I post this every week, but Nintendo is ridiculous. Good for them. I still think it's bad for gaming in the long run, in terms of the hardcore. I thought so before I had one, and then I won one, and now I am sure it's bad for the hardcore. But sales numbers for the Halos and Metal Gears and Fables and Gears of Wars and the like help counteract it. There will always be big hardcore games. But I fear we are going to get fewer and fewer titles to compete against those big games - less new IP in the future that isn't casual. We shall see.
I find it hard to believe as well that PS3 isn't in some serious trouble over the next 6 months. If those PS2 numbers are right, 360 is nearly outselling PS3 and PS2 combined in North America. And Wii is outselling all three combined, almost. Sony's got problems until they can get that price down. And even if they do, it's hard to get big gains in marketshare a couple years into the cycle.
Just as Wii's are selling because people see them everywhere at friends' houses, the same is true for 360. Don't underestimate the lure of people buying what your friends have in America. If people want the social experience of Live or PSN, they are going to often buy what their friends have. I've seen that happen first hand several times. I have 20 or so real world friends on my Live list, but only 2 on PSN. In the past year at least 4 of them bought 360 over PS3 just so they'd have more people to play with.
If 360 outsells PS3 worldwide by even a million more in Q3/Q4, I think PS3 will never catch up. And if I am not mistaken we are at nearly 300k already.
Surprising stuff. I really didn't think 360 was going to put up this kind of fight. Lots of people said that PS3 had a clearly better catalog of games coming this year, and it really didn't turn out that way with Fable and Gears delivering big, and Fallout 3 running better on 360 and the like. On the flipside, Resistance and Little Big Planet don't look like they are catching fire the way we might have thought, though each are selling quite well. Even MGS4 didn't have any legs.
Curiouser and curiouser with each passing week.
Can't we all just get along and play our games in peace?
