| davygee said: Publishers are jumping on the Wii bandwagon, although we have yet to see a good selection of 3rd party games appear for the Wii though. This will IMHO take another 6-12 months to happen. I honestly think that developers are caught in the middle. They want to take their games to the next level utilising the power of next generation gaming, but they cannot afford to take huge hits on unpopular games on small userbases. The Wii will allow them to create smaller last generation games and make a good profit on a continually growing userbase, but developers WILL need to make the jump to next gen at some stage as they will be left out again when this generation finishes and they haven't developed tools at a higher level. One thing you need to think about is this. Is the Wiiremote enough to keep a generation of gamers away from the PS3 and 360 entirely? I honestly think that most of the big publishers/developers are waiting to see what happens with the PS3 before they decide to leave it for dead, this is why 2008 primarily will be a decided year for the PS3. Also, why are developers making 360 and PS3 versions of games when the 360 has 3 times the user base at the moment? Because there is a loyalty and a knowledge that the PS3 won't die anytime soon! You mention unimpressive sales of the PS3...compared to what....the Wii. The PS3 has virtually sold the same number compared to the 360 in the same timeframe. Yes, compared to the 12m Wii consoles (7m more), it does look weak. Also by the time the PS3 has been on the market the 18 months, we could see as many as 12-15m PS3's worldwide, which is not a low number by normal sales. |
The PS3 is selling at a very similar rate to the XBox 360, XBox and Gamecube and is selling worldwide at approximately the rate the PS2 did in Japan; all else being equal this would mean that you would anticipate the PS3 selling less than 30 Million units worldwide after 5 years.
Certainly, developers will continue to produce games with higher graphical content and release them as multiplatform games across the PS3, XBox 360 and PC. The real problem for the HD consoles is the resource breakdown; if the Wii gets equal development resources it will receive 2 to 4 times as many games in the same timeframe and if the Wii outsells the XBox 360 and PS3 combined I would expect that it would have at least an equal distribution of resources as those two platforms.
What this means is (as an example) Square Enix will release Final Fantasy XIV as a PS3 and XBox 360 multiplatform game and the Wii will only receive Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest X and Crono Trigger.
