| reverie said: "How deep is the pool" you need to drown that guy? |
Someone just did the undoable, surpassing John Lucas in Nintendo fanaticism. That's quite a feat.
Welcome to the forums Sullla. I'm more of a Marius kind of guy but good to have as many people as possible who understand video games are a business and that hard core gamers are not the market.
I agree with everyone who said the obvious, VP of a 3rd party dev can think whatever he wants about systems but no matter how much he hates a system he should never reveal it in any capacity unless its part of some corporate strategy (e.g. Epic similarly ragging on the Wii just before Gears of War 2 is released). Although this correction wasn't as amusing as that EA programmer who had to meekly beg forgiveness the day after using an expletive to describe the 2 Gamecubes duct-taped together.
I'd like to point out that the reason Nintendo didn't go gun-ho on the graphics front was that the market has reached an technology barrier called HD. To take advantage of HD required such a leap in console power that it could not be done at mass market prices. Even without mass market prices Sony and MS lost record amounts on their consoles. Add to that the reality that HDTV's won't be standard until the end of this generation and that means most of that extra power everyone is forced to pay for is being wasted. Further add the reality that most people who buy consoles don't care about the extra power and/or aren't interested in spending the money to get an HDTV before they reach mass market prices and most of the market for the system vanishes.
What we are left with is a video game market somewhat neatly divided in 2. On one side, those with HDTV's, the disposable income to blow $500+ at one time on video games, the inclination to blow $500+ on video games at one time, and the interest to let their opinions be known on gaming sites and forums. Then there is the other 80-90% of the market. 2 companies are bleeding themselves white fighting over the smaller half, Nintendo decided being all alone making tons of money in the other half was the better idea. In 5 years things will change, HDTV's will be cheap and universal as will the technology to take advantage of the greater graphics on them.
Hate the Wii all you want but more than just 20 something single men with way too much money to waste play video games as Nintendo's financial reports clearly shows. Nintendo's financial reports also shows they made the right decision. Sega's financial reports shows they can't figure how to not make a bad decision. Their VP's comments shows that tradition is alive in well in the house that Sonic built.
