"Artsy" Wii? A Rant *spinoff

[ATI-liens]

(I'm also a little curious about Nintendo's reason for shipping a relatively underpowered system, and if it relates to what I understand was some weakness in Nintendo's share price back in '02. Perhaps that weakness forced them to invest less and so aim lower in power, or maybe they've been on that path for a while.)

Before the Wii and most Ds sales Nintendo was only worth around (from the top of my head) $4 Bil, compared to Sony being worth $30+ Bil and MS being worth everything.

How can a company worth a fraction of the competition compete with graphics that will set them back into a loss for every console sold.

Up to today MS Xbox team has not yet made up for the 4 billion the original Xbox lost them. So it wouldn't make sense for Nintendo to compete graphically down that road.

It's about money at the end of the day, Sony makes a loss per Ps3 sold, so did the X360, Nintendo makes a profit per Wii sold. So they can't loose.

You get what you pay for.

So it isn't underpowered.

 

[cthellis42]

They're charging $250 for the console, while the Cube has been sold for $100 for ages. Do they actually have $150 more gear in there? (And bear in mind even the Cube's cost has kept going down, though they were probably in no great rush to keep redesigning for savings at the end.)

Nintendo has lost money on their consoles before, and seem to mainly skirt the break-even line so they can maintain a price point advantage against competitors.

Point is, you're not really "getting what you pay for" in this case. Nintendo makes boatloads mainly on their software sales, so they're certainly in no need to profit off their hardware sales even if they are wanting to avoid huge subsidizations. And at a $250 starting point for the Wii, they could quite easily have put in hardware to make the unit much more competitve graphically and performance-wise at its' resolution (still sticking to 480p, they ostensibly need only a "1/3rd as powerful" console, but even going that high might be relatively wasted at 480p. As well, they have more laurels to rest on, as they would likely feel no compulsion to push toward 1080p or 60FPS in any games, which stretches the discrepencies even further). They'd need to adjust their form factor, perhaps, but they could certainly have put in more competitive hardware and do more to quiesce complainers except where HDTV and SDTV is concerned.

This ultimately doesn't provide any real answers to the "artistry" dealio, but there are certainly valid comments and concerns about their hardware decisions.

 

[Teasy]

Before the Wii and most Ds sales Nintendo was only worth around (from the top of my head) $4 Bil, compared to Sony being worth $30+ Bil and MS being worth everything.

Actually before Wii Nintendo had just over $7 billion in cash, Sony had about the same amount. Of course Sony can afford to lose money in the gaming market without it hitting there overall profit as badly as Nintendo. Because they make a lot of there money outside of the gaming market. But Nintendo certainly have the money to throw around. I suppose they even have the DS there if they need to subsidise a loss leading console. But at the end of the day they just don't need to

 

[Scott_Arm]

They're charging $250 for the console, while the Cube has been sold for $100 for ages. Do they actually have $150 more gear in there? (And bear in mind even the Cube's cost has kept going down, though they were probably in no great rush to keep redesigning for savings at the end.)

Nintendo has lost money on their consoles before, and seem to mainly skirt the break-even line so they can maintain a price point advantage against competitors.

Point is, you're not really "getting what you pay for" in this case. Nintendo makes boatloads mainly on their software sales, so they're certainly in no need to profit off their hardware sales even if they are wanting to avoid huge subsidizations. And at a $250 starting point for the Wii, they could quite easily have put in hardware to make the unit much more competitve graphically and performance-wise at its' resolution (still sticking to 480p, they ostensibly need only a "1/3rd as powerful" console, but even going that high might be relatively wasted at 480p. As well, they have more laurels to rest on, as they would likely feel no compulsion to push toward 1080p or 60FPS in any games, which stretches the discrepencies even further). They'd need to adjust their form factor, perhaps, but they could certainly have put in more competitive hardware and do more to quiesce complainers except where HDTV and SDTV is concerned.

This ultimately doesn't provide any real answers to the "artistry" dealio, but there are certainly valid comments and concerns about their hardware decisions.

One of those weird things I remember from school was that supply and demand curve. You'd think with higher demand, price would drop because of the high number of units sold, but it works the other way. With high demand comes high price. Nintendo launched with an over the top price and it has almost nothing to do with what's inside the box. They simply picked a price they thought would be competitive and would allow a huge profit. When sales slow, they are in a position to rapidly reduce the price to boost sales and still turn a profit. It's a perfectly sound business decision as it will allow them to line their pockets with money for future endeavors. We're used to companies selling their consoles at a loss, but its bad business and Nintendo is going back to the "turn a profit" side of the business. I think, in the end, it will work out in their favour.

You can try to make the argument that you're not "getting what you paid for," but if people enjoy it, then it doesn't really matter what's under the hood. As a business, why should they cut their profits on a sale that people are perfectly willing to pay? I got one two weeks after release knowing full well they had a significant markup, but I don't regret my decision at all.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The question is, like my rhetorical example above, does a lesser degree affect the artistic experience?

Now that that's your question, instead of ludicrous comparisons of still images with television, the answer is "yes."

And that Heavy Rain stuff is cool...it's also pretty much cutscene material. Sure puts Silent Hill 3 to shame.

 

[cthellis42]

One of those weird things I remember from school was that supply and demand curve. You'd think with higher demand, price would drop because of the high number of units sold, but it works the other way. With high demand comes high price.

Of course it works that way, and certainly no one blames Nintendo for wanting to make more profit off it. Demand didn't cause them to pick their price point, though, but rather "expectation of demand." There was certainly enough skepticism out there and dour looks to make them not sure it would take off like it has and become the hot item over the holidays and an impulse purchase for a lot of people who wouldn't really consider console games otherwise.

For the more gamer sorts, however, who tend to litter message boards like this, there will always be questions and concerns for the long run. What's better: to make more money in the short term, or to be more appealing to gamers and developers performance-wise and graphics-wise (only at the lower resolution) while offering exactly what they are right now anyway? Things look dated even now, but the newness and uniqueness of the system is propelling it along; how will it look in three years? In five?

Nintendo certainly hasn't shirked from edging up to the profitability line before; when the Cube dropped to $99, they went to losing money, in fact (just a minimal amount, like around $10), and the Cube had way less going for it in comparison, so they were basically compelled to maintain a lower price point. At the moment, the Wii could wait until everyone else came down to IT, and still be a compelling alternative.

But face it, we're geeks. What do you THINK we're going to hope for with the prospects of "less powerful" versus "more powerful?" I just think they could have spent more time to create a much more compelling machine while not impacting their bottom line by a huge amount. Moreso, perhaps, the form factor. Heh...