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Forums - Sales Discussion - Electronic Arts Plays Catch-Up After Shrugging Off Wii's Appeal (Bloomberg)

johnsobas on 10 April 2007
Poseidon said:
vanguardian1 said:
Shane said:

Third parties have never done well for Nintendo. Even EA's most optimistic expectations are to finish second, which EA never does.

I still vote silly.

Zelda was designed for Cube. Then they tacked the Wii features onto it. This isn't indicative of whether it's better on one or the other, but this is the exact thing third parties have been accused of doing.


 3rd parties never did well on Nintendo?  Then why did they make tons of games on their systems before Sony came into the picture? Nintendo proceeded to mess themselves up more than anything by refusing to adapt to the changing market, I understand that perfectly well, but that's another story.

Btw, if you haven't noticed, this generation Sony is getting the smaller install base AND putting out a significantly higher number of 1st party software titles.  Doesn't that sound a lot like someone else the last 2 generations? Oh, and not to mention that a fair amount of their 3rd party sales are rather disappointing as well.  Let's even mention that companies are starting to delay their ps3 titles or starting to porting them to the 360. 

 

The Wii has a swelling user base in all 3 regions, versus Microsoft's 1 and a half regions or PS3's 2 poor regional sales with 1 unknown as of yet, which console looks the most promising overall?  Can developers wait for the PS3's install base to increase?  If the can, how long CAN they wait?  Or will they even try to wait?  We've seen a lot of changes in the last few months, and if the Wii keeps selling out in all 3 regions (which it look like it will until June at the earliest), then how will 3rd parties react?  Even withe the PS3's launch in Europe, the Wii is still pulling ahead overall and even catching up to the 360 in North America alone.

 

Sony's strengths over the previous generations aren't applying here, the PS3 isn't the same kind of hardware that the PSX and PS2 were.  And it's competition is VERY different and much more flexible than the competition of the previous Playstation consoles. 

Just because a console fares better early and another seems to be stagnant, doesn't mean that it will stay that way.

There were over 200 million consoles sold in the last generation (with the PS2 still pushing that number up slightly), and not even a whole 1/10 of the new consoles have been sold. I highly, highly doubt that people are abandoning consoles, but rather are still waiting it out. People could be waiting for killer apps (MGS 4, Halo 3, SSBB), people could be waiting for a price drop (highly doubt that people don't like the price of the Wii), and the last one really concerns only the 360 and PS3, how many people are just waiting it out to see what game no longer stays an exclusive? There were many people who were willing to purchase the PS3 because of its big 3: Devil May Cry 4, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Final Fantasy XIII. With DMC4 headed for the 360 as well, I don't think it's wrong to believe that people just want to see what actually stays exclusive.

It seems the Wii has won the battle, but the war is far from over.


Sorry but Sony has put themself in a bigger hole than you think.  People can refer to the N64 and dreamcast as systems that started fast, and weren't as successful as expected.  However, it was pretty clear things were going wrong when developers were quickly jumping ship and there were many other problems too.

People can refer to PS1, 360, and ps2 (to a lesser extent) as systems that started out slow and picked up steam later.  However, these systems all had no (real) competition during the years when they were selling slowly once the other consoles launched they did pick up the momentum.

 In Japan no console has ever been behind at any point by more than a few ten thousand and came back to win.   Usually 1 console dominates while 1 or 2 other consoles sell 6 million or less.  That pattern has for this generation already starting forming right now.

America has shown that they can support 3 systems, but the worldwide market has not. 



currently playing: Skyward Sword, Mario Sunshine, Xenoblade Chronicles X