Could the Wii remain dominant another five years?

[Resident_Hazard]

patjuan32 said:

Resident_Hazard said:

A third party can build a game for the Xbox360 and port it to the PS (and/or PC) for relatively little cost.  Much cheaper than building said game from scratch to run on the Wii.  The other two are not a "technology race" anymore--nobody cares about the minor differences in architecture of those systems.  They're comparable, and making games multiplatform for those two isn't that hard.  Look at Final Fantasy XIII--the change to put it on both the Xbox360 and PS3 really did not lengthen development time, and no doubt, was financially smart for Square-Enix.  You act like the X360 and PS3 aren't successful.  The X360 is more successful than the original Xbox by a long shot, and the PS3 is a far cry from the GameCube's dismal 3rd place status.  Both companies (MS, Sony) are making tons of money now, and third party companies generally have quite a bit of success there.  This may have changed, but for the bulk of this generation, the X360 had the highest attach rate of any (current gen) system.

I did not "miss" the fact that Nintendo is enjoying its best software sales ever, you just chose to assume that in attempt to one-up me.  Everyone knows the Wii is the most successful Nintendo console ever, and from that, Nintendo's software is selling way better than ever.  That's just numbers.  More available consumers means higher available sales. 

Yes, the Wii is "still" selling well--especially compared to the GameCube at this time.  But it's sales are down year over year while Sony's and Microsoft's are roughly the same if not better--even before the new X360.  Besides that, how many of us still play the Wii and enjoy the motion control, and how many feel that it's grown to be gimmicky? 

I sincerely hope that Nintendo doesn't just kill off the Wii because if they do, they're going to piss off consumers and developers alike.  But the successor will likely be revealed at next year's E3.  It's their current pattern, and it's logical.  It will happen.  Nintendo's trend the last two generations has been to announce and launch a new portable system, then a year later, follow with a new home console.  This will be no different.

EDIT:  Shit, I can't believe I overlooked this:  By your logic, Nintendo wouldn't be "stupid enough" to put out a successor to the DS line at this point, because the DS is still the top selling system in the world.  Releasing successors while the previous system still has some strength in it, and while it's still in the public mindset is a smart way to maintain popularity and interest.  It actually makes more sense to replace the Wii right now over the DS, if all you're going by is hardware and software popularity--the DS still easily tops the Wii in both. 

You are mistaken, A third party can not develop a game for the Xbox 360 and port it with little cost to the PS3 nor can it do the same for the PC. The architecture of all three machines are different. That means it requires resources to port a game from one system to another. It's not as simple as you seem to think nor is the cost minimal. Also the Xbox 360 and the Wii have a similar architecture, The Power PC and their GPUs are built by AMD. The Wii development kit is very cheap and building a game for the system is very easy and cheap. If it were not so do you think that all of these no name companies would be developing games for the Wii? A lot of them are considered shovelware by us but others tend to enjoy them.

Final Fantasy XIII had been in development for what? About four or five years before they announced it was going to be ported. No one knows when they started porting the game . Unless you work for Square Enix, I doubt you know.

You state that the Wii is down year over year but it was only 200k the last time I checked and that is easily rectified. The Xbox 360 is enjoying great sales due to a new slim model being released and a clearence on the old model that is being replaced. The PS3 had a new model released last year and was above the Wii and the Xbox 360 but sales returned to normal when the effect wore off. Also if you look at the Xbox 360 sales. You'd see that no old software is popping back into the top twenty in software sales. This indicates that old users are Upgrading their consoles.

""Nintendo's trend the last two generations has been to announce and launch a new portable system, then a year later, follow with a new home console.  This will be no different.""

That statement is conjecture and is false. The Gamecube was five years old when Nintendo pull the plug on that system While the GBA was only four year old. The DS is around six years  now while the Wii is only approaching it's fourth birthday. Nintendo will not kill the Wii for the sake of a hardware race with Sony and Microsoft. If they wanted to do that then they could have made an HD system instead of the Wii. Furthermore the Gamecube was in third place last gen. Yet Nintendo did not pull the plug on that system until after the five year cycle was up.

As I stated previously, The DS is appoaching it's 6th birthday and Nintendo has new technology to replace the system. Sony should have replaced the PS2 early in it's life span, using your logic, because it was inferior to the Xbox and Gamecube. They should have also replaced the PSX early in it's life span because it was severly underpowered when compared to the N64. But they did not, proving that your logic is flawed.

Nintendo will not kill the using your logic. There is still money to be made off the software and the hardware. All Nintendo has to do is release more games. The sales of the rise and fall depening on the amount of software that they release for the Wii. They also have a blue print to follow which was developed by Sony. I think they'll do that it's more beneficial in the long run. Besides Microsoft and Sony are not going to launch a new console any time soon.

 

Ughhh, this is turning into one of those internet nuances where logic is pummelled and abused the way religion treats science.  And you're making very incorrect assumptions.

For one thing, my "logic" doesn't automatically assume the PS2 should've been replaced early in it's lifecycle to compete with the GameCube and Xbox--for one major reason (that isn't sales), the PS2 was technically still in the same generation as the GC and XB.  Most games at the time were made on the PS2 and then ported to the "bigger brothers" because A) the PS2 had higher sales so it made sense to optimize for the PS2 and B) it's cheaper and easier to port a game from a weaker system to a more powerful one.  Everything the PS2 could do, the GC and XB could do.  The same wasn't necessarily true the other way around.  The Wii is easily a generation behind--and everyone knows that.  It's as if the PS2 was running on N64-era hardware.  The Playstation was also not under-powered compared to the N64.  Looking back, many PS1 games made the N64 look like the weaker system thanks to those stupid cartridges and the N64's pathetic textures.

You seem to be assuming that porting from the Xbox360 to the Wii is somehow cheaper and easier than porting from the Xbox360 to the PS3.  Which is just absurd.  For one thing, the Wii cannot even handle many of the new game engines such as that in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or the Unreal 3 engine. 

Here's what happens when porting from Xbox360 to PS3:
--Programmers rework the game for the different system architecture.
--Graphics may be upgraded slightly if time and money permits--if it's even worth doing.

Here's what happens when porting from Xbox360 to Wii:
--Brand new engine must typically be used.
--Polygon counts must be dropped drastically across every facet of the game.
--Texture quality must be reduced so the Wii can handle it--if it's HD, it won't work.
--Some more detailed animation sequences will likely have to be redone as poly counts change.
--Depending on the physics engine of the game, that may need to be redone.
--Lighting will likely need to be changed.
--Smaller, specific things such as bump mapping and the like will not just transfer over from HD to Wii.

Just because the Xbox360 and Wii may have similar basic architecture, that doesn't automatically make porting shit to the Wii suddenly an easy task.  Remember, the Wii is roughly the same power as the original Xbox, and it's not even remotely close to the Xbox360.  If porting from HD to Wii was so easy, Activision wouldn't have handed the development of the Wii versions of Call of Duty to different development teams.  If it was so cheap and easy, development of the Wii version would've been done by the same team that made the HD versions.  For that matter, if porting from X360 to Wii was easy, then the Wii version of Dead Rising would've been more like the X360 version than the piece of crap the Wii ended up with.

...

Okay then. 

Old software suddenly "not showing up in sales charts" is not proof that most new Xbox360 sales are going to users simply upgrading.  Older games, for one thing, are not typically in constant production throughout the lifespan of a console.  They are not still making Fable II, for instance. 

I was mistaken in one thing, however, and that is that I was a year off in thinking of the launch of the DS.  I was thinking 2005, not 2004.  Still, Nintendo did not just kill off the GBA because the DS was out--it was still fairly heavily supported for another year all-around.  Nintendo did axe the GameCube in 2006 when the Wii launched, which was pretty foolish--but then, there was almost no support on the thing, and the fact that the Wii was barely any different meant that many GC games could just easily be dropped onto the Wii.

Nintendo is also not going to follow Sony's blueprint for console/system development and sales.  They didn't the last two generations, why would they do it all of a sudden now?  Essentially, you're not using logic.  You're making really loose assumptions like equating the PS2 to the Wii in their respective generations, which is grossly innacurate.  The Playstation & N64, and the PS2 and GC/Xbox were in similar leagues with one another.  The Wii is at least a league behind the Xbox360.