Lifespan of the Wii?

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Shane said:
Nintendo's gonna have 3 million units per month for three months? One month maybe (globally). The people calling for this insane production boost must know something Nintendo's not revealing to the rest of us. Some projects can be cancelled, but it would be silly to pull the plug on anything that's already cost 8 figures. Makes much more sense to port it to 360 or better yet go to Sony and beg for money. PS2 had 414 third party games at the end of 2002, but it's not really a fair comparison because it had been out for an extra year. Better would be Microsoft with 176. Nintendo's previous system had a 12% market share. It'll take more than just being better than that. PS1 did not have the PlayStation brand or the 12 years of building developer relations that goes along with it. Also, back then, Sony was not a strong publisher, and its internal efforts had been jokes consisting primarily of its own crappy licenses. Sony's not the new kid on the block any more. They know the industry, and the industry knows them. I do think they're too arrogant for their own good, but that doesn't negate the good things that they have going. Let's see Nintendo try to sell a $600 system and see how far they get. You can only get so far on the basis of one company. We saw that with N64 and Gamecube. At least on N64 they had Rare, but now they don't even have that. Third parties are needed to win. They need to start embracing them and stop doing everything based on their own needs. That's what got them in trouble in the first place. I want to see a company willing to spend. That to me says they're serious. Aggressive marketing, losses on hardware, shopping for exclusives, online gaming, whatever it takes. It can be argued this isn't the smartest move, and perhaps Nintendo's too small to do it, so cutting corners was probably their best strategy. We saw Microsoft reduce about 25% months ago, and they're just above the 10 million mark. Sony's halfway to that point and has a lot more room to reduce. The difference between N64 and now is that N64 lost all its exclusives before it even had a chance to get them. Microsoft may not have wanted shorter lifecycles perse, but their goal of launching earlier than the competition resulted in it. PS3 already has third party support. It doesn't need to get it. Obviously, going forward, we are talking about something different, but there are enough major projects already in the works that developers will be looking at sales of those to determine where to go next. Sony doesn't even have any first party games out yet. They never feel the need to launch with a killer app. If they did, we'd have seen God of War II on PS3, where it probably should have been. Bingo. Once Nintendo's quick start disappeared combined with lackluster third party sales, support dried up. The exclusives are meaningless, though. Well, maybe not quite meaningless, but largely pretty close to it. Mario, Pokemon, SSB, etc. are all excellent exclusives to have, but as far as third parties, the list ranges from "Who cares?" to "Okay, maybe even pretty good," with an emphasis on "Who cares?" Their biggest exclusives are spinoffs that we already know won't sell as well as the main franchises (we saw this with both FF and RE already) that are going to be on other systems. Making a profit over the long term at the expense of short term losses is how the industry works. Nintendo can have a profit annually (primarily from its portable sales but whatever), but the others are willing to be more aggressive.

What? Nintedo will ramp up production as long as they have to. Even if this would mean 10M per month for next ten years. But it's not a quick thing to do. Porting to 360 plays to M$:s pocket, you don't have any reason to buy more expensive console, when cheaper console has same games. Not a fair comparision? If we are looking at the competition that GC was facing. Any other way to look at it would be unfare or at least unrealistic. People are interested in a console, which has a lot of games and there were lots of cheap games available already when GC and Xbox was released. This is the reason why manufacturers want headstart from its competitors. It really didn't matter that what GC had, the thing that did matter was what PS2 had. GC 3rd party support dried because 3rd party on PS2 sold better. It's as easy as that. Of course Nintendos strong first party is bad for 3rd parties. But still, with same advantage in sales for GC, what PS2 had, would have given enough room for 3rd party to make better money with Cube, than with PS2. And you do wonder why Nintendo isn't selling a system as expensive as PS3? Well, look at the sales figures. Sony doesn't have air to drop the PS3:s price, but they have to. Nintendo have much more air to do that, but they don't need to. Also M$ has more air to drop price than Sony has. Thinking of aggressive approach, Nintendo has it if we compare to its competitors. Just look how different it is. I don't know what the marketing will eventually be, because so far Wii haven't had a real need to market it. Spending more money than you could afford, is not very clever. Bankrupts don't benefit anyone. You are not familiar with the thinking that Iwata brought with him to Nintendo. They are using a lot of 2nd party for their own franchises. This was seen on GC, but it did lack from 3rd party support. There are two types 3rd party games that are important: exclusives and multiplatform. Exclusives give you a benefit over competitors and multiplatform doesn't give that benefit to competitors. It's big if you get competitors exclusive go multiplatform. If exclusives don't matter, then what does? Multiplatform games benefit Wii the most, because it's cheapest. No reason to buy more expensive console for same games. So competitors need exclusives. So does Wii. It doesn't matter whether exclusives are 1st or 3rd party as long as they are exclusives. Nintendo is putting a lot of effort to 3rd party at the moment, and it is working, at least if you look at the titles announced. In fact, Miyamoto is in charge of helping 3rd parties in their games, and if you know who Miyamoto is, thats much bigger investment to 3rd parties, than M$ or Sony could invest. M$ is in about 10M, Sony 3M. 360:s lead is about the same today, that what it was when PS3 was released. But Nintendo is in about 6M, and catching M$. By the end of 2007, Wii should pass 360, and PS3 still 6M behind. Only this time it's 6M behind two of its competitors and the other is making more gap.