| Gamerace said: 'We can even discuss rivals' predictions to get my opinion on the matter for more debates.' Okay, let's discuss. This topic may seem hogwash to many, but I know it won't to JL. You've predicted Wii will sell at least 240m and upwards of 500m lifetime. I've countered that while Nintendo will succeed on making the video game industry to primetime, they'll never be able to meet the demand they've created (this is obvious now and has been since the beginning to anyone who's got real vision). I've predicted this will prompt another major player to jump in and capture a lot of the new market that Wii is leaving behind and Sony/MS will never be truly positioned to capture. Thoughts JL? |
Now that's a very good question.
There WILL be another competitor who steps into the arena. I see so strongly that one of our current competitors is gonna drop out of the gaming biz by the end of this generation.
Gaming is a costly business that no one has quite seemed to master other than Nintendo. Why naturally. They designed the engine in the first place since 1985.
Meeting ravenous demand is the best problem any company can have. People would KILL to have this problem. It means your product is on fire and is moving out of your hands like hot potatoes. It's the Michael Jackson's Thriller of game consoles. I lived through the Thriller era & am a big MJ fan so I know this phenomenon well.
Somebody (hopefully not the makers of the Vii) will step into this industry because of Nintendo putting it on another level. This has happened before when Nintendo hit it big with Famicom/NES. All of a sudden here comes NEC with the PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 and other competitors especially in the 4th/5th gen. My God! The bloat!
But I disagree that the new competitor will be able to steal Nintendo's thunder.
And it's gonna take a giant to do it. Think about it. With all the console/handheld failures from companies all over the 3rd, 4th, & 5th gen, it took giants like Sony and Microsoft to enter and sustain in this business. And STILL they haven't mastered the profit model Nintendo has. Sony has invested 13 going on 14 years in this business and they still haven't mastered how retain revenue into profit like Nintendo has. I always call them companies on green roids. Cash is their performance enhancing drug. Without all that big megabuck cash from companies with alternate business to draw from interally they may not have been successful at this. Microsoft would have died if they weren't Microsoft with that embarrassing $4 billion loss on the old XBox. And they STILL haven't quite recovered a far I know. But they can get away with it being so rich and so entrenched as a virtual computer world monopoly. Sony's gonna pay playing the chicken game with Microsoft. I really see MS putting on the pressure next year to run Sony out of the biz with hardball tactics. They are gonna flex that money power bigger than ever before in the years to come.
See Nintendo's handheld line to understand the difficulty in penetrating what Nintendo can produce. PSP is the best YET. Very admirable that it could stand up to Nintendo's handheld empire but even IT is not selling as many games and I don't know if the system is profitable for them yet. They certainly did not succeed in uprooting Nintendo from its handheld stronghold. I think the PSP lit a fire under Nintendo honestly that resulted in this WiiDS Phenomenon we're seeing now. They saw Sony trying to rub them entirely out of the business and they said "Oh HELL Naw!"
The only real reason Nintendo ever lost console dominance is because they pissed off the 3rd party. And the 3rd party united behind Sony. 3rd party made Sony. I'll say this to the end of my days. 3rd party made Sony and Sony was smart enough and resourceful enough to capitalize on it. This is why 3rd party flaking out on Sony is dangerous. They built their empire around mercenaries. Hahahaha!
Because the business is such that it is hard to make a profit from, hard to sustain R&D costs and ability to wow audiences, hard to balance business acumen with artistic brilliance, it discourages many companies from trying. Look on Wikipedia or any game history website to see all the comers who failed to make a dent in this industry. Cereal companies, toy companies, computer companies, software companies, tech companies, media companies. All kinds trying to step in this business only to leave with tail tucked between their legs.
Consoles only survive because of Nintendo. Without their input this is really an obsolete platform. It would have died out in the 1980s. Gaming "appliances" were designed by Ralph Baer in the 1960s/1970s because tech at that time was at a much different place in people's lives back then. TV & radio was about as far as it went. Personal tech just wasn't as integrated into people's lives back then. Things were woodgrained to match the furniture. They were given radio knobs so people could feel more at ease touching it. You always have to go back to 1972 & understand that time period. Computers were mainframes at universities and special secret hidden governmental things. People still did data the old fashioned way back then on files and cards. As personal computers took hold with the Apple II slowly consoles would lose their relevance because you do all that on a computer and more. This is part of why the Crash of 1983 happened. And no company worldwide dared to step into this thing. Toys R Us of all places didn't even feel like stocking game systems. It was retailer doom and no one in Europe, USA, nowhere was willing to fill the void. They wrote this industry off. It was a dead duck. All except this upstart Japanese company called Nintendo. They restarted this engine and redesigned it in the process. I don't think people understand the significance of that time period and Nintendo's place then and now. It's because they don't understand 1972 on a broader scale. Nintendo worked with Ralph Baer's Odyssey as a distributor in the mid 70s. This inspired them to extend their newly built toy division into videogames.
Because of these origins they understand the truest core of the business. They are at heart a fun company. It started with playing cards made some missteps into "love hotels" (more fun) & such then moved into another fun pastime called toys. From here games came to the fore. They have a special knowledge about this industry. Yamauchi didn't even play games but he understood this industry because of its roots as a company built on fun leisurely entertainment. Tech is a means to an end not the purpose. This is what the other companies don't understand. They focus on the tech more than the fun experience. Fundemental mistake that I see everytime. Tech is the tool to produce fun things. It's the servant not the master. This is why their games are always so top-notch. This is why they could take a chance making something like DS & Wii.
Sega understood this too being a company that sprang from pinball machines in WW2 to entertain American troops stationed there in Japan. But their business acumen was weak which is why eventually they succumbed in the hardware market. Notice how none of the 3rd parties want to start their own console? Square-Enix certainly has a fanbase as does Capcom. Why not EA? It's because they know they couldn't make it as both a software producer AND a hardware producer simultaneously. Sega & Nintendo did this. Atari did this. And did it well. Sony makes hardware but does not understand fully how hardware must stay dynamic. They are approaching it from a general electronics perspective which is their core business and origin. They are approaching it like a VCR or DVD player. A Playstation. An all-purpose "GME" player. Microsoft approaches it from the network/operating system computer mindset. Who was the first to put a hard drive in a gaming console? You really can't change much from your DNA and this is why a company from the outside trying to make it will have difficulty.
Apple tried before with Pippin. I don't think they understand gaming even if they understand sleek machines to play them on. Europe I see would be the next candidate being that that region is so overlooked with releases but PC is strong there. They have to think like Nintendo to offset PC. If they make their system too close to PC they will doom themselves. Gizmondo & N-Gage prove that they don't quite understand the totality of hardware & software simultaneously. Europe barely tried to get into consoles back in the day and with how the industry has grown now I doubt they would try today but that's one place I see a competitor coming from.
It's gonna take big pockets. Could GE or Wal-Mart or even Kroger get into the act? And if they do do they understand how to make both compelling software AND compelling hardware that entices one to play the software? AND can they sustain over multiple generations as a producer? Will commercial interests conflict? Will they understand the delicate balance on the business side of gaming?
Even IF someone pops up as a competitor to this Wii thing I don't think they can touch what Wii's doing. And certainly not enough to make sales formidable enough to be taken seriously. Microsoft as far I can see can come the closest with this Microsoft touch table thing they came up with but neither they nor Sony has become a true 1st party producer of excellence yet. Sony's improving certainly but all the fancy tech in the world will fall apart if the games aren't compelling from in-house. Else you're stuck with the 3rd party as your foundation. And those guys are mercs who are loyal to the highest bidder.
There will most certainly people bringing red blood into the blue ocean but I don't think it will be enough to touch what Nintendo's doing. As far as I'm concerned its impct will match that of a Vii. Some minor sales but only seen as a knockoff. Never a true competitor.
John Lucas
Words from the Official VGChartz Idiot
WE ARE THE NATION...OF DOMINATION!
