Is this game over for Sony?

[mrstickball]

Erik Aston said: 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.

The 1.1m userbase is good (not as good as it should have been, but still good). But again, the question for western devs is how well to push for exclusives for a system that has been marginalized in the US the past 10+ years. I'm not saying they won't, but its a roadblock to a slap-happy Wii future that you dream of. The VC is designed to just have old games. None of the games are new content. Not that it's a bad thing (if I got a Wii it would be due to wanting the VC games). There is less content on VC than XBLA currently. XBLA has 60 full games, about 100+ demos & trailers of games, tons of downloadable content, and Bethsadia is putting Shimmering Isles out on XBLM in April.

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...

The huge problem I see with the Wii is the horrible flash drive. Yes, it can hold nearly every NES game, but it could barely hold more than 10 N64 games. Again, nowhere near the content of XBLM...PSN is yet to be seen, but I have never heard of the Wii actually having more content. How many demos of Wii games are there? How many VC games in the US right now? How many movie trailers, tv shows, movies themselves, IPTV, ect ect. Nintendo is far behind MS and maybe on par with Sony.

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.

Ok. Listen to why I am arguing PS3s sales against the Wii: Nintendo had a customer basis of 25m people last generation. If Nintendo caters to the non-gamer so much, exactly how many consoles are going to sell to non gamers to give Nintendo a lead over Sony and MS? If Nintendo kept their entire 25m user base, Nintendo would have to create the largest surge in gaming history (next to the 70s and 80s) to garner a 1st place lead. The market doesn't increase as fast as you'd think it does. Each generation of systems gains about a 20% increase versus the previous generation. The only one to really buck this trend was the PS1/N64/Saturn era, where they sold 160m units and this most recent generation, only sold around 175m. There are around 175m console buyers. Nintendo isn't going for the 150m that bought PS2s or Xboxes (they haven't secured any major IPs to the Wii as much as MS or Sony have). Now, don't get me wrong. I believe the Wii will get non-gamers involved, but not as much as you feel they will.

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.

Could that be because they all launched in Japan first? Hmmm. Maybe. Actually, the Japaneese market doesn't emulate the rest of the world anymore. At one point it obviously was, but the past 5 years for J-gaming has been different. For example, the PS2 hasn't sold as well as the 1st one in Japan (by about 2m units, give or take). Despite this, it's sold better in the US and Europe than the PS1. We're comparing DS titles (which Nintendo has ALWAYS dominated the handheld market since they invented the market itself) to console titles....Huge difference.

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.

My point was that Nintendo is a very established company, but during the GC, they became even moreso marginalized due to far too much reliance on specific first party games during the N64 period, and continued to the GC period. Nintendo doesn't "need" third parties to sell 20m units, whereas Sony and MS could barely sell 10m units w/w on first party games. However, for any company in the future to actually go beyond their current fanbase of gamers X and Y, they have to secure strong 3rd party support. Nintendo has a horrible track record for that, but seems to be gaining it. Sony has had a fantastic 3rd party support base, but seems to be loosing it, and rapidly. However, we have to wait and see how much it erodes and how much Nintendo gains.

Geometry Wars has only sold about 250,000. I think Uno is around the same total.

Doubtful. Mygamercard.net has Geometry Wars at 312,000 paid users that have Geometry Wars on their list of people that have played it and unlocked achievements (which can only be obtained with the full version of the game). For refference, thats 33% of their card basis. Now, how much more than the 312k is there, who knows. For refference, on their site, Gears of War only has 550k users, or about 60% of their base (and GoW is at or near 3m copies sold thus far). I know you can't extrapolate that data, but it shows that your certainly wrong about 250k sold for Geometry wars.

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).

I don't get this "Wii will give developers something Sony and MS won't cuz its in 1080p" bullcrap. Nintendo is trying to give devs the same service Sony and MS is doing (actually less than MS, since MS is offering XNA to allow devs to port to PC and 360 at the same time with the same costs. A game costs no more to make on XBLA than it will PSN or Wii. Just because a game is in HD doesn't mean that it's going to be pushing the chips an incredible ammount. Most of the arcade games have poor graphics that are nowhere near any full game. If they cost so much to make, then why does XBLA end up getting ports of cheap PC games like Bejewled? Its not like a game like that costs $1m. It would be relatively easy for a company to just upper convert a SD game to HD without any issues from MS. Also, Erik. We've been discussing how Sony's deminse will happen, and your arguing for Nintendo to dominate this generation. Despite this, you have never once posted in the prediction thread (atleast from what Ive seen) to actually put down numbers. Please, give me insight on exactly how many units you believe this uber-wii console will sale, and how poorly the PS3 will fail.