NPD November 2008

They were decisions made around their videogame business.

eg: cartridge to stop bad loading times with Mario 64

furthermore, they weren't so prohibitively expensive to send them out of business like Sega when everything wasn't so hunky dory.

bluray was primary a decision to piggyback a movie format on the shoulders of videogame fans.

With the economic downturn..... its not looking good.

 

No, it was not. If you can believe it, I, as a gamer, love the fact that I don't need to buy a Blu-Ray player to watch Hi-Def movies at home.

 

Well yeah it does... He was just banned for a month I think, with valid reasons I might add...
Don't lose your sleep over him

 

Hmm, so you think casual players you mentioned are deeply interested in purchasing genuine successors of simple games such as Wii Sports 2 and likes just like "hardcore" gamers buy Gears of War 2 or FF13? If that's what you mean by "software headstart", I'm not terribly convinced as yet. IMHO there is a reason why they are called "casual".

 

Headstart as in
- know-how of developing games for a wiimote controller
- massive third party support just because they're the market leader (it'll be there for sure)

 

On the issue of graphics,I think you are going to start seeing more devs making games that are stylized like Nintendo does. I said along time ago that Nintendo made games like Wind Waker because that style can't can't outdone by another more realistic looking game. Photorealism will get better but I think it will start to become a little passe and it will get into a cycle where devshave to keep making their games more realistic looking to compete in which case they will hit a brick wall within each gen. The smart devs will get off the hamster wheel and make games that look great but timeless in their own style. People still talk about how beautiful Wind Waker was and I think you will more and more of that as "photorealistic games become more and more common.

 

Sure. Then those Wii third-party experts can port their Wii games to another motion-enhanced console with some HD brushup. Now that we know people don't care that much for graphics, it will be allowed and won't cost much to add superficial HD looks to them especially in 2010 or around.

 

Sucks to be us, then! You're better off without us really, enjoy wherever it is you end up.

 

I hope so too. If the duct taped gamecube(s) has shown us anything..... it can do cel shading pretty competently.

Take Australia as an example. Similar to America with their Gridiron...... one of our national past times is Australian rules football.

It is the dream of australian videogame fans that a top selling AFL videogame captures the market here..... but it is such a small fanbase comparatively that noone yet has been able to make a really profitable AFL game.

In recent times, it has usually been admirable efforts (but nothing compared to Madden) using Renderware on the PS2 but sales have been patchy.

Just a few weeks ago, a new company announced that they were going to make a new next gen AFL game for the PS3/X360/PC but left out the dominant marketshares of the Wii and the PS2.

Personally I think that the best business decision would have been to use cel-shaded graphics to make a videogame that looked stylish on the Wii and could be ported to the PS2. By not being forced to cater to the unrealistic expectations of HD console fans (because they don't have the budget of EA).... they could have concentrated more on making a fun videogame and a proper marketing campaign so that it could be a financial success.

The only celshaded sports game I can remember is Gekitou Pro Yakkyu on the Japanese PS2 so its not like they catering to a flooded market of similar looking games.

 

I think the central problem with your premise that the Wii will hold onto the casual gamer audience is that... the casual gamer audience doesn't give a whit about brand loyalty. Software's king. And, like you said, the casual audience doesn't -really- care about all the big-name games we do. What Sony needs is an affordable system and... shovelware. The Wii is remarkably easy to develop for, but we have no idea what Wii 2 will be. And really, there's nothing remarkable or unique about the Wii * branded 'lifestyle' games, nothing Microsoft or Sony won't copy beyond heavy, heavy marketing.

Normally you wouldn't think they'd screw this up, but this is the console industry, it wouldn't be the first, or even the second (or even a third, really) time a market-leader screwed up a monolithic lead.

I can see shutting down SCEI as an option to short-term profitability, but I think it's far more likely that we're going to see a retooling. And no, the Wiimote isn't the key to it nearly as much as marketing is, which was Nintendo's brilliance this generation.

And again, though Wii Music isn't a flop it still hasn't shown the same performance as its older brothers in the Wii * line, and that says that Nintendo certainly isn't infallible. To me it says they haven't cracked the nut of this audience, though with heavy, heavy marketing they can make up for much of that.

 

Time and time again it has been demonstrated that the consumer cares about convieniece, not "high tech".

One of the primary reasons DVD succeeded over VHS is because you didn't have to deal with bulky tapes anymore (no more REW or FF)... convenience.

Why did the PS2 succeed? You could get a DVD player and a gaming system rolled into one product that's cheap... convenience.

Why does LCDs sell but CRTs don't when CRTs are better for video? LCDs are smaller and easier to move around. If companies believe that the consumer is buying LCDs for HD they will continue to make mistakes like HD-DVD in the future.

Blu-Ray will be a niche format because it provides no advantage over DVD in terms of convenience or price and there is nothing either Sony or any electronics manufacturer can do about it. The consumer electronics industry needs to go back to the drawing board and release a solid-state, internet download or Hard-Disk based movie format. Blu-Ray has no future.

 

A "Wii 2" that has backwards compatability w/upscaling+postprocessing, improved graphics capabilities and a more capable online service would be a tough competitor to beat coming off a dominant performance this gen.

Nintendo are pumping a bunch of money into R&D and I'm willing to bet that a lot of that is going into developing the infrastructure to come up with their own version of XBOX Live. Given their mainstream popularity and "family friendly" image a Wii successor could easily end up as a portal device to all kinds of content that would be a poor fit for the platforms targeted at a more hardcore demographic. If they play their cards right, Nintendo could easily use their mobile and home gaming success to negotiate deals to distribute other forms of mobile and home entertainment.

 

I'm starting to think that a good chunk of the "hardcore gamer" crowd might actually be more price sensitive on hardware pricing than the "casual" crowd the Wii has tapped into. It seems like lots of keen gamers don't mind dropping loads of money on games, but they don't want to pay through the nose for hardware.

I guess when you have long lists of games you want to play, spending all your hard earned money on hardware means less games. Or something like that.

 

Would Nintendo do that? They haven't shown tremendous interest in producing media, nor do they have a stake in the livingroom, like MS or Sony. Last gen Reggie had a whole spiel about how Nintendo had lost sight of their primary business, video games, and the Wii was their way of refocusing.

 

I think that what we're really seeing is the split in the userbase. Like Laa-Yosh said, a ton of the old PS2 owners moved to the Wii. Problem is that the PS2 was the console on which you could play anything, pretty much. Not the case now. So the person who last-gen might've bought a console for Madden or GH or GTA would stick around and buy something else. So maybe Wii owners are right. If anything, I think it speaks for the one-console future.

 

Expletive I think you're underestimating the weight of Nintendo is the "gaming space".
Nintendo brand is very well know and strong, they are only associated to gaming as opposed to Sony or Ms.
Wii users are likely to have plenty of controlers, wii board etc.
The only thing Nintendo has to do to put his competitor in a world of pain is to come with something good enough (without breaking their profitability plan).
The Wii is a really shitty hardware, Nintendo made a bet with the wiimote and wanted to minimize risks.
By the time they release the Wii2 even super conservative hardware might do the trick.
The winner of this generation starts the next one with a huge advantage, there is no point discuting it imho.

 

Nintendo is clearly a gaming company but they are not dumb.
For example even if they don't say I would bet that they are very aware of the upcoming competition coming from device like Zune2 Iphone"x" which will have the power o act as gaming device. While their Dsi is conservative, I'm willing what they will push with their next really new portable system. It's not a business they will be wiling to lose
I don't think Nintendo ever lose sight on anything, they have bunch of cash and I'm willing to see them once again as a leader, I feel like some will be for a surprise both in the protable and living room space.

 

I'd argue we're seeing the opposite. The PS3 sales are falling for many reasons, but one of the reasons is it's no longer the cheapest Bluray player and actually there are many capable Bluray players cheaper than the PS3. This will only increasingly become the case.

The PS3's advantage as a bluray player is diminishing over time, not increasing. Just like how the PS2's capabilities as a DVD player were increasingly irrelevant.

 

Mod edit to remove snide remark. We all know how to behave here, thank you...

 

Alot of baby steps it seems in Nintendo's current strategy.

In Japan, they've actually outsourced another company to use their install base as a platform for an online video service..... mostly family oriented stuff like documentaries IIRC.

I think there will be a future for HD type graphics as analogue television transmissions are turned off (2009 for america) and the mass market are forced to upgrade to new televisions.

Its up to Nintendo to develop software (eg: wildlife simulations, interactive movies) to convince their captured audience that it is worth the upgrade to a redesigned console when the Wii eventually reaches saturation point in 3-4 years.