Doesn't matter how great Uncharted, Killzone, or MGS4 is, if Nintendo overwhelms Sony in Third party games Sony will lose. Take N64 for instance. The Nintendo 64 had Ocarina of Time which is considered the greatest game ever made, and a massive amount of other great games and they lost big time. It will be the same with sony. Doesn't matter if Uncharted and Killzone are gods of gaming, they won't fix Sony's numbers. Sony needs games above all else.

Sullla said: That article was a gigantic pile of fence-sitting. As far as I could tell, DFC Intelligence said nothing other than "it's too early to call" and "let's wait and see what happens next summer." And they get paid to do this?! At least some of the other analyst groups actually make predictions, even if they are often laughable. Let me highlight the fundamental flaws in the assumptions that they've made. Here are the key lines from their report: If all hardware manufacturers make their stated shipment goals over the next year, no system will have more than 40% market share when we revisit this issue next summer. Furthermore, by that time we will only be about 20% into the new generation. There are two major assumptions at work here. First of all, DFC makes it clear that they are focusing on shipping numbers, not sales when talking about the upcoming year. That's a major stroke against any kind of insightful analysis, and we're left with a statement that says relatively little. I agree: no one will have more than 40% market share if we count shipped numbers and ignore actual sales. Microsoft hit their 10 million shipped goal for end of 2006, and Sony hit their shipped goal of 5.5 million at the end of March - but their sales were nowhere close to those numbers. It will be the same thing in 2008: Sony can easily meet their target of shipping 11 million PS3s this fiscal year, but they sure aren't going to sell that many. Comparing market share of "shipped" units paints an inaccurate picture and is a waste of time. Secondly, DFC has completely swallowed Sony's statement that this will be a 10-year console generation ("we will be only 20% into the new generation.") No offense, but I call BS on that idea. There has never been a previous console generation that lasted anywhere close to 10 years before, simply because whichever company is doing poorly in the market will try to rush out a new system heralding a new generation, forcing everyone to response or be left behind. Even if all three current console companies decided to ignore this precedent, a new company would almost certainly step in to fill the void, as the current systems became more and more outdated. If Apple could launch a system 5x more powerful than any current console and sell it (at a profit) for $250 in 2012, don't you think they would? Someone will introduce a new console before 2016; it's an inevitability considering how the gaming market works and technology becomes cheaper/simpler each year. In short, once again the analysts have me scratching my head. I have no idea where they come up with their predictions (or non-predictions based on poor assumptions, in this case). TheSource does a much better job than these clowns.

Yup. That basically says it all. The Source FTW!

Was there a single analyst that predicted the current success of the Wii when the product was announced?

DFC was pretty high on the Wii launch after E3 06'..

 

If I am considered an analyist, I had the Wii pegged at doing much better than anyone thought (about twice that of WM, DFC, Famitsu, ect), and about 60% of what most analyists thought PS3 would do.

There haven't been a whole lot of analyists to call the Wii past 30m mark until it launched. I cant think of any.

Same reactions as always from the same people (on all sides of the argument).

I expect John Lucas to come in next and call for the hanging of the DFC people because they are not predicting 200 million Wiis this gen.

Anyway, I've been saying all along that the race will be close and that the difference between the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place won't be like the previous 2 gens.

PS3 is not doomed, people are very short sighted. They predict doom and gloom for the PS3 because of the loss of a lot of 3rd party exclusives, but what people fail to consider is that the new big 3rd party exclusives of the generation will come further in. Games like GTA's success will come along on a certain console and define it (PS2 in N.A. was defined to a big extent by GTA's success).

Even barring any surprises whatsoever and no new big franchises starting this gen (really almost impossible, there will always be new big 3rd party games that will come out of nowhere to dominate) then the PS3 still isn't doomed because of 2 things: PS3 outselling 360 everywhere outside of America (right now it's close in Europe, but when there are actually a lot more games to get and a cheaper pricetag the PS3 will surpass it except in the UK) and Sony's first party. Sony is already rolling out a good number of brand new IPs that have potential, take that and couple it with the already established million sellers from Sony and you got yourself a very good amount of Sony only games that are going to sway people into buying a PS3.

ckmlb said: PS3 is not doomed, people are very short sighted. They predict doom and gloom for the PS3 and the loss of a lot of 3rd party exclusives, but what people fail to consider is that the new big 3rd party exclusives of the generation will come further in. Games like GTA's success will come along on a certain console and define it (PS2 in N.A. was defined to a big extent by GTA's success).

You're right ... the exclusive games that are going to 'win' this generation for a console are going to be the ones that are started after Holiday season 2007. What platform will a developer choose:

Wii: 20 Million user userbase, $5 to $20 million budget
XBox 360: 16  Million user userbase,  $20 to $40 Million budget
PS3: 7 Million user userbase, $20 to $40 Million budget

Publishers always take the safest route when publishing a game and Lower Budget + Larger Userbase makes the Wii the obvious choice.

ckmlb said: Same reactions as always from the same people (on all sides of the argument). I expect John Lucas to come in next and call for the hanging of the DFC people because they are not predicting 200 million Wiis this gen. Anyway, I've been saying all along that the race will be close and that the difference between the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place won't be like the previous 2 gens. PS3 is not doomed, people are very short sighted. They predict doom and gloom for the PS3 because of the loss of a lot of 3rd party exclusives, but what people fail to consider is that the new big 3rd party exclusives of the generation will come further in. Games like GTA's success will come along on a certain console and define it (PS2 in N.A. was defined to a big extent by GTA's success). Even barring any surprises whatsoever and no new big franchises starting this gen (really almost impossible, there will always be new big 3rd party games that will come out of nowhere to dominate) then the PS3 still isn't doomed because of 2 things: PS3 outselling 360 everywhere outside of America (right now it's close in Europe, but when there are actually a lot more games to get and a cheaper pricetag the PS3 will surpass it except in the UK) and Sony's first party. Sony is already rolling out a good number of brand new IPs that have potential, take that and couple it with the already established million sellers from Sony and you got yourself a very good amount of Sony only games that are going to sway people into buying a PS3.

 

I have never said the PS3 is doomed, but I do not see it reaching number 1 this gen. I could say the same thing about Nintendo. To each, their own.

 

As they should. The masses' opinion determines the market, after all.

That doesn't excuse their being wrong earlier (speaking generally; I don't know if these specific analysts were), but I'll take an analysis like this grounded in reality over someone like Pachter, who sticks to his guns that "PS3 will sell 120 million" despite all current evidence to the contrary.

I actually liked this article. It doesn't make a lot of bold predictions, so I don't know what good it is to the people who fund these guys (but then it seems to be written for the layman anyway), but everything it says is very sensible.

Something that seems to get overlooked a lot, though:


When those third-party products hit, it won't matter anymore if the launch excitement has cooled. They'll generate their own excitement. Once the Wii secured its developer support, it secured its future. I get the feeling these guys just felt they needed to cover all their bases by coming up with a way the Wii could fail.

Of course, this assumes that a lot of great third-party titles actually are on their way. We keep hearing about all the publishers flocking to support the Wii, but so far we've seen very little in terms of actual games to get excited about. I'm hoping some of this will start coming out at E3.

So when they announce Wii 2 at E3 is only 2 years away from release how are you going to classify that? Support for GameCube dried up pretty quick didn't it?