| psrock said: I agree with Matt but more so in the hardware part, the software is fine since it's Nintendo games. But there is no excuse with the shortcut Nintendo took with the Wii, this company is loaded with money and has always been toe to toe with other console, it's a shame they gave us such an underpowered hardware this Gen. I don't see the problem with the games though, they took a lot chances with Wiifit and other games no one expected to have such epic success, but they really could have spent some money on the hardware side. |
Sony and MS can both afford to loss lead and are willing to take a risk for domination in the home entertainment space. Sony in particular is comfortable with this strategy because it's worked for them twice before and they and everyone else expected them to dominate again this generation. When you 'know' you are going to dominate loss leading turns from being very risky to a viable strategy for a big company.
Nintendo on the other hand doesn't have an end-game in the videogame market, videogames is all they have so they have to try to make profit as they go which makes a strategy like loss leading a no-win for them. If they had created a highly expensive console this generation, sold it at a loss and then didn't become the dominant console that would have been very bad news for Nintendo. Gaming is their only business, they have nothing else to fall back on so if this strategy didn't pay off for them they stand to lose much more.
Now let's say Nintendo pushed a little harder in the hardware department (than they did with the Wii) and created a piece of hardware that broke even from the outset or only incurred minimal loss per sale. The console would still have been underpowered compared to the competition and what's more it would look like or it would certainly be portrayed as a failure on Nintendo's part to compete with Sony and MS's technical muscle. The console still would have been marginalised for what? Perhaps a two fold improvement in performance? It still would have made 720p a dicey prospect unless the graphics were fairly simple and it still wouldn't necessarily have facilitated cross format development.
So Nintendo went with a relatively low powered console that provided good graphical output for 480p that lowered development costs, obviously took them out of the 'arms race' but allowed developers to take chances with the new controls without the risk of blowing a 20 million dollar budget for a game idea or concept that may or may not have worked with the Wii-mote.
You don't have to agree with the direction they took but it makes alot of sense. The concept of the Wii as an experiment was all or nothing. Nintendo made several decisions that went against the grain and if it failed they probably weren't going to be much worse off than last gen but if it succeeded they had the opportunity to do very well. Changing any of the factors in the equation, such as hardware power, would have served to increase the risk and reduce the potential reward.
