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Forums - Sales Discussion - Nintendo DS Becoming Best Selling Console of All Time in a Couple of Days

homer on 28 November 2010
dany612 said:
homer said:
RolStoppable said:
homer said:
dany612 said:

But a PC is made into a console. As in until you buy games for it, and a controller which not many people do. But in that sense. A cell phone is also a conosole. OMG

I disagree. Since when do you need a traditional controller to become a console? The keyboard and mouse works fine. Most pc's come with built in flash games do they not? A cell phone would also be considered a console. That is why it is hard to compare things using such broad terms.

A console is a device with unified specifications (i.e. every Wii sold has the same processing power) specifically made to play video games, either as sole or primary purpose. PCs and cell phones are not consoles.

Who said it had to primarily be used for gaming? If that were the case, would the ps3's that were bought by some (albeit a small minority) primarily for bluray, not consoles? The same for the ps2? If that is your current definition for consoles, soon, we may never see consoles ever again, as our devices become more focused on multimedia.

Yes but those are add ons. The PlayStation 3 is still primarily a gaming console with blue-ray. A PC on the other hand, is a multi-tasking system which happens to have 'gaming' as an availability. Even for whatever reason a consumer choices to buy it, it still remains a gaming console. Heck, one could just buy a Wii to use the internet or watch netflix.

Who's to say though, other than the people at sony, nintendo, and microsoft, what their "console" was intended to be used for? To the big 3's headquarters!



"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." -My good friend Mark Aurelius

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NYANKS on 28 November 2010

I'm pretty sure the argument basis isn't over whether the DS is a "thing that plays games", its over a possible inherent advantage that handhelds have over consoles.  They are portable, possibly enhancing their consumer base.  They're usually cheaper, as are their games.  There is a much greater tendency for a household to have multiple copies of them.  How many houses have two 360's or PS3's.  There's probably not even that many dual Wii households. 

And on top of that, Ps2 is undertracked by quite a bit on the site. 



italo244 on 28 November 2010

"According to VGChartz..."


I laughed so loud it woke my bat...



homer on 28 November 2010
RolStoppable said:
homer said:
RolStoppable said:

Whoa there, I chose my words carefully. I said "made for", not "used for". If I said the latter, then one could argue that a gaming PC is a console (which it isn't). The PS3 may be able to Blu-ray movies, but it was made to play video games first and foremost.

Whoops, misread your post. Some pcs are made specifically for gaming though, right? Wouldn't that make them consoles, or are you saying that they have to have both unified specs and be made to game? Also, there is only one way to find out if a "console" was made to be used as a gaming device, ask the people who made it. For all we know, the Wii could have been made primarily for the photo channel lol.

Yes, there also needs to be unified hardware. I edited that into the post you just quoted, but I had that part already in my first post on this subject, so it's not like I am grasping for straws.

Asking the people who made it isn't the only or even the best way to find out what the device was primarily made for, because there can be a huge difference between what people say and what they actually do. You just have to look at what purpose the most money is invested in by the manufacturer. For console makers it's naturally the development of video games, so there's no question about what these machines were intended for.


Wait, if a company invested the most on marketing of said system, what would it make it then? Say if Apple developed a console, and took a completely hands off approach to its platform, and only marketed it as being shiny, had 3rd party software, and unified specs, would it then be a console.



"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." -My good friend Mark Aurelius

homer on 28 November 2010
NYANKS said:

I'm pretty sure the argument basis isn't over whether the DS is a "thing that plays games", its over a possible inherent advantage that handhelds have over consoles.  They are portable, possibly enhancing their consumer base.  They're usually cheaper, as are their games.  There is a much greater tendency for a household to have multiple copies of them.  How many houses have two 360's or PS3's.  There's probably not even that many dual Wii households. 

And on top of that, Ps2 is undertracked by quite a bit on the site. 


This is true. I know far more people with multiple ds's than ps2's. It makes them hard to compare, as we do not know the amount  of people that are equipped (sounded nerdier than I intended) with a ds. The same goes for tracking the move's sales as multiples are sold to the same people.



"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." -My good friend Mark Aurelius

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NYANKS on 28 November 2010
RolStoppable said:
NYANKS said:

I'm pretty sure the argument basis isn't over whether the DS is a "thing that plays games", its over a possible inherent advantage that handhelds have over consoles.  They are portable, possibly enhancing their consumer base.  They're usually cheaper, as are their games.  There is a much greater tendency for a household to have multiple copies of them.  How many houses have two 360's or PS3's.  There's probably not even that many dual Wii households. 

That's definitely an advantage that handhelds have over home consoles, but the stationary platforms also have one big thing going for them: they are viewed as the premium choice across the entire industry which means that everyone puts their top development teams on games for those. This is especially prevelant among Western publishers. As you might know, there are hardly any significant games coming from them for handhelds.

Better software makes the hardware more desirable to own, I think everyone can agree on this. Handhelds have historically always played second fiddle to home consoles and were usually seen as "lesser gaming" by a large group of gamers. This changed somewhat this generation (moreso in Japan than anywhere else), but the number of blockbusters on portable consoles is still very low compared to home consoles.

This is true, but I also feel like people who choose to invest in handhelds care less, whether by simply expecting the same support from the past to continue or whatever.  Do you need to a top tier team to put out many of the games that do well on handhelds?  Not really.  There are a lot of remakes, easy.  Puzzle focused games, the friggin Imagine Series, tower defense games that would on consoles be a twenty dollar PSN game, etc.  People generally expect less from handhelds, so the lack of mega dev team support isn't a big deal.  Does anyone care the Santa Monica isn't doing Ghost of Sparta? No.  So many big DS games, people here probably don't even know the actual devs, because they were outsourced.  I mean, do you always need a AAA team to do the 146th port of Tetris?



homer on 28 November 2010
RolStoppable said:
NYANKS said:

I'm pretty sure the argument basis isn't over whether the DS is a "thing that plays games", its over a possible inherent advantage that handhelds have over consoles.  They are portable, possibly enhancing their consumer base.  They're usually cheaper, as are their games.  There is a much greater tendency for a household to have multiple copies of them.  How many houses have two 360's or PS3's.  There's probably not even that many dual Wii households. 

That's definitely an advantage that handhelds have over home consoles, but the stationary platforms also have one big thing going for them: they are viewed as the premium choice across the entire industry which means that everyone puts their top development teams on games for those. This is especially prevelant among Western publishers. As you might know, there are hardly any significant games coming from them for handhelds.

Better software makes the hardware more desirable to own, I think everyone can agree on this. Handhelds have historically always played second fiddle to home consoles and were usually seen as "lesser gaming" by a large group of gamers. This changed somewhat this generation (moreso in Japan than anywhere else), but the number of blockbusters on portable consoles is still very low compared to home consoles.

I think though, that portability outweighs the software, as shown by the sales. Of course, you must factor in the multiple handhelds sold, making this a headache to compare seeing as we do not know how many people have a ds while we have a pretty good estimate over how many people have a ps2. Then again, how many people use the ps2's would have to be factored in. I think we are missing the point of the thread though. I think it was just trying to show that the sales were nearly on par with ps2's, not the user base.



"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." -My good friend Mark Aurelius

homer on 28 November 2010
RolStoppable said:
homer said:

Wait, if a company invested the most on marketing of said system, what would it make it then? Say if Apple developed a console, and took a completely hands off approach to its platform, and only marketed it as being shiny, had 3rd party software, and unified specs, would it then be a console.

Yes, that would be a console based on the things you said. I mean, you didn't even mention any feature besides playing games that this hardware could do.

But didn't you say,"You just have to look at what purpose the most money is invested in by the manufacturer." which would be the marketing of it being shiny?



"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." -My good friend Mark Aurelius

atma998 on 28 November 2010
italo244 said:

"According to VGChartz..."


I laughed so loud it woke my bat...



Really? Can you explain us why?



dany612 on 28 November 2010

italo244 said:

"According to VGChartz..."


I laughed so loud it woke my bat...


I smell a ban