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

Avinash_Tyagi on 04 December 2007
Untamoi said:
Avinash_Tyagi said:
...


Yes of course they are niche, so what if they are the highest selling games in this market, this entire market is still niche, PS1 and PS2 didn't expand the market, they merely took advantage of populatiion growth, increased ownership of more than one console by many gamers and the fact that their opponenets sold less.

Yeah GTA is more popular than Mario, so one niche title is more popular than the other niche title, big whoop, none of these games are mass market successes.


 

With this logic, every game ever released would be a niche game...

 


 Right now yes, because no game has been able to explode into the mass market, what do you think Nintendo is trying to do with its push into the "nongamer" markets

 

Video gaming is a niche hobby so everything in it is a market sub-segment of an already small niche.

 

Exactly, the hope of nintendo is that it will be able to go beyond these confines 

 



 

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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PS-She on 04 December 2007
TheBigFatJ said:
PS-She said:
Sri Lumpa said:

True, but conversely there will be plenty of games that can only be made in the Wii because of the Wiimote, or that would be much better with it. I am sure that if RE5 or another RE4 style RE game came to the Wii that it would be more successful than RE5 on either 360 or PS3 and possibly do better than both combined due to the superior controls (plus the RE series already proved itself on the Wii whereas it hasn't done so on the PS3 or 360).

More successful maybe, but a better game definitely not. For all the stuff the Wiimote does, the Wii is still a large step down from the PS3 or even the 360.

The best version of Resident Evil 4 is on the Wii. And this would still be the case if it was released for the current-generation graphical powerhouse from Microsoft. The improvements to control outweigh the graphical benefits, in my opinion.

I've been following graphics for a long, long time. When voodoo graphics was released, I was right there playing GLQuake on my 28.8k modem. When Unreal came out, I spent time graphics-whoring that. I had an N64 and thought that, because it was so much stronger than the PS graphically, it would have better games. I remember prefering Quake 3 Arena to UT, primarily due to several rendering technologies that I thought were impressive and were the pinnacle of rendering at the time.

Graphical improvement is an inevitability. The particular styles -- including attempts to make models, textures and actions as realistic as possible -- gain and lose popularity with the season. I believe that realism, in particular, will begin to significantly lose popularity this generation or next. This is nearly here nor there, but it is perhaps an example of how tastes change when you can finally do things you couldn't do before.

My point is that pushing the envelope graphically no longer makes sense. Let the fillrate, clock frequency, and bigger memory come to you. Let your developers work within more realistic bounds to keep profitability reasonably attainable. All else equal, improving graphics and sound makes games better. All else being equal, improving control and gameplay makes games better. But If I had to choose between the two, I'd take the later every single time.


My opinion differs from yours greatly.

After handling a Wiimote, I was disappointed. The -, +, Home, 1, and 2 buttons as well as the directional pad are all awkwardly positioned on the remote making their use annoying. Only the A, B, C, and Z buttons are comfortable to use. Nintendo has an IR pointer on their Wiimote and that is the only thing really going for it as far as "improving controls." The shortage of buttons (let alone comfortable buttons) is also staggering on the Wiimote/Nunchuck. Nintendo did not improve controls with the Wiimote, it simply changed them.

I would much rather game with a well-designed ergonomic controller than the Wiimote due to its shortage of buttons and poor placing of existing ones so I do not see the Wiimote as a step up in controls rather only the IR pointer as such.



TheBigFatJ on 04 December 2007
PS-She said:

My opinion differs from yours greatly.

After handling a Wiimote, I was disappointed. The -, +, Home, 1, and 2 buttons as well as the directional pad are all awkwardly positioned on the remote making their use annoying. Only the A, B, C, and Z buttons are comfortable to use. Nintendo has an IR pointer on their Wiimote and that is the only thing really going for it as far as "improving controls." The shortage of buttons (let alone comfortable buttons) is also staggering on the Wiimote/Nunchuck. Nintendo did not improve controls with the Wiimote, it simply changed them.

I would much rather game with a well-designed ergonomic controller than the Wiimote due to its shortage of buttons and poor placing of existing ones so I do not see the Wiimote as a step up in controls rather only the IR pointer as such.


As you've pointed out, we basically have the opposite opinion. I feel like the Wiimote is very egonomic -- overall button placement is imperfect, but, as you pointed out, primary buttons you use have perfect placement. However, I find it extremely nice that I don't have to sit with my hands together in front of me to play. And the buttons are far, far less important than they are on controllers without accurate aiming.

Your opinion and my opinion aren't the ones that shape gaming, but rather the mass opinion. The Wiimote makes gaming accessible to many more people, and it is why the common opinion at the end of this generation will likely be that the Wiimote method *is* gaming for the masses, and holding your hands together in a constrained manner is unnatural.

Those who are introduced to gaming on the Wii may not want to use conventional ("old fasioned") controllers. This includes the classic controller. A lot of people are being introduced to gaming on the Wii.

People considered the DS a gimmick as well when it was released. People questioned how long it would sell well, whether 3rd parties would spend any time and effort programming good touch screen games. Now we have games like Elite Beat Agents that couldn't be done on a non-touch screen system, and there are plenty of games that make essential or very good use of the second screen. And for being a great game system, that DS is dominating the market in terms of sales, third party support and profits.

The DS, however, started off much more slowly than the Wii.



NJ5 on 04 December 2007
PS-She said:


 



After handling a Wiimote, I was disappointed. The -, +, Home, 1, and 2 buttons as well as the directional pad are all awkwardly positioned on the remote making their use annoying. Only the A, B, C, and Z buttons are comfortable to use. Nintendo has an IR pointer on their Wiimote and that is the only thing really going for it as far as "improving controls." The shortage of buttons (let alone comfortable buttons) is also staggering on the Wiimote/Nunchuck. Nintendo did not improve controls with the Wiimote, it simply changed them.

I would much rather game with a well-designed ergonomic controller than the Wiimote due to its shortage of buttons and poor placing of existing ones so I do not see the Wiimote as a step up in controls rather only the IR pointer as such.


The button for launching missiles in Metroid Prime 3 is well positioned and works fine (it's the down button on the D-Pad). So make that 5 easily acessible buttons. The other ones are for rarely used functions or for when the Wiimote is turned sideways. Combine all of this with the analog nunchuk controller, motion controls and IR pointing, and the controller will work well for many types of games (and for FPS games, it certainly beats any other console controller, maybe even keyboard+mouse).

 



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

PS-She on 04 December 2007
NJ5 said:
PS-She said:

After handling a Wiimote, I was disappointed. The -, +, Home, 1, and 2 buttons as well as the directional pad are all awkwardly positioned on the remote making their use annoying. Only the A, B, C, and Z buttons are comfortable to use. Nintendo has an IR pointer on their Wiimote and that is the only thing really going for it as far as "improving controls." The shortage of buttons (let alone comfortable buttons) is also staggering on the Wiimote/Nunchuck. Nintendo did not improve controls with the Wiimote, it simply changed them.

I would much rather game with a well-designed ergonomic controller than the Wiimote due to its shortage of buttons and poor placing of existing ones so I do not see the Wiimote as a step up in controls rather only the IR pointer as such.


The button for launching missiles in Metroid Prime 3 is well positioned and works fine (it's the down button on the D-Pad). So make that 5 easily acessible buttons. The other ones are for rarely used functions or for when the Wiimote is turned sideways. Combine all of this with the analog nunchuk controller, motion controls and IR pointing, and the controller will work well for many types of games (and for FPS games, it certainly beats any other console controller, maybe even keyboard+mouse).

 


So your response to my saying the buttons are poorly positioned is "you rarely use them?"

The level of depth in that argument is staggering.

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NJ5 on 04 December 2007

Did you miss the part where I said "or for when the Wiimote is turned sideways"?

If there's anything staggering here, it's your knee-jerk reaction.



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

TheBigFatJ on 04 December 2007

Also, consider that it is not the case that the Wiimote is short on buttons. If developers believed the Wiimote was short on buttons, they could easily offer an attachment with more buttons than the nunchuck. It wouldn't be expensive for the devs, although it might slightly offset the profitability gap between Wii games and PS3 games unless the developers passed the cost on to consumers and decided to charge $54 or something for their game.



PS-She on 04 December 2007
NJ5 said:
Did you miss the part where I said "or for when the Wiimote is turned sideways"?

If there's anything staggering here, it's your knee-jerk reaction.

That negates the whole IR pointer part which means the biggest improvement is useless and you wind up holding a blocky uncomfortable controller.



mancandy on 04 December 2007
PS-She said:

My opinion differs from yours greatly.

After handling a Wiimote, I was disappointed. The -, +, Home, 1, and 2 buttons as well as the directional pad are all awkwardly positioned on the remote making their use annoying. Only the A, B, C, and Z buttons are comfortable to use. Nintendo has an IR pointer on their Wiimote and that is the only thing really going for it as far as "improving controls." The shortage of buttons (let alone comfortable buttons) is also staggering on the Wiimote/Nunchuck. Nintendo did not improve controls with the Wiimote, it simply changed them.

I would much rather game with a well-designed ergonomic controller than the Wiimote due to its shortage of buttons and poor placing of existing ones so I do not see the Wiimote as a step up in controls rather only the IR pointer as such.


That's because you have little girly hands that can't fit around the manly hardcore controllers of the Wii.

Seriously though, not all the controllers will fit into all people's hands. I don't like the 360 controllers at all. The PS3's are comfortable for me, but maybe that's because I've been using them for a million years now. The Wii controller can capture 3-D movement, it's not just the pointer. Wii Sports cannot be played with the SIXAXIS.

I find the Wii controller to have more than enough buttons. Even with taking away 1 and 2, there are the C, Z, A, B, +, - and each direction on the D-Pad. Add in that you can shake either the controller or nunchuck for input. That's 12 points of input for the Wii controller. How many buttons do you need?

I also have no problems reaching any of the buttons on the controller. I can easily, in MP3, jump around my enemy, scan him, roll into ball, bomb him, unroll, lock on, freeze him, take a picture, go to hypermode, blow him up with a missle, and then check my map to see where I killed him. Must be my monkey hands. 



Wii Code 8761-5941-4718-0078 

jjseth on 04 December 2007
CrazzyMan said:
Who won`t buy Wii for 99$? The end. =)

I won't.

 


Get your Portable ID!

 

My pokemon brings all the nerds to the yard. And they're like, "You wanna trade cards?" Damn right, I wanna trade cards. I'll trade this, but not my charizard.