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Forums - Sony Discussion - Why people are overestimating the Wii's life time sales

Louie on 02 December 2007
Bladeneo said:
Louie said:

I think the PS3 is a fad...

don´t get me wrong it is a great console and it was fun to play it for about 5 hours. I played Resistance and it was a great game but when I finished it there was nothing to play anymore and I got bored...


See the logic, guys? Every PS3 owner would tell me to buy just ANOTHER GAME, god damn!

When you get bored of a wii game buy a new game.


Consoles are based on games not their hardware. The games are a fad not the console itself. As soon as the Wii Sports fad is over there is the Super Mario Galaxy fad, the Trauma Center fad, the Metroid Fad... you get the point.

If you look at the PS3 with just one game, does it really look like a great console? Why don´t people say the Xbox 360 is a fad because there is just Halo to play? Well, because there are more games.

Hell, people, its annyoing. Buy games for your console. Every game gets boring after some time.

Is it so hard to realize the games are the "fad" and not the console? If Halo sells like crazy for 4 months and then dropps of the charts isn´t that the exact definition of "fad"?

Aren´t 99% of our games fads as they sell for some weeks and then drop out of the Top 10?

Isn´t Wii Sports, a title that sold for over a year now, the exact opposite of a fad?


The fact of the matter is however, that a large portion of Wii owners are people who get drawn in by Wii Sports and the pretty adverts, the casual group. After playing Wii sports for hours, when they have friends round, they put the Wii down and dont know what to do with it. It gets forgotten, and eventually, will be completely forgotten. Thats why its a fad.

On the whole it wont be a fad, because alot of people who have a Wii are your regular/hardcore gamers who bought it for Metroid, Zelda, Mario etc, I just dont expect the Wii to last that long because alot of people want one because its the next cool thing to have.


 Or those casual gamers will buy other games... at least that´s what my wife is doing, she´s looking for games to play and she´s the biggest casual gamer you´ve ever seen



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Rubang B on 02 December 2007

Your argument would make sense if Wii Sports was the most fun possible on the Wii.

It seems like your argument can be simplified to a "Wii is a fad because it comes with a free game I don't like and don't want other people to like."



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Bladeneo on 02 December 2007
Rubang B said:
Your argument would make sense if Wii Sports was the most fun possible on the Wii.

It seems like your argument can be simplified to a "Wii is a fad because it comes with a free game I don't like and don't want other people to like."

 Well, that makes no sense, because not once did I state I dont like Wii Sports, I think its great fun when you have 4 people playing it. 

 My argument does make sense; if you look at your average Wii Software sales, theyre generally quite low in terms of the amount of owners. Shouldnt that be a point of concern? Especially considering a chunk of the software sales are packed in in the form of Wii Sports. Surely thats some indication that Wii owners arent exactly rushing out to buy games for their console?



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Avinash_Tyagi on 02 December 2007
Mummelmann said:
When an item is supply constrained, its very hard to determine by how much. No one knows for sure how big or small the Wii demand really is, its impossible to judge whether it lacks wares for 10 million or 50 million customers, but people still pick only the topmost possible numbers!
As for what Avinash said about market turnarounds; Sony sure turned things around with their Playstation in '95, and almost every "expert" on the planet said that the 360 would win this gen easily simply because it was out first like the PS2 had been.
This, however, was not the case, and what does that teach us about speaking too soon and too unabashedly?
The console market is not as predictable as we like to believe at times, and quite frankly I find the insane Wii predictions rather naive...

lol, two things wrong with those statements, first there is a total lack of understanding of the industry on your part, the PS1 had the advantage of a large game library by the time N64 was launching, thanks to Nintedo's liscensing program Sony was easily able to sign on third party support, right now PS3's library is faltering while Wii's is rising, even MGS4 shows signs of making the trip to the 360, weakinging PS3's lineup even further.

 

Secondly the 360 was never a worldwide console, heck its barely even a success in NA, anyone who thought it would win was not paying attention to the market, sorry pally, but your comments show a lack of understanding of history and the gaming market.

 

Sorry but none of your arguements have yet to show a shred of evidence why Wii would experience the big dropoff , the first of its kind in the gaming market, Wii has the library (even if its not what the hardcore want, the hardcore aren't that important, and the libraryhas waht the casuals and nongamers want) and it has the world wide support, not to mention the strategy that is making it wildly popular



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

Avinash_Tyagi on 02 December 2007
Bladeneo said:
Rubang B said:
Your argument would make sense if Wii Sports was the most fun possible on the Wii.

It seems like your argument can be simplified to a "Wii is a fad because it comes with a free game I don't like and don't want other people to like."

 Well, that makes no sense, because not once did I state I dont like Wii Sports, I think its great fun when you have 4 people playing it. 

 My argument does make sense; if you look at your average Wii Software sales, theyre generally quite low in terms of the amount of owners. Shouldnt that be a point of concern? Especially considering a chunk of the software sales are packed in in the form of Wii Sports. Surely thats some indication that Wii owners arent exactly rushing out to buy games for their console?


 Lets see, eleven million sellers (26 million in sales from games not bundled with the system just from those games), yeah, I don't think there is reason to worry



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

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Mummelmann on 02 December 2007
Avinash_Tyagi said:
Mummelmann said:
When an item is supply constrained, its very hard to determine by how much. No one knows for sure how big or small the Wii demand really is, its impossible to judge whether it lacks wares for 10 million or 50 million customers, but people still pick only the topmost possible numbers!
As for what Avinash said about market turnarounds; Sony sure turned things around with their Playstation in '95, and almost every "expert" on the planet said that the 360 would win this gen easily simply because it was out first like the PS2 had been.
This, however, was not the case, and what does that teach us about speaking too soon and too unabashedly?
The console market is not as predictable as we like to believe at times, and quite frankly I find the insane Wii predictions rather naive...

lol, two things wrong with those statements, first there is a total lack of understanding of the industry on your part, the PS1 had the advantage of a large game library by the time N64 was launching, thanks to Nintedo's liscensing program Sony was easily able to sign on third party support, right now PS3's library is faltering while Wii's is rising, even MGS4 shows signs of making the trip to the 360, weakinging PS3's lineup even further.

 

Secondly the 360 was never a worldwide console, heck its barely even a success in NA, anyone who thought it would win was not paying attention to the market, sorry pally, but your comments show a lack of understanding of history and the gaming market.

 

Sorry but none of your arguements have yet to show a shred of evidence why Wii would experience the big dropoff , the first of its kind in the gaming market, Wii has the library (even if its not what the hardcore want, the hardcore aren't that important, and the libraryhas waht the casuals and nongamers want) and it has the world wide support, not to mention the strategy that is making it wildly popular


 I think I have a pretty decent understanding of the gaming market, having taken part in it since the Commodore 64 and NES era, but when I don't support the Wii, all my statements become irrelevant by default. This is why its so annoying discussing with Wii fanboys.

Anyhow, ever since you posted in another thread (about Wii immaturity) and basically called every single franchise outside of the Wii a niche product, I promised to stop taking you seriously... That's just what I'll do. 



etuoyo on 02 December 2007

I think people overestimate Wii sales cause it has been selling as well as PS2. but the difference was that PS2 though weaker than xbox and gamecube was not significantly weaker. so developers didnt miss out on much by just developing on the console that had swallowed most of the matket. games that were released on all platforms used ps2 as the common denominator without any improvement on gamecube and xbox despite the systems being more powerful.

this time around wii is so much weaker than the competition that the same can never happen again. there will always be tons of big budget games that can only be made on 360 and ps3 no matter how well wii is selling. so unlike what happened last gen Wii will never basically monopolise the 3rd party scene so is unlikely to see the same level of success as ps2. unless as john lucas thinks it is insanely successful in this blue ocean thing and brings in so many casuals that never owned consoles before



celine on 02 December 2007

@Mummelmann
No offense but I think that Avish has good points .

" and almost every 'expert' on the planet said that the 360 would win this gen easily simply because it was out first like the PS2 had been. "
Obviously these "experts" are not experts on VG history and his understandings
These "experts" probably looked at VG history and think that every generation is the same , as the same pattern, and this is fairly stupid.
What an expert of VG history and business will think is that the company that build a console around the best "business model" will probably be successful in the market.
Who do you think is the console with the best "business model" between Wii, 360 and PS3 and why ?

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Louie on 02 December 2007
Bladeneo said:


Well, that makes no sense, because not once did I state I dont like Wii Sports, I think its great fun when you have 4 people playing it.

My argument does make sense; if you look at your average Wii Software sales, theyre generally quite low in terms of the amount of owners. Shouldnt that be a point of concern? Especially considering a chunk of the software sales are packed in in the form of Wii Sports. Surely thats some indication that Wii owners arent exactly rushing out to buy games for their console?


 Isn´t the Wiis Software: Hardware Ratio better than the Playstation 3s? 

 

I don´t see why the Wii should sell less software than other consoles, honestly. The DS is the incarnation of casual play and it has the highest software sales of any portable system ever...  



stranne on 02 December 2007

The Wii might not sell 100M at $249 with just Wii Sports, but there's a lot more to be done with price cuts and bundling. $149 with Wii Play in 2011 would sell great.