albionus on 29 March 2007
Shane said:
Thanks for the numbers covering Nintendo's historical position. Too bad numbers from 10 or 15 years ago fail to address: what have they done lately in the console space (sorry, but DS and GBA titles really don't count)? Wii Play/Sports and Zelda pretty much sum up the past few years.
If PS2 weren't selling so well and developers weren't still releasing big games for it but instead something like GOW2 came out on PS3, wouldn't its sales jump? Wii is not detracting from PS3's sales at all, whether it's outselling it or not.
On the first issue Nintendo had 24 games pass 1 million on the GameCube for a total of 58.2 million sales despite it selling just over 20 million units. Sony also has 24 with a total of 71.3 million. So despite selling 5.5 times as many systems Sony has sold only about 20-25% more games. The DS difference is simply so staggering its no wonder you want to ignore it, Nintendo has a 2:1 advantage in systems and almost 40:1 advantage in games over 1 million sold. The Wii with only 6.5 million units shipped has 4 Nintendo (pretty much all of them) games over 1 million already! Super Paper Mario will be on that list by May autumn. That outnumbers the number of Sony games over 1 million on the PS3 by 4:1. I don’t know why Sony apologists insist on posting such ridiculous claims on a website with info that disproves it, but they do.
Anyways, no the Wii won't cannibalize PS3 sales, because the PS3 and 360 are priced at a point where only the 40 million or so hardcore gamers/guys living in their mother's basement/guys with way too much money to spend will buy them. If any of those types buy a Wii it will be in addition to a PS3 and/or 360. The Wii is essentially alone in the 100 million casual/kiddie/niche gamer markets while also playing to the other 40 million. The only gamers who won't buy a Wii are diehard Sony and Xbox fanboys but there's a lot fewer of such types than they think. That's the source of the sell outs and mass demand which Nintendo didn't expect since it's been a long time since a Nintendo system tapped all the markets. The PS2 was squarely in the place of the Wii in its day, only minus more than 1 mega selling 1st Party titles the Wii has.
