Wii below 60% market share in Japan, where will it finish?

[trestres]

jarrod said:

trestres said:

jarrod said:

trestres said:

PS3 is down 34k Yoy
Wii is down 175k YoY

Wii was selling at the 35 - 30k level until the end of March, it will now be lucky to sell above the 10k level for the entire Month of March.

PS3 will also be losing sales YoY, but not as many since it's soon getting some big games. In March alone it's getting Way of the Samurai 4, Dynasty Warriors 6, Yakuza: Of the End, Pro Baseball Spirits 2011 and Dynasty Warriors Troy. As well as a handfull of smaller to medium games. Wii is only getting 2 games that will be lucky to sell 20k LT. I'd say that Wii is in a very tough position as 3rd parties are not developing for it anymore. PS3 still has after this March many big games coming up like a new Metal Gear, 3 Final Fantasies (FFXIII-2, FFvsXIII, FFXIV), a new DMC, Ni No Kuni, new iterations of Powerful Pro Baseball and Winning Eleven, a new Tales of game, a new Tekken game, 2 Street Fighter vs Tekken games, a new Ace Combat, Dark Souls, Ni-Oh, a new Armored Core game, The Last Guardian, etc.

Wii only has DQX, Inazuma Eleven, Zelda, Rythm Heaven and Kirby as big games.

I'm sure both machines will also get new price cuts, bundles and colors.

But looking at the above, since Wii is getting an average of 2 new games/month and the announcements are running out, I can only see the Wii dropping more than 50% YoY. PS3 will probably be down as well, but about 10% or so. This is the Wii's last year in Japan as a meaningful console. There simply aren't anymore games coming out and devs are not announcing games anymore either since late 2009.

I get the feeling NGP is going to decimate PS3 in Japan.  I mean, it basically makes PS3 wholly unnecessary from a Japanese perspective given it does about everything PS3 does but in handheld form, and that feeling will only intensify if it gets much of the same games.  Next year PS3 will likely see Wii-like declines, the year after it'll have negligible sales (and probably a successor looming).

Also, I'd say the vast majority of the games you listed don't qualify as "big" (and some, like another Powapuro, don't even exist yet).  A good threshold for that would be 500k, and as far as that we've got...

PlayStation 3

 

• Final Fantasy XIII-2 (likely 1m plus)
• Final Fantasy Versus XIII (likely 1m plus, 2012 or later)
• Yakuza: Of the End
• Metal Gear Solid Rising (2012)
• Ninokuni: The Queen of Sacred White Ash (maybe)
• Tales of Xillia (maybe)

Wii

 

• Dragon Quest X (likely 3m plus, possibly 2012)
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
• Rhythm Heaven Wii
• Kirby Wii
• Just Dance 2 (maybe)
• Inazuma Eleven Strikers (maybe)

...to be honest, right now it looks like the vast majority of Japan's future 500k plus sellers are headed to 3DS and (maybe) NGP.

Be honest, you know you are trying to make the Wii look good when there's no way to achieve that. Just Dance 2 will not sell 500k. If it does I'll stop predicting the Japanese market. Inazuma eleven won't either, I'm 100% sure. But why set the bar at 500k anyways? Those I've listed will sell 150k . Which is enough to give the console a boost or maintain its relevance.

For example you are leaving aside games like Winning Eleven 2012 or Dynasty Warriors 6 which will sell more than 400k. Also it's quite obvious that Konami is going to release Powerful Pro Baseball on the PS3 this year when you look at the sales of last year's iteration and that's the only game I've listed that hasn't been officially announced yet, don't know which other games you speak about.

I was mainly speaking about the home console situation, portables are another story. Yes, they steal games and sales, but we are debating here whether or not Wii will lose market share based on what we know of each home console's upcoming plans and games. And Wii never went sub 15k during any year before October. Lowest sales have been 10,797 on October 2010 and right now at the beginning of March Wii sales are at 11k. This year support is even more terrible than last year and if sales are this bad so soon, we can only expect bad things. Sub-10k for sure before the second half of the year.

I'm just saying scale matters.  A game that sells 100-200k isn't "big", by any real definition of the term.  The only reason we have anyone considering those sales as such is because home console game sales are (generally) in the toilet today.  No one would apply that bar to PS2, DS or PSP games.  Hell, they don't even really apply that to Wii games, it's either Nintendo million sellers or total bomba.  Why suddenly makes an exception for PS3? 500k already seems like a "middle ground" compared to previous generations, iIt all depends on where you want to draw that line.  And when you do draw a low line, I think it's worth differentiating for larger scale anyway... simply listing Dragon Quest X and Dynasty Warriors 7 alongside each other with no distinction, as if they were equals, is incredibly disingenuous.  PS3 actually doesn't have a game as "big" as DQX, the platform can't seem to even support games of that scale sales wise (while Wii has multiple titles that have sold over 3m, more than PS2 or PS1 do even in fact).

The "maybe" games I listed were just that though, possibilities.  Strikers is probably the longest shot out of what I listed, but the IP (IE) is strong, the genre/direction (multiplayer focused casual sports) is strong on Wii, and if L5 hits all the right notes I think it might manage that milestone.  It'd be better as a holiday release though, spring's definitely tougher sales wise.  Just Dance 2 I think you're really underselling though (which really, is what people have always done with JD)... it definitely has the right ingredients to really take off if handled right.  Hopefully Nintendo doesn't fuck it up.

I'd say my PS3 maybes are just as iffy though.  No Tales game this entire generation has managed 500k, and even on PS3 Graces stalled out below 350k.  I still think Xillia has a shot, being the first "ground up" entry on PS3, but it's still a pretty high bar. Ninokuni hasn't passed 500k yet on DS either, me listing that game has a lot to do with faith in L5 managing to correct the marketing mistakes they made last time.  In all four cases "maybe" is just that though... there's a way to 500k, but it might or might not happen.  Unlike the other titles listed, which are all pretty much sure things.

And I'm not sure what you're arguing with me about Wii's awful sales.  I don't disagree, at all.  I'm just saying PS3's not going to go on as is indefinitely either, it's biggest games are all behind it and NGP is going to eat it's lunch.  This is probably it's last "big" year (Wii's was probably last year).

I never said that Nintendo games are million sellers or bomba? The definition was always the same for me this gen. Bigger than 100k is big IMO. It helps move HW and expand the active userbases. Problem is that even with a big 3m seller like DQX, Wii won't be going anywhere since that's about the only thing it's getting that can help move HW in big quantities in 2012 and like we saw previously with FFXIII, the HW boost dies off pretty quickly.

As long as PS3 gets support I cannot see it dying. Wii is not getting games anymore and has just too few announced for the future. That's where I'm aiming at. We don't know yet if NGP is going to kill PS3 or not. We don't know about the official existence of any NGP games coming from third parties yet, so we can't say which series will leave the PS3 (or most probably go multiplat) with NGP. It's far too early for that.

Yes, your PS3 maybes aren't also granted for 500k, but not taking into account that the PS3's library still has many relevant games is disingenuous. Games that sell more than 100k have proven to boost or even stabilize the HW sales, and PS3 has a lot coming up. Take a look at TLS, although it had a new bundle, it boosted sales. Last time we had this arguement, you were listing TLS as a big game for the Wii as well and now according to you this isn't big anymore. Your arguments were pretty similar for TLS than those you are using in favor of JD2 and Inazuma eleven Strikers. There's no way those games will sell 500k. Not even a big JRPG project by pedigree developers that got its own conference and a lot of advertisement was able to get over 200k. I don't know how you can excpect IES to sell well when it is simply a spin.off, not even a main game. And soccer games have been selling worse and worse on the Wii as time passed by. Yes, the anime will help, but that's the only thing that will help the game sell. That's why I can't see it go over 150k. Just Dance 2 won't sell either, dance genre has died in Japan years ago. It won't come back now all of a sudden only because Nintendo is the publisher. Japan is a totally different market than the West when it comes to casual games, I think you are not understanding what casuals want there.

Finally, I never said PS3 was going to live forever. I said that the future is far brighter for it than for the Wii. I even accepted a decline for the PS3 this year.