Lifespan of the Wii?

[Erik Aston]

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.

NO. Nintendo has always started strong in ONE MARKET, NA. They've been WEAK in Europe forever, and in Japan for 10 years.

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.

What good is it doing MS? They've got another exclusive killer app now. Just one, from several titles they've pimped. And those are second party relationships. Driving install base quickly, and keeping dev costs low, will ultimately result in Nintendo garnering far more support than even Microsoft could ever pay for.

And what good did it do Nintendo in the GC-era? Did they get ANY exclusive killer apps from third parties? No, they all left for the install base.

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.

Nintendo hasn't challenged the conventional wisdom with Wii? Good luck arguing that. I suggest you read Sean Malstrom's series of articles over at theWiikly.com, as well as the "Ask Iwata" interviews, at the Nintendo site.

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.

GT is their ace, no doubt.

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.

Hahahaha. Why not?

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.

Second-party games are first party published, which is all that's worth discussing. They are games Sony paid to make and is publishing.

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.

I agree.

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.

No. Once PS1 started building up a massive catalog, and a bunch of hype gathered around NEW franchises, people went to Sony. And Wii is crushing N64s launch outside of NA. I'll let you look up the numbers yourself.

PS3 is selling on brand alone. Their big games won't be out for months.

Evidence that brand doesn't matter very much; PS3 isn't selling well. 50% of initial sales goal, anyone?

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?

No. The numbers have been spun to appear close. The one area that is close is multi-platform titles, though that comparison did not include Tiger Woods and Rayman. Nintendo leads in exclusives, soon in multi-plats, and leads overall by a wide margin. And what do you mean "when Nintendo starts trying?" If they aren't trying now, Sony should be shaking in their boots.

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.

Of course there will be a significant boost. They're selling out right now, and increasing production. So we know for sure sales will get even better.

Exclusives that can sell and sell systems aren't meaningless. Exclusives like Cooking Mama are.

Cooking Mama can sell systems. Can't sell systems to young men, no. The original on DS has done 267K in NA through Feb. The new one will build on that. I for one am not going to be surprised when that TYPE of game is regularly producing million sellers on Wii in a few years.

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.

Wii Sports is a title more on a level with Pong, Super Mario Bros and Tetris. Except its the first such game which is taking off in all three major regions right away. Just wait and see.

What I learned from DS vs. PSP is that Nintendo's portable market dominance was the most important factor.

You continue to make the common mistake of putting faith in the company instead of the business plan. There is no such thing as a "good company," only good business plans. We can see with Sony's current slide that brand doesn't get you past launch.

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.

Nintendo planned for that. When they tried to compete for games like that with GC, they failed. Now they've decided to let the others duke it out for market share of power-hungry games that repeatedly hit the same audience, while they get the entirity of several other, untapped audiences. And its highly likely that a game like Cooking Mama for Wii will be far more profitable than a game like the PS3 version of DMC.

They did get a big steal in Guitar Hero, which may sell better to Ninty's "casual audience." And they nailed the Sims exclusively. Check the top 3 Sims games on PS2, and you'll find they slightly outsold the DMC PS2 trilogy. And those were PC ports, not ground up console builds like the new game.