Lifespan of the Wii?

[Shane]

Losing exclusives is definitely bad for Sony, but here's the thing: those projects are still coming out for the PS3. Nintendo's always started off strong in marketshare, then faded. Let's see how fast they fade this time. They definitely will fade, but it's a matter of how much. Sony still needed to pay for exclusivity. We saw this with GTA. Nintendo got RE4 because they farmed Zelda GBA out to Capcom, which was a good move. Problem is you won't see Nintendo either paying for an exclusive or just simply taking on the marketing like Microsoft did for Gears of War. They just hope the developers will come to them with an offer. Nintendo hasn't challenged conventional wisdom. They've used the same wisdom they've used for years. Go with the slowest processor, and let Sega take a massive chunk of the marrket. Go with the best money making format, and let Sony take complete control of the market. This "It's about the games" BS isn't new, and it's very short-sighted. Whether it will work remains to be seen, but it's certainly not some genius innovative tactic that they haven't tried before. If Sony can reduce 25%, it would put them in the $600 range. They should hit that mark by fall. A price drop then would still be losing money, but it wouldn't be as substantial as what they were giving back at launch. Sony doesn't have any 20 million sellers, but they've got a bunch that can move systems. I'd take Gran Turismo over any other franchise from any other company any day. If Kingdom Hearts doesn't go to Sony, who would it go to? I think we all know the answer to that isn't Nintendo. Resistance and Motorstorm are both second party, though both the developers may as well become first party. Their first internal game will be released next week, their first major internal game is probably Warhawk with a September release, and their first established franchise game is probably going to be Getaway for the holidays. 4 months is not a lengthy period of time. Neither Sonic nor Tony Hawk put up solid numbers on either of the two consoles thus far, though it has been proved in the past that Sonic is the one franchise that can put up big numbers on Nintendo platforms. Sony doesn't just have FF and MGS. They have plenty of other franchises of varying sizes that Nintendo doesn't have and won't have (GTA anyone?). For Nintendo to really get aggressive third party support, they're going to need to have a sizeable lead on both their competitors in another 12-18 months. N64 had a similarly fast launch. Once people found out the major franchises, many of the same ones Sony's still got locked today, weren't going to be on a Nintendo platform, they bailed. PS3 is selling on brand alone. Their big games won't be out for months. The numbers have been examined in previous threads, and there are a lot of games where PS3 third party numbers are outperforming Wii ones. But the numbers are ultimately pretty close. The problem with this is that Nintendo has double the installed base. What happens when it's no longer double? What happens when Nintendo actually starts trying with its first party releases? There's no more evidence that Nintendo's sales will drop than that they will continue like this forever. What we do know is that there won't be a significant boost. It's a safe bet FF will not be a DS game. Exclusives that can sell and sell systems aren't meaningless. Exclusives like Cooking Mama are. Let's say Wii Sports moves 10 million units. That will put it right up there with Mario 64. The system that was on sold 33 million units, a figure which would be good enough for third. As I said, Nintendo needs more than just in house titles. What I learned from DS vs. PSP is that Nintendo's portable market dominance was the most important factor. Nintendo will no doubt continue to explore new ways to produce more units, but as you said, it will take many months for them to do so. In terms of second parties, Nintendo's lost a lot of them. Certainly the more noteworthy ones bailed during the Cube generation, finding new homes with Sony and Microsoft. The problem is the only multiplatform games Nintendo is encouraging are again not big names. They're not going to steal a DMC or a GTA like Microsoft did. System power prohibits it.