The Price Cuts Might Not Have Any Effect on Wii as the various analysts have said they won't, but what about the games?
I agree with most of what I've read here in the articles about the Wii doing just fine in the future and not needing an immediate price cut in response to the Sony and 360 price cuts. However, I am wondering how the Wii will do in the future if games that are perceived to be of a higher quality by most consumers start to come out on PS3 and 360 at more rapid rates.
I don't believe any of three current gen consoles have had anything like the Christmas season of 2001 for PS2 which I believe virtually seales the deal for Sony in the last gen. Within a matter of weeks they had titles like Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, Jak and Daxter, Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, GTA IIII, Devil May Cry, and Ico released in 2001. These titles had good sales and almost all of them received 90+ review scores from critics as well. Both 360 and PS3 had a strong Christmas season in 2007, and even though the 360 had titles like Halo 3 and Mass Effect then, I still don't think those titles had the commercial appeal to all gamers that the Sony 2001 lineup had. Also, there have been certain moments when one game as big as the Christmas 2001 games came along such as GTA 4 and MGS4 in the summer of 2008, but in the case of GTA IV both games woulnd up cannibalizing the sales of the game on the other system, and in the case of both GTA IV and MGS 4 the one AAA game was followed up by a lengthy software drought on the console so that it couldn't capitalize on these big games.
Ninja Gaiden II, Too Human, and Tales of Vesperia didn't receive very high marks on 360 from reviewers and it wasn't until November when games like Gears 2 and Fable II came out allowing the 360 to have a pretty successful holiday season when combined with a 360 pricecut. Similarly, Sony didn't really have any games to capitalize on the success of MGS 4. There Christmas 2008 offerings included critically applauded games like Little Big Planet and Valkyria Chronicles but they were either new ips in genres that weren't so popular any more like Little Big Planet in the platform genre or Valkyria in a very niche genre the strategy rpg genre.
Killzone 2 for Sony earlier this year was another popular game for Sony that lacked any other game to come after it to bolster or capitalize its success. In Japan, during the same time however and during a software drought for Wii games like White Knight Chronicles, Resident Evil 5, and Yakuza 3 did give the PS3 at a higher price than its current one an advantage for a more than a couple of weeks over the Wii.
So, I don't expect the price cuts to really have an effect on the Wii, but what effect would better games on the other consoles have? Right now, the PS3 has at least two big games that seem to be coming close together in FFXIII and GT5. They are also supposed to have another FF on the way at some point, and what if they could add another big exclusive with appeal to a wider audience like Kingdom Hearts III to their upcoming roster?
