Christopher_G2 said:
I think we should caution against the DS and Wii comparisons. For one Nintendo has owned the handheld market for nearly 20 years. And second the competition the Wii will have in the console market through 2008 and beyond will be far more fierce than the competition the PSP or anything else can give the DS. I'm just not convinced the Wii can pull a PS2 and sell amazing for 5 or 6 straight years but I know the DS will. I see the Wii selling amazing for it's first two years, than as the HD gaming market really starts to show itself the Wii will start gradually declining though the rest of the generation. The Wii is likely to be the best seller this generation, but it's not going to be as much as a runaway as some people think. |
We probably shouldn't make direct comparisons between the Wii and DS because they're in different markets.
With that said, the point everyone makes using that comparison is quite valid; the NES, SNES, Gameboy, Playstation, PS2 and Nintendo DS have all sold really well inspite of facing competition which was far more powerful and (in many cases) had far greater multimedia capabilities. The reason for the success of these platforms is varied but (in general) they were successful because they were affordable systems which sold well enough to be supported heavily by developers through out their life; at the same time none of these systems were constantly outsold by direct competition for any period of time.
Now, the question is how long the Wii can survive for ...
If sales trends continue by mid 2008 there will be no way that the XBox 360 or PS3 will be able to "kill" the Wii; as long as the Wii outsells the PS3 and XBox 360 combined resources will continue to shift towards the Wii at the expense of XBox 360/PS3 development. By mid 2008 developers will be spending similar ammounts of money on Wii exclusive games as they will be on producing multi-platform PS3/XBox 360 games, which will result in the Wii having 2 to 4 times as many exclusive games as the PS3 or XBox 360 have in total games.
