a good use of that controller as well. PS3 doesnt offer me that controller, neither does 360.
Dont serious gamers and non-nintendo fans have a right on that controler as well?
My sister for example begun as a casual too, and now she is more demanding. She wants more from Wii and asks me why I want to get one. I explain her its a different experience and showed her the games. She is still unimpressed by the games. Which surprised me and still shows that even if Wii doesnt affect the industry and others, its targeting audience do affect Wii's offerings in the same way. If its not alienating hardcore gamers from the industry, it does alienate them from Wii. Atleast since it was released. In the future things might change