| shakarak said: The fact that Nintendo had to operate at a loss makes it evident that the masses do not value stereoscopic 3D I'm not sure how your getting to that conclusion. I in my experience have not met a person who wasn't generally impressed by the 3d on the system itself. Nintendo operated at a loss for a multitude of other reasons. They launched a product that was suceeding their most successful product ever. One of the main reasons for the DS's sucesses is because it was priced lower compared to it's competitors. Nintendos consumers are a lot more price conscious then other consumers due to the fact they are a majority casual gamers. The casual gamer isn't prepared to pay $250 dollars for themselves or their kids when they can get a DS for $99.99 Are you saying that Sony operated at a loss becasue consumers didn't value the hardware superiority of the PS3? |
People may be impressed by the 3D (although I personally wasn't, and it's no exaggeration to say that no one I've shown it to has anything more excited than a "oh that's neat"reaction). But from a business perspective, that's largely irrelevant. What matters is if people are willing to pay for the 3D. Judging from the fact that Nintendo failed to meet its latest (revised!) shipment forecast, and that such failures have been more the norm than the exception since launch day, the answer apppears to be "no."
Put it this way: while I disagree with reducing market analysis to "casual" vs. others, let us assume you're correct, and that the casual gamer is not prepared to pay $250 for a system (or apparently even $180!). Why is the system $250? I'm pretty sure the stereoscopic 3D plays a large role there. If that's the case, then you're essentially arguing that the casual audience is not willing to actually pay the price for the 3D.
Isn't that conceding the point?
| JWeinCom said: Let's focus on the 3D Mario for just one second. We have had 3 3D Mario games in recent years. The first one, Super Mario Galaxy, sold 10 million copies. To put this success in perspective, this is more than any game for the PS3 or 360 that isn't Call of Duty or Halo 3 (not including the bundled Kinect Adventures). |
To put it in more proper perspective, it's the third-worst selling Mario platformer to date, beating only Sunshine (3D) and Galaxy 2 (3D). It's been outsold three-fold by one of the least critically praised Mario platformers (NSMB), and almost three-fold by the 2D game on the same platform (NSMBWii), notwithstanding that it's been out much longer and has been available for only $20 (vs. $50) for nearly a year.
I'll add that when you say "[s]o, the market doesn't want 3D Mario? Apparently they do, because they're buying it" you're not actually contradicting his point, as he's repeatedly conceded that there's a market for it. It's just a much smaller market, but it's also the one that's being catered to in lieu of the demonstrably bigger one. That seems foolish, no?
| shakarak said: So if I'm understanding correctly your saying masses only care about games (which malstorm says nintendo doesn't make good games for the masses). Maybe i'm the minority (but I highly doubt it) but I got a 3ds beacuse I was excited about the thought of what 3d can do to make my games better. Just because the 3ds isn't having skyrocketing sales, but decent sales even with a lackluster game library doesn't mean people aren't excited about the 3d of the system. Which brings me back to my arguement that people are purchasing it on the current excitement of 3d. I'd be willing to say that the majority of games that will sell well on the system in the furue will be a direct result of the 3d features Nintendo implements in the game itself. |
3DS sales were far below expectations for most of the year. The exception was the last quarter of the calendar year, i.e. the holidays. That was when the system saw such games as Mario and Mario Kart. Japan also got Monster Hunter. Once those games dried up, the sales followed suit. This tells me that excitement at the prospect of more 3D isn't the motivating factor behind sales, or else sales would have been stronger initially and they wouldn't have tailed off once big games stopped arriving.
There's a reason Miyamoto said "Especially for the first six months following the system's release, sales were weaker than the DS. This was mainly due to the fact we didn't have any big first party titles, I believe. Also the price point was too high... In fairness to us, we realised that, reduced the price and worked very hard to have a strong lineup for the Christmas season, which we offered with Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7 and Kid Icarus."
He puts part of it on the price (which we talked about earlier), and part of it on the games. I agree primarily about the latter: more games equals more sales, just as they have for nearly every system ever. For example, I fully anticipate a prolonged sales bump come September.
Let me try another angle. If current excitement of 3D was a strong motivator for system sales, Miyamoto wouldn't be saying that "we also have some excellent features that appeal to non-gamers: 3D photography, the augmented reality features and other preinstalled apps. We tried hard to communicate these, but we failed." He's putting it down to a failure to communicate (insert your own Cool Hand Luke voice here). I suspect it's for the same reason that 3D movie ticket sales have declined after the initial novelty: most people simply don't care about it, certainly not enough to pay for it. Either way, per Miyamoto the 3D doesn't seem to be having the intended effect.
shakarak said:
But nintendo currently in the handheld market, is the market leader? |
The fact that Sony, it's only competitor in the arena, was nice enough to repeatedly shoot itself in the foot with an elephant gun plays a large role in that. Seriously, what's the next big release for the thing? A Persona port sometime in mid-Summer?
