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Soundwave on 10 August 2020
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padib said:
Soundwave said:

Realistically though I don't think this is really what happened. I mean is the type of consumer that's shopping for a game system in YEAR 5/6 really looking at a system and saying

"You know the 1500 available games are OK I guess, but I really don't like the looks of this May/June/July release schedule coming up and their E3 wasn't great"

Like I know in gaming enthusiast circles people believe real human beings think this way, but really, lol that isn't reality. 

By year 5 of any hardware your existing library of several hundred game titles should be the selling point not the immediate month to month release schedule. 

And people also go back and forth on this, like Just Dance selling so big in 2011 proves the Wii could sell software, but then doesn't that also show the Wii did in fact have a massive blockbuster ever green seller? You can't have it both ways. 

The fact is too Wii sales didn't plummet really at any one particular point. The drop in sales from 2009 to 2010 was about 6 million less. Then the drop the next year was another 5-6 million. And then another 5 million. It was a pretty consistent downward trajectory after 2008 onwards even with games like Wii Sports Resort, NSMB Wii, Mario Galaxy 2. 

Right, and that supports my idea. The sales dropped off (slowly or abruptly however one chooses to see it) due to decreased support.

As for interest in a console 5/6 after release, refer to my prior reply to you, we have plenty of good examples. Remember, HW sales is one thing, SW sales is another. Certainly I don't expect hardware to keep selling too strong for an older console, but SW sales can persist. A great example is the Pokemon series far into the Gamboy's lifecycle. 

Pokemon isn't really a great example because it's a massive outlier, a once in a 50 year type phenomenon that came out of nowhere. You can't really say "well see Wii, Pokemon boosted Game Boy 8 years after launch, why can't you do the same", like that's not a realistic ask for a software library. 

The fact is even when the Wii had major releases like NSMB Wii and Super Mario Galaxy 2, the system still was on a sales decline. 

I think XBox 360 getting Kinect also hurt the Wii, because really it stripped the Wii of being a unique system which the only go to place to play Wii Sports type games. All of the sudden you gave consumers a choice between one console that can play Wii (well Kinect) Sports + Call of Duty for the teenager in the house versus the Wii which had Wii Sports and didn't have the "real" Call of Duty. 

For a mom trying to make her kids happy and wanting to have some bowling fun when the grandparents came over, by 2010, honestly the XBox 360 was the better option and also quite affordable. Instead of having to buy the Wii for Wii Sports/Fit and then get a 360 for your 13 year old, you could just buy one that basically did both things. For a lot of families I think once that option was presented to them it became more attractive than the Wii. Why buy two different systems spending several hundred dollars more when you don't have to. 

I mean IIRC the XBox 360 very rarely beat the Wii in NPD sales prior to Kinect releasing, but after Kinect released they were no.1 on the NPD chart for the majority of the time. This is also the danger of banking so heavily on simplistic games ... that can copied eventually by other companies (Brain Training, Wii Sports, etc.). It's not so easy to copy Mario or Zelda or even Pokemon. 

To be honest the Sony Wii Sports ripoff (can't even remember the name) was the best one from what I played. The controller was really accurate and felt like your movements were really accurately reflected on screen. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 10 August 2020