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illuminatus on 11 October 2008
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RolStoppable said:
illuminatus said:

The situation we have with Wii, 360 and PS3 is not comparable with any console generation before. Just because the console prices differed for such a long time by so much. That was never before the case. The Wii is not necessarily the winning system. It won saleswise the first two years but the customers of the Wii mostly are people who never ever bought a console before. This generation is not comparable to the ones before. Nobody can say how many Wiis will be sold in 2009 and 2010. I think Wii never again will sell as many units as it sold in the first 2 years.

We had this situation before. When the NES came to America, videogames were dead. Gaming was on home computers. Those were the real competition of the NES, not the Sega Master System which was launched as reaction to Nintendo's success because there was a market for videogames again.

The home computers were more expensive than the NES, offered more sophisticated games and hardcore gamers laughed at the NES. Sounds familiar? Despite analysts who kept saying every year that the NES had no future, Nintendo still came out on top and the home computers which were believed to be the future of gaming were made gone. This generation has many similarities with the NES era from 25 years ago.

And the Wii is the winning system, how could you argue otherwise? People who haven't bought consoles before don't count? Besides, the vast majority of Wii owners bought a console last generation, most of them a PS2. Obviously, because that was the marketleader of last gen.

When you compare the current consoles to the auto industry you could say that the Xbox360 is the Mercedes E-class and  the PS3 is the BMW 5er. But the Wii is not a Lexus...it is more like a Beach Buggy. The Wii the winning system? Against whom? There is no other Beach Buggy in the race. And it is not clear that the Wii has the most sales in 3 years from now just because it had the most sales until today. The 360 still has a chance to overtake the Wii.

(the situation around the NES was SO different. It is certainly not comparable to the situation today. Actually it is comparable to nothing else.)