Changing perceptions.

You know all these conversations remind me of my research on Political Cycles.

People are myopic and retrospective. They give attention mostly to past information and the most recent events and in the effort to form future expectations they avoid a ton of other information and the course of the later events due to current events. Their future expectations are a result of limited first hand experiences of now and past. And in case they use the other information they are interpreted according to their retrospective and myopic perception, not with an objective judgement.

 

Wii: Really good impresion at first, cool controller, but just that, i don't like the games, Zelda is boring, Mario is for Kids, and WiiSports suck. If you want to spend 250 dollars, buy a PS2 with 4 o 5 games.

360: Right now the best console, smooth online play, nice graphics, good games, i hate the controller too big for me.

PS3: I loved PSX and PS2, but i don't think i'm going to buy it right now, i think it has a lot of potencial, with a lot of features, and really good graphics, i like the "backwars compatibility" using the EE+RS , and the connectivity with PSP. The PS3's succeds remains on really good franchises, lot of loyal ******s (there are a lot of people still buying PS2 instead of 360 or Wii) , Bluray (in the case it becomes the standar format), and a good online play, and right now looks that PSN works pretty well.

My Prediction:

Marketshare 2012:

50% PS3 70M - 80M
35% 360 40M - 45M
15% Wii 15M - 20M

 

Mario for kids?

 

wii: I already knew that the graphics werent going to be on par with the 360 and ps3 when I bought it, so I wasnt that disappointed in that area. I had lots of fun with wii sports and what was surprising of all was madden. For those that like football (american), you should definitely pick this up OVER the 360 and ps3 versions, unless you prefer graphics over control, the controls are very intuitive on the wii. I honestly thought that most people would have jumped on the next-gen wagon and picked up the other 2 consoles, but am very surprised that there is so much demand for it over the other 2 in this holiday season. My perception of it and its future has gone up.

360: I picked this up a few months after the launch. Most people would dismiss this console because its MS and the lack of variety of titles, but that is far from the truth: Kameo, Viva Pinata and Condemned are all underrated. It seems like what I consider great games have fallen into the general public's perception of "kiddy" games, ie: Kameo and Viva Pinata. I have found those to be the most addicting. I am starting to think that the general public is more worried about how others will view them than playing the actual game. My perception of the 360 has gone up as well.

ps3: May pick this up in the future, depending on exclusives. I had high hopes with regard to launch titles, but when I heard that a lot of launch titles got postponed I was disappointed. My friend had gotten 2 ps3s at launch: sold one on ebay to pay for the one he was going to keep. Went over to his place to try it out on his 60" dlp. Resistance wasnt bad, but it wasnt what I would consider a "killer app". One thing that I am glad sony did was include the hdmi port on the lower model cause that is probably the one I will pick up in the future. My perception of the ps3 has gone down just a tad.



as for gaming in general: i wish there were more tactics/strategy games, ie: advance wars and final fantasy tactics. I picked up enchanted arms, but the voice acting was meh so I had to mute it when playing. It wasnt too bad, but not great either.

 

Peersonally I d give an around equal market share to PS3 and 360. And I would also increase Wii's sales.

 

yea, nearly everyone that I've read with real perspective on the issue is expecting a 35/35/30 kind of generation WW.

 

360 - It gets better as time goes on, but I've never really disliked it; always 'good'. Granted, I still haven't bought one, but I've been playing as often as my friend lets me. The marketplace is really attractive because of the HD videos.

If there is something that I am very disappointed in, it's the arcade titles. The people who decide on what classic titles are released need to be fired and replaced with people who push for high res, redone bitmaps and sprites.

Wii - I initially didn't think it'd go over well with the public, but that's obviously not the case. The whole controller thing just doesn't swing for me, and there is nothing that I'd want to play on it right now. *shrug* So yeah, my opinion on how well it'll do is changing. I don't think I'll ever like it as a gaming platform though.

PS3 -It gets worse and worse with the production issues that we've all been hearing about. I want them to pull through, but it really seems there was something lost in translation between the guys at the manufacturing plants and the higher-ups. Another delay would have been terrible, and clearly they wouldn't have been able to launch earlier. It's just a bad situation right now.

 

Indeed. 360 is gaining lots of ground

I think Sony was aufully unlucky with the PS3. They had too many problems in such a short period of time, and on top of that the production problems occured.

On the other hand if they do solve production problems soon they will gain lots of lost ground I believe. But it should be done as soon as possible. During Xmass if they have enough supply and do the appropriate adverdising to promote it, it could take some of the "glory" away from its competitors. But its funny that they have no supply available because it also gives no point in adverdising. Adverdise what? something that's not available?

On the other hand MS has the userbase, the supply and games to go brutal with ads all over the place. And its during christmass that people go all crazy about products.

Btw have they mentioned anything about production increase during this holiday season?

 

Well... I'll be getting a Wii, that's for sure (it's where Zelda, Mario and Metroid will all be and I'm a huge fan of all those three franchises). I have no interest in the Xbox 360 whatsoever and I'll buy the PS3 the moment it hits $299.

 

Yes, I am overall displeased with gaming right now. I think the DS is an amazing system, even though I only have two games for it, but the home consoles aren't impressing me. Wii would have been fantastic with Gamecube-style face buttons and an extra trigger on the remote. As it is, developers are struggling to put all the functions they need on it. I'm fine with the graphics tradeoffs--I hate spending lots of money, and I'm worried about more developers going bankrupt or getting absorbed by EA. I still don't care about online, since you have to play a game constantly in order to have any fun with it in online competitions. But the control tradeoffs just kill my interest. I will probably get a Wii eventually for Metroid Prime and Battalion Wars, but I will be playing Zelda on my Gamecube.

 

My perception of the 3 systems:

Wii: As launch came closer and we found out more and more about the system I cared less and less about it. I'll buy it for Smash bros (and I'll probably pick up Zelda then too), but there isn't anything that I've heard announced on the system that I feel I need -- mario games don't generally matter to me now days, lost interest in metriod after the SNES one, etc. Wii has definitely lost the initial excitement factor that it had when it was first announced -- SNES/NES/N64 game download prices kind of suck too, for what you actually get.

X360: After having one for ~9 months or so, I've come to like it a lot more. Originally I was sort of indifferent to it (I wanted it because I decided since I could afford it this gen, I'd pick up all the systems). Looking at it's release list next year (this year didn't offer me much), it's gotten me pretty excited for it. My perception of it has definitely improved since launch. MS should definitely be happy with the 360 -- I came off last gen thinking the Xbox was one of the worst consoles ever made (lacking games in a big way -- only had 5 or so I had any desire to play). I'm not a big fan of Live! (as I don't really like or care about online gaming as much as I was tricked into thinking), but MS has managed to get a decent list of games that definitely seem worth playing this time around.

PS3: I don't see how I could claim to have a complete gaming experience without a Playstation. PS1 and PS2 were my top two favorite systems -- PS3 seems to be following in place. I'm very much enjoying blu-ray and the games announced for next year have me quite excited. It's stayed about the same over time (which isn't a bad thing). Sony's first party seems better than ever and they've still got all the franchises that I love from 3rd parties. Their downloadable games seem to have a great start... if they continue the way they have, a PS3 would pretty much be worth it for them alone.

I'd say PS3 and 360 are definitely making me happy -- it makes me wish, more than ever, that MS and Sony would just team up and make something amazing... Hell, while I'm dreaming, get Nintendo in there too and just have them all team up and release one console.

 

Yeah, and the could sell that for 800 dollars and call it 3D0!

 

Hey, Trip Hawkins definitely had some good ideas as far as how the industry should/could be run. 3DO was a pretty good concept, it just wasn't properly executed.

 

You haven't played Metroid until you've played Metroid Prime, seriously, one of the best games to hit any platform.

 

I've been a bit surprised by how well the Wii has been selling. For quite a long time I thought it was underpowered for a console launching in holiday 2006 and when they announced the price I thought it was underpowered and overpriced. I also thought the controller was a gimmick and wouldn't really catch on. I didn't expect it to sell that well. I thought the same about the DS though and I guess the sales of that have proved me wrong there too

From what I've been hearing from people who've played the Wii the controller is pretty fun in certain types of games that are designed around it but doesn't work so well in more traditional games. I've never been a Nintendo ****** (due I think to not having grown up with a Nintendo console) so I'm still reserving judgement on the Wii and waiting to see if the novelty wears off with the controller and how many people are still buying games for it in a years time. I can definitely see the appeal for party games / social gaming though so I may pick one up when the price drops. Overall the Wii has proven again that Nintendo seems to know better what the average consumer will buy than I do

I bought a 360 at launch and I've always been pretty positive about the system, right from the early days of working on G5 devkits. It's a great platform to work on as a developer and I've always liked it as a gamer as well. I'd say overall my opinion hasn't changed much. There's some great games on the system now and things like Live are mostly living up to expectations but I also have a few areas I'm less happy with. I'm one of what seems like a disconcertingly large number of 360 owners who've had to get their units replaced and though I think I'm supposed to be getting a refund from MS I've yet to receive it. I also think there's some areas of Live that could be improved, I still think the interface for marketplace needs some work and I'm disappointed at the lack of availability of video marketplace in Canada (though I know MS can't really be blamed for that given the convoluted deals on exclusives Canadian TV stations have). I'm also a little disappointed that some more of the promising upcoming 360 titles didn't make it out for xmas and are not going to make an appearance until next year, though the lineup for 2007 is looking strong. Overall I'm still positive about the 360 but I don't think my perception has improved or worsened.

I've had pretty low expectations for the PS3 for a long time and every new bit of information that came out only served to keep my expectations low. Having had access to devkits fairly early I've known for a long time that a lot of Sony's claims about the power of the console and about when they were going to launch and what kind of software side features they'd have were never going to be delivered on. Now that the system is out my low expectations have more or less been met. Sony have done better than I thought in a few areas - the system is cooler, quieter and seemingly more reliable than I thought it might be based on experiences with early hardware. Resistance is more polished than I expected any launch title to be. Overall my perceptions of the PS3 haven't changed, though the jury is still out on just how resilient Playstation brand loyalty will prove to be over the next year or two.

 

Wii -- Wasn't that interested because of the really incremental advance if any it represented over the current generation in graphics. I did try Wii Sports, the tennis and baseball. Both too shallow to hold too much interest over the long term. Not being able to field or throw to bases for instance.

The motion tracking isn't refined enough. I could just flick my wrist to throw a 94 MPH fast ball instead of doing a full pitching motion. If the games forced you to use proper motion, it would be interesting. But I think they would need some combination of the Eye Toy as well as the gyro and accelerometer to really track your motion accurately.

Next generation of the Wii could have the tech necessary to exactly translate your motion to the screen.

X360 -- Like online games a lot but not interested in paying to play them whatsoever. Give me a basic interface as long as it's free. Not interested in online service features at any price.

Don't like shooter games so many of the X360 mainstays present and future have no appeal to me -- GoW, Halo3, Rainbow6, GRAW, etc.

Reports of hardware problems and the dongle design also off-putting.

PS3 -- Like the hardware design including the integration of Blu-Ray, which probably has hurt their launch period production. But have no doubt that games within this generation will exceed DVD9.

Sports games are my main thing, especially football but don't like Madden at $60, at least not this year. No Resistance, although I have checked out the demo. First games will probably be Motorstorm and HS, followed by Warhawk and maybe Lair. VF5 is a possibiilty too.

 

Actually I believe this is not the case, not because of technical limitation, but because requiring strict motion tends to turn people away from the game in the long term. It also prevents you from laying down and playing in a casual fashion, which was a worry many had about the Wii.

 

Well I think the game would be more interesting for instance if you could throw 3/4 or sidearm to pitch and the game rendered that.

It would have to be able to track the relative position of your arm to your shoulder/torso though.

In the tennis game, I don't recall for sure but I think you could just do a motion anywhere and it would hit forehand or backhand depending on where the onscreen player was on the court.

But if you watch tennis, there are some guys who will go around and try to hit a big forehand instead of a backhand because they could hit it harder and with more accuracy. Not sure with the current setup you could do that.

I was serving by flicking my wrist, not really extending the arm from by body and it had the same result on the screen as when I was trying to do a tennis serving motion.

Yeah casual playing is a valid issue. Sometimes you just want to play sitting on the couch. Maybe there would be an option just to track motion and acceleration but not arm position.

 

Possibly, but I'd recommend not judging the technical abilities of the Wiimote by Wii Sports, its a really basic game that shows that the motion sensing works and that's about it. I would certainly guess that readings and stuff like that from the Wiimotes data output will progress and much more fine control could be implemented if desired.

 

Wii: My expectations of the Wii has gone up and down and up and down. Now that I have one I'm qutie dissapointed. After being used to HD-graphics the bland low-res graphics on the Wii are off-putting (well, hopefully the component-cable can help a bit) since I think that good gfx helps imerse yourself into a game and increase the game enjoyment. . The games are fun but I've not been blown away by the controls. yes, it is fun to wave around and control that way but it's not that different and in the end I feel it won't fit many of the game more than the party-games. The online-implementation also has been awfull. So my perception of the Wii has gone done considerably.

Xbox360: So far my perception has been increasing continously. I think it is going from strength to strength and now is the best console of the three.

PS3: Since it isn't out in Europe I haven't tried it yet. But my perception so far has stayed just as low as its been for quite some time. Maybe not so much because the console sucks but because all the crap Sony has been talking. I think they should have taken it a bit easy when boasting about their plattform. The reviews and reports also haven't helped raise my perception of the console.