| Mazty said:
You still aren't getting it and clearly no one else is. By buying the wii, these people have shown they don't care about hardware whatsoever. What does a next gen console do? Improve hardware. How can Nintendo sell a console to these people who don't want better graphics or better controls? Unless they delve into VR, the Wii market is just that, a market for the Wii and nothing more. |
No, I think you clearly did not understand my point. Consumers are not super rational beings who hold the exact same values for long periods of times. Looking outside of the videogame market, the early iPods faced competition from multi-media players (devices that played videos and not just music) and PDAs (which provided videos, applications and MP3s) and people saw no value in these features; when Apple started providing multimedia functionality with the iPod, and then incorporated PDA functionality with the iPod Touch/iPhone, suddenly these features became massively important to the public. Part of the reason for the change in opinions is in how Apple delivered these features, another part is that people’s exposure to an earlier iPod demonstrated the value of these features, and part of it is just that the timing of Apple’s focus on these features was better for external reasons.
Using higher resolution screen output to enable 6 player split-screen Mario-Kart may be a more meaningful way of showing the importance of higher resolution output than better looking games in a single-player or online videogame for many customers; for some social gamers this could be the killer feature to sell a console and, while it would be possible on the PS3 or XBox 360, Sony and Microsoft (for the most part) have not seen value in offering games with more than 2 player split-screen. Gamers may not care about shiny and bumpy space-marine armour at high resolutions, but they might see value in high resolution output.
On top of this, we’re now in the middle of 2010 and only about half of all households have HDTVs. The value of pushing HD graphics to an individual who doesn’t own a HDTV, doesn’t have a high quality source of HD signals yet (no HD Cable or Blu-Ray player), or has not become accustomed to HD visuals is fairly minimal. From what I have seen of most of my friends, it usually takes at least 18 months of steady exposure to HD video before they become HD snobs; and if HD growth continues at its steady pace, a large portion (potentially most) consumers in the next generation will demand better visuals.
Finally there is the exposure factor. Many people probably own a Wii, enjoy playing it, and still look at the visuals from HD console games with envy. While they might not be willing to spend $300 on a HD console set-up to get these visuals when they have a Wii and it suits their current gaming needs, a new generation of consoles might be the reason they need to upgrade to more advanced visuals; especially if it comes with other enhancements.
Basically, your argument could have been used to claim that there was no reason for people to upgrade from a NES to a SNES, Gameboy to a GBA, GBA to a Nintendo DS, Playstation to a PS2, or PS2 to a PS3 because people demonstrated their lack of interest in graphics by buying these systems rather than their more advanced competition.
