( PCWorld ) Why The Wii Needs an HD Visual Upgrade

[Ail]

LordTheNightKnight said:
"The idea is that the narrow demographics are easily targetted, because they've already "raised their hand" as being in that demographic -- by buying a HD console. Thus, they are much more easily targetted. Since the HD marketshare is greater than 50%, and porting from HD-to-HD (since they are largely similar in specs) is cheap, the HDs make for a much more lucrative target platform... for "hardcore" games. The devcost is more for HD games... but that's easily outweighed by the actual market size differences.

it just so happens that said "narrow fanbase" tends much more towards the HD consoles than the Wii. Its just simple mathematics -- the crowd isn't there on the Wii, because much of the demographic just isn't interested those kinds of games. This is pretty obvious from the last 3 years of attempts to bring "hardcore" gaming to the Wii.

There's nothing Reggie, or anyone else, can do to change this. If Nintendo wanted "all the oceans", they should have made a console that appeals to the hardcore gaming crowd as much as the HDs (requiring a loss on HW, likely). They chose the blue ocean only, and this is the drawback.

Oh well. They are still rolling in cash. I don't know how a console maker who has "fallen" to "only" having like 40% marketshare sold each week can really complain."

Porting is not cheap. It's just that they don't have to adjust as much. And the market being for that means more competition. Not seeing the flaw in that is how Sony, Microsoft, and many of the third parties lost money. Narrow demographics are BAD for business, because it creates a smaller pool.

Reggie can't change that. Third parties need to change it.

Why ?

To make Nintendo happy ?

What's in it for them ?

 

The big problem is that making this new customer base aware of your product when you are not Nintendo is not cheap. Not at all..

In most cases it actually costs more to raise awareness for the product than to develop the product itself....