Spain, where the Wii failed?

[Diomedes1976]

The PS3 success in Spain is easily understatable .

-Brand name .The Playstation brand has its name fully intact .Even the PSP has rivalled the DS sales for most of their run (I think the PSP numbers for Spain in this site are quite way off but thats another thing ) .

-Quality .The PS3 and in general all the Sony products have a image of quality the toy-like Wii and defective 360 simply dont have .

-Online service .People here can spend a lot of money on a gift or a console given a time ,but they are a lot more hesitant to put themselves in a monthly fee to play online .We already pay monthly cell phone ,the loan of the house ,subscripstions to organisations ,food ,games ,parking ,taxes ...people have easier to think in a big spending and then enjoying your adquisition that a nearly as big investment and then having to pay monthly fees for a undeterminate amount of time .Plus many people like online gaming but still prefer playing phisically with friends multiplayer or solo adventure games .The PS3 service online is perfect for the tastes here .Want a game of Warhawk ,Call of Duty 4 ,Resistence ,Motorstorm ,GRAW2 ,Medal of Honor ,Rainbow Six Vegas or any sports game ?There you have it .But paying just for some improvements as the unified tag etc ?No way .

-Lineup .The people here likes a lot adventure games ,plattformers ,some RPG and FPS,fighting ,but specially racing and sports games .The PS3 has a lot of all of these .Sports games it has pretty much the same as the 360 ,and the one that looks worse on PS3 as Madden isnt a force here at all .That has hurt the PS3 in US thanks to some EA subports but not in Spain and Europe .The thing that could have hurt PS3 would be terrible versions of PES2008 and Fifa 08 but that hasnt happened .Fifa looks the same on PS3 (and with free online ) and PES2008 had some problems but it is already patched and the 360 version had problems of its own .Right now the PS3 has quite a balanced lineup with games as Ninja Gaiden ,Heavenly Sword ,Conan ,Assassins Creed ,Call of Duty 4 ,Uncharted ,Ratchet and Clank ,Warhawk ,PES 2008 ,Fifa 08 ,NBA 2K8 ,NHL ,Tiger Woods ,Virtua Fighter ,Virtua Tennis ,F1 ,Motorstorm ,Need for Speed Carbon and Underground ,The Darkness ,Lair ,Eye of Judgement ,Rainbow Six Vegas ,GRAW 2 ,Folklore etc etc ...theres just a lot of product in the shelves that people are interested in.Plus a lot of the casual games of the PS brand ,as Buzz ,Singstar and the Eye Toy games ,those are heavily associated with the PS brand and rightly so as they are first party games .

-Good marketing and publicity .Sony is making good efforts in the advertising .They started out bad with the This is Living nonsense but since september they are showing lots of games ingame in the TV and have a good advertising campaing going on .

-Lack of FUD against the machine .In the USA the machine is being attacked by thousands of fanboys in the blogs and forums .Microsoft has posted many doubts over the PS3 and continues with crap like "the PS3 doesnt have online service " and the media is happily in that bandwagon .In Japan and Europe this just dont happens .There are sure a lot of fanboys in the forums (although many less ) and some online publications are following the bandwagon of the US sites they take the info from .But all that is very minoritary and has a strong contestation from other users and sites .But for the main media the PS name isnt damaged at all ,and for the general public too .

-Price cuts ,the Starter Pack and the 40Gb machine have definitely approached the people to the price they are ready to pay for the machine .When it hits 250 or so it will be madness ,everyone will want one .If they introduce the 80Gb version at 499 and with two games in the Eu again they will sell even more than right now .Those 60Gb machines have literally fly off the shelves .

The Wii on the other hand is doing quite well ,it is doing good numbers and having great advertising .The advertising may look a bit disgusting for a hardcore gamer as it shows mostly old people playing the Wii ,Nicole Kidman playing the DS ,and Ipod like clean announces with people in very big apartments and modernly dressed moving the Wiimote around but you dont get to see the game more than 2-3 seconds .The only game that have had some ingame exposure in the TV is Mario Galaxy .The DS has had a lot of success between middle aged people due to BT in Spain but the bigger percentage is still children ...the children had the GBA and they have naturally evolved to the DS .And the Wii is benefiting from this and the Nintendo style because parents are buying the Wii in droves to the children just for this and maybe out of the curiosity to play themselves with the kids .All in all its doing great ,but it just lacks the oomph ,the lineup and the name to challenge the PS3 here .

THe 360 ,?It has a paid online service no one wants ,bad name ,crap manufacturing quality ,its made by Bill gates and most of its games are on the PS3 or PC and pirated by the people there or are FPS that people like but not 10 a year .No wonder it doesnt do too well here .