Is this game over for Sony?

[Erik Aston]

Round 3: What about Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade? Both are HUGE mediums for both systems that allow developers to make games on the cheap, distribute them cheap, and keep their costs low. Yes, a PS3 game will cost a huge amount to make, but there are other means to bring the games to the gamers. On another note, I really wonder what the true costs of making a PS3 game to a Wii or any other system will truely be. About publishers adopting the Wii: Remember how long it tpok for the DS to get major 3rd party support? 2 years from DS's launch. And thats the DS - one of the fastest selling systems in history. How quickly will devs jump on board for a system that has a 1.1m user base in America that only had a 14m userbase last generation? This is a questions dev's have to answer before they act.

You say Wii has a 1.1m user base in the US like it is something to scoff at. But that makes Nintendo basically as successful as Sony and Microsoft combined at this point from launch. And unlike Sony, Nintendo are still having sell-outs around the world. Even on PSN and XBLA, devs still have to make games in HD. Its still more expensive than producing games for the VC, at least in theory (won't know until PSN and VC original content get off the ground). And the VC is designed to build up a giant library of titles regardless of it can get developers on board for new content. There is already as much content on VC as there is on XBLA. The success of online stores is dependant on selection, and the success of videogame consoles is dependant on selection, so it stands to reason that selection will determine the success of these services as well. And just like the physical systems, it stands to reason that success snowballs. Games cause sales, sales cause developers to get on board.

Again, having that 20 or 60gb HD will come in very handy. IF people really like games that aren't pushing the envelope with the hardware, the PSN will do very well to entice developers to develop games. Programming for a PS3 with 7 cores is hard, but you can always take the Saturn route, and program with 1 SPU. Remember, 1 PS3 PSU is twice as fast as the CPU in the Wii, therefore the graphics would STILL be better, and dev costs would be very very small.

The storage capacity of the Wii is ample to store every NES game ever made; it is fine for classic content. But Nintendo's system allows unlimited re-downloads of games attached to your console's account. This allows them to forego the harddrive, and further keep costs down... And yet they still already have the online store with the most content...

Look at the MONTHLY charts first, buddy. The PS1 launched with 144k units, then only went on to sell roughly 2m units in the next year before the N64 launch. The N64 launched with nearly 400k units in sales, and beat the PS1 every month except for 1 from that September to the next August. It nearly overcame a 2m unit deficit that the PS1 had gained in the hear. However, in the next September FFVII launched and the rest is history. Get your facts straight - N64 had a superb launch, but eventually the lack of 3rd party support killed it.

I know the N64 had a better launch. It was an established brand. The lack of games on N64, regardless of whether they were first party or third party, caught up to it. Creating a superior environment and superior profit potential for developers resulted in the success of PS. And I'm not wrong to say that PS had an early lead; it did, and it never gave it up.

Yet the fact is, I seriously doubt that in the US and Europe, the non-gamer really wants to buy a game. Thus why they are a non-gamer. Yes, I am sure non-gamers would be interested in the Wii, but are they really $250 interested in it? Lets look at the facts, during the Wii launch in the US and Europe, Zelda: TP had a 85% attach rate. Zelda is NOT a non-gamer game. It is a hardcore Nintendo fanboy game. Japan has a huge casual market, thats why TP didn't do nearly what it did in the US. Not only that, we cannot actually see who makes up the Wii purchase base in the US, since Wii Play isn't out, and Wii Sports is a pack-in. Now, if Wii Sports wasn't a pack-in, and it outsold Zelda, or got very very close, we could assume that casuals bought the Wii, but we cannot. However, again, when 85% of Americans and Europeans bought Zelda, that tells me its mostly hardcore consumers that waited in line because Zelda was coming out. Not john and suzie casual.

People are non-gamers because games have not been made for them. When the games for them do show up, like Nintendogs or the Sims, they sell like hotcakes. The market is untapped, and so the few games that get released into it expand to fill this giant space, and become killer apps of the highest order. Yes, it is the existing customer buying Wii in the US and Europe at launch. But thats why it was important to have Zelda at launch, and its why Mario, Metroid and Smash are all scheduled for the first year too. Nintendo want to sell to the existing customer as much as possible in the first year, because they know from experience with the DS that it can take time to gain that casual audience. The DS was neck and neck with the PSP in worldwide sales just a year ago, and now its opened up this gigantic lead after the "casual" audience came aboard.

But certainly not in the same way. I can say the same thing about the US: No system has won the world without winning the US. PS2's fanbase in Japan actually was less than that of the PS1. Despite that, PS2 outsold PS1 in Europe and the USA. Japan isn't the trendsetter anymore. It's a huge, very important market, but it isn't the be-all end-all of gaming anymore.

The point is that the systems which first catch on in Japan oftentimes later catch on in the rest of the world. NES, PS and DS all took off like rockets in Japan before anywhere else.

We're comparing DS titles (which Nintendo has ALWAYS dominated the handheld market since they invented the market itself) to console titles....Huge difference.

Nintendo not only invented the handheld market, they reinvented it. Twice. Game Boy was predicted to fail since it was following the business plan for consoles, instead of the established handheld market of Game and Watch. And everyone knows "the handheld market is different from the console market." And then DS reinvented the handheld market again. Unlike GBC and GBA, which hit the ground running, DS had to build up slowly and prove itself. The key games on DS hit markets which handhelds had never hit before, and eventually DS reached a point where it sold faster than any Game Boy ever had.

Actually, World of Warcraft is threatening the Sims, and has a 8m PAYING MONTHLY userbasis. That earns Blizzard far more money than Maxis does with the Sims. I don't remember Sims: Hot Date selling 2.64m units w/w in 24hrs like Burning Crusade did, did you?

The "8 million paying monthly" goes back to the differences in gaming culture: lots of those are bulk subscriptions from internet cafes in China and other parts of Asia. But WoW is an interesting case, seeing that is has caught on with both gamers and non-gamers. Lots of girls play WoW because they like the chat room aspect of it. Who cares what a game sells in the first day, btw. Thats evidence of having a strong, established brand with loyal (possibly starved) fans. Halo 2 sold 2/3rd of its lifetime total in the first month, but might end up 4 or 5 million total sales behind Nintendogs, which sold better Xmas 06 than Xmas 05 in many territories.

Also, your comparing 1 Sims game with 50 expansions to just upto 3 GTA games....Huge difference there. Thats like saying "every game with mario, added together has outsold every game with Halo characters in it".

Fair enough. The Sims alone still outsold every GTA title alone.

Then why has Gears of War outsold Wii Sports, despite 1.1m copies being giveaways?

Because its a freakin' console launch. D'uh. Wii Sports is essentially sold out around the world, while Gears has sold most of what it will sell lifetime (going by sales trends of similar titles) so you can't exactly judge its sales yet. Oh, and Wii Sports actually IS more prolific than Gears already too.

Power has absolutely nothing to do with sales, nothing. No system sells due to power, or lack of it. Systems sell because of games. Power helps augment things, but it does not hurt it (unless the system is $600, like the PS3).

Thanks for seeing things my way. You don't sell a system to developers with power either. You have to deliver the end users to the developers.

Again, as I have stated, I don't think Sony is using a great strategy. Again, I believe the PS3 will lose 40% of Sonys entire fanbase. That is ungodly. No system has EVER done that poorly. Nintendo was on a downward trend from SNES to N64 to GC, but none of those systems saw more than a 33% decline in fanbase. The PS3, however, will see that. But again, my belief is that all the gains the Playstation brand gained in the past 10 years won't entirely be lost. Tons of it will, but I still just dont see it being enough to "dethrone" it from #1. However, Sony will take such a beating this generation from the Wii in Japan, and the 360 in the US to only give the PS3 a shadow of its former self.

I don't think much momentum carries from one generation to the next beyond the launch. There have been many cases of a follow-up system losing faaar more than 40% of its predecessors base, including two collapsings of the entire home console market with the downfall of Magnavox and Atari. Sega Genesis far outsold all its successors combined too, though they mismanaged things far beyond how much Sony has.

Your comparing Nintendo, a company that has been around for 100 years, helped create a major console market, and has atleast 5 of the top 10 franchises in history, to Microsoft a no-name console startup that recieved tons of bad publicity and negativity surrounding them cash-cowing into the console market, and asking WHY the GC nearly beat out the Xbox? Like you said, Games. GC didn't have them then, and I don't think they have them now.

They honestly don't have a ton more than GC at this very point in time, but then PS3 has a fraction of what PS2 had. Wii games seem to be announced with more frequency than for the other two systems too. And Wii also has the least redundancy between titles, and more exclusives. And uh... You were saying that third parties were the be-all end-all, and I was pointing out that far superior third party support didn't help XB much. Then you comment how Nintendo has at least 5 of the top 10 franchises in history, and then say GC didn't have the games. Are we having the same conversation? Due to Nintendo having so much first party development, they need less third parties on board to reach a critical mass.

And the vast majority of those 500k to 1m units were sold and established on Playstaiton systems. Again, devs would have to sell 500k to break even if they were spending $10m or more on a game. I still don't believe games like Guitar Hero 1 or even 2 cost that much, and despite that, sold very very well.

Again, are we having the same conversation? The vast majority of those 500k to 1m units were sold on PS systems...? What? The vast majority of PS2 games sold were NOT from what we'd call "hit" games. The mass of non-hit games are what drove the PS2s success. These types of games are still coming to PS2 more than any other system (which is why some are predicting PS2 will be the best selling system of 2007, even with the AAA titles moving on). But these games will be viable on the Wii far earlier than they are on the PS3 or even the 360.

A dev has to consider what system is cheap to develop for, and what systems you can port to. The PS3 has the advantage of getting major support from multi-ports that the 360 and PS3 will get, but not the Wii. There is still a huge list of games that will be on PS3 and 360 but not the Wii. Most of these games will help repair that negative Playstaiton image.

And the Wii is getting ports from PS2, which is still more popular than 360 or PS3. Wii is designed NOT to get the same games going to PS3 and 360. They didn't get those games anyways when they TRIED to. Now instead, when they get games, more will be exclusives. PS3 and 360 will be fighting over existing franchises for existing fans, and cutting that segment of the potential audience in half, while Nintendo has free range to market to any other audience they want.

Nintendo games are alot more important to Nintendo systems compared to Sony games on Sony systems, and/or Microsoft games on Microsoft systems. Nintendo has a huge publishing basis, and they need that, and always have since the SNES era. Sony and MS have video game divisions of a much larger company. Nintendo isn't a side-business by a larger company (atleast for the most part), and they need games to survive. Sony and MS really do not.

Well Sony arguably does. They've been pretty mismanaged for the past several years. I wasn't talking about Nintendo "needing games to survive" though, I was talking about their far greater first party meaning they'll need less third party contributions to reach a critical mass.

Every smallish studio is going to go for the medium that gives them the most profit, and I don't see it being 100% on the Wii. I believe with the strides the PSN and XBLA are trying to do are steps in the right direction. The Wii has limited multiplayer support versus the 360 and PS3, and I believe that will kill them in the long run. More and more homes are able to support larger and larger functions for downloadable content and games, and the Wii just cant do that. The PS3 uses a 20/60gb storage medium compared to a 512mb medium that the Wii uses. Devs won't be able to use that as a storage medium - not when VC is already out and snatching up a large portion of that drive. Yes you can easily upgade, but not everyone will want to, as people are lazy.

The cheif form of distribution for this entire generation will be physical. Nintendo will have the most successful digital store, due to having so much more content. Their storage space won't be a major issue, due to their unlimited re-download policy, and their use of the standard SD card format to expand system memory. The lack of a hard drive is one small reason they can keep cost down, which is the right move to make as long as physical media rules.

Examples: Look at Xbox Live Arcade. The Nintendo fanboys get happy that the VC has sold 1.5m games. Geometry Wars alone has most likely sold that number or more. And thats just 1 of the 60-odd games that are on XBLA. PSN has the same advantage. Yes, the Wii has VC and promise to allow devs to make games and distribute them, but the hardware functionality really isn't there to truely take advantage of it like the PSN and XLBA systems are.

Geometry Wars has only sold about 250,000. I think Uno is around the same total. I haven't seen anything about overall XBLA sales recently, but I know they only sold 600,000 games through March. So at the least, the VC took off much faster. XBLA has to grow significantly before it becomes a solution for smaller, marginalized companies, and PSN obviously has to grow much more than that (I'm not excited about a 15 dollar, 1080p version of a free Flash game, personally...) Wii allows small companies to keep following their business plans and design team structures from PS2, and even port games between the two systems during the generational transition, which is more desirable in the short term (ie this generation, while physical still rules).