Against The Grain: The Wii's return to grace

[Zlejedi]

RolStoppable said:

NYANKS said:

Oh, not at all.  I don't consider this any great achievment for them at all.  I prefer to focus on the Wii, it seems to be all about that console.  The fact that things have gone so badly is the headline here to me.  To me the other two have stayed relevant mostly, while the Wii has disintegrated relatively speaking.  I just feel like the two HD consoles were just going about their business of trying to draw in consumer with games and such, and the Wii just imploded.  Seems isolated, which is why I don't get all the comparisons.  The Wii only looks healthy because it was so high to begin with.  The collapse may get worse, who knows.  Like I said before, we've never really seen this.  I'm truly curious.

We've seen this in every generation so far, although there is a major difference this time.

If you look at any of the past consoles, you can usually see an interesting trend in the years three to five. Some consoles stay at a constant sales level while others start to drop off sharply and never recover. We are seeing the same pattern this generation. The reason for a decline or lack thereof is third party support. By year three third parties usually have picked a winner, so that console gets continually supported while the others of any given generation get increasingly ignored.

The major difference is that this gen third parties didn't pick the winner in sales. The Wii's sales curve is in line with systems like the Nintendo 64, the Gamecube, the Xbox, the Saturn and so on. The 360's and PS3's sales curves are in line with NES, SNES, PS1 and PS2. Once you've realized this you know how things will play out from here on out. The Wii will continue its steep decline selling several million units less with each passing year until it hits rock bottom while the 360 and PS3 will see a more gradual decline over the coming years.

There was a chance that the Wii would maintain higher sales levels despite its lack of third party support, but that would have required Nintendo to continue to put out killer apps at unprecedented levels. That really is the only possible way to make up for a lack of third party support. Games that are "only" good just don't cut it.

Oh they have precesily chosen the winner in sales. By this point of time it should be pretty obvious that costs of porting beetween platforms must be low enought that combined PS3/X360/PC development together with DLC potential is lot more attractive.