johnlucas said: When reading the charts and making predictions do you see yourself as an Optimist, a Pessimist, or a Realist? AND what do you think OTHERS may view you as? I actually see myself as a Realist but realize that others see me as a dyed-in-the-wool Optimist. (possibly Delusional Optimist Hahaha) Why do you think your worldview of the gaming market formed the way it did? My view came from experience growing up with gaming observing and absorbing the happenings of the industry while having moments of Pessimism (yes I've doubted Nintendo before and was proven wrong hard which is why I follow their aims more tightly now). Let's discuss how we formed our views of the industry and how we make these high-falutin' sales projections. John Lucas

Ok you say you have doubted Nintendo before and been proven wrong hard?umm what are you talking about ?and when Nintendo has just recently turned it around with DS and Wii so ...how many times were you Pessimistic 2? Because if you thought the Cube was gonna suck ..you were right....the GBA micro...you were right so unless you thought the Wii was going to fail(I always thought it had a good chance to be on top due to It serves as a good 2nd system for a 360 or PS3 owner due to Price)it apeals to some non gamers too.Relly I think Price drops are the Key to 360 and PS3 gaining ground but I don't know if either will catch the Wii becase it will always be a great bargain 2nd console...the PS3 has probly the best chance of catching the Wii though due to the Japan market a significant Price Drop and it will sell in Japan easy...and in the US but the 360 will just not sell in Japan hell Erope is paying even more than anyone for the PS3 and it still sells well there at a hundred -2 hundred less they will sell fast...You can always bet that Microsoft and Sony WILL not fail..they can reduce the cost and loose alot of money on the console and have areas to regain that money Nintendo will have to be Very carefull in every generation from now on They are up against 2 of the largest companies in the World and have been doing Ok so far

Steve 3.2 said: I try to keep a level head when discussing sales and expectations.  Too many people forget that video games are all about having fun.  The 'war' is kind of stupid when you think about it.  Sure, it can be entertaining to debate the merits of your console of choice and its games with other people.  But at the end of the day, all of the major systems are going to have some great games and their share of losers.  And no matter how much you post, argue, or complain, it's unlikely that you're going to change someone else's mind on which system and its games are the best.  (If someone has hours to spend on here posting, then maybe their system isn't that much fun after all... :P) So I'm a realist here for some fun debate while trying to avoid the fanboys.

Dude I could not agree with you more ....Game should be fun...Why hate any system they all have good points I think the war is only here because Microsoft and Sony made people choose sides with prices that do not allow most people to buy both systems.So here come the Mine is better than yours argument.Lastly i did read in an article from EGM that Microsoft does Pay people to go into forums and bash sony even in sony sites....Then there was the boat thing in France ...all in all Microsoft annoys me with thier fanning of the flames of a console owner "war" seems like Sony and nintendo do not bad mouth anyone really they stay focused on what they want to do...

 

NorthStar said: Ok you say you have doubted Nintendo before and been proven wrong hard?umm what are you talking about ?and when Nintendo has just recently turned it around with DS and Wii so ...how many times were you Pessimistic 2? Because if you thought the Cube was gonna suck ..you were right....the GBA micro...you were right so unless you thought the Wii was going to fail(I always thought it had a good chance to be on top due to It serves as a good 2nd system for a 360 or PS3 owner due to Price)it apeals to some non gamers too.Relly I think Price drops are the Key to 360 and PS3 gaining ground but I don't know if either will catch the Wii becase it will always be a great bargain 2nd console...the PS3 has probly the best chance of catching the Wii though due to the Japan market a significant Price Drop and it will sell in Japan easy...and in the US but the 360 will just not sell in Japan hell Erope is paying even more than anyone for the PS3 and it still sells well there at a hundred -2 hundred less they will sell fast...You can always bet that Microsoft and Sony WILL not fail..they can reduce the cost and loose alot of money on the console and have areas to regain that money Nintendo will have to be Very carefull in every generation from now on They are up against 2 of the largest companies in the World and have been doing Ok so far

I doubted Nintendo on the art direction of Wind Waker. I wondered if such a shift was wise after displaying the more realistically-drawn art style at an earlier show. I saw screenshots in EGM & expressed great doubt. I knew the game would be fine & I would have no problem playing it but I thought that might alienate certain fans and hurt the selling power of the game.

Nintendo shut my mouth HARD after I picked it up and played it. I said it's actually MORE realistic. More natural movements and the art style was integral to that type of gameplay & game design. I learned right then that magazine screenshots were no longer useful for getting an idea on how a game would play. They actually make the game look worse.

I doubted Nintendo on the decision to make Metroid in the 1st person perspective. I even came up with a game design that I told my friend about that would allow Metroid to be 3rd person and in "tracks" that simulate a 3-D world but still have the 2-D feel. After I got it & played it I said I was F'in silly and they actually pulled it off.

Nintendo once again shut my mouth HARD and I discovered that the game STILL felt like 2-D Metroid just in a 3-D perspective. I thought the game would feel too much like a common First-Person Shooter with boxy square rooms which is good for them but not Metroid but somehow Nintendo made this game feel right and when I got Metroid Prime 2 and they brought back the Screw Attack I said to myself how could I ever doubt these guys being able to make this happen. My game design idea would have been limited compared to this & I felt like a dadgum fool thinking that mess up! LOL! Plus the game atmosphere was beautiful. It really immersed you into the world.

I doubted Nintendo on this DS idea. The third pillar strategy. I first heard of the DS in the summer of 2005. A co-worker had one and showed it to me. It looked like a cool idea but I was like "Didn't they just come OUT with a new handheld not too long ago?" referring to the GBA. By this time I wasn't keeping up as closely with the gamescene. No mags, didn't go online looking for the latest game news. I was a little out of the loop and was just content playing the games I had amassed. Getting old games from past systems in Rhino's, the used gamestore (R.I.P. GRRRR! Gamestop~ *shaking fist to the sky*). I was like wouldn't this render the GBA obsolete ruining one of the pillars? (since it plays GBA games as well). The GBA SP, GBA Micro, DS thing confused me & I didn't follow neither the need for a brand new handheld so soon nor the strategy to have all three of these handhelds running concurrently.

The DS soon started to make sense and once AGAIN Nintendo shut my mouth HARD. Why we just have someone posting March NPD estimates showing GBA sales matching PS3 sales while DS still sells like a monster. I wasn't far off DS DOES INDEED replace the GameBoy line but the transition of the torchpassing is when we pass through the pillars of DollarMake Temple. So many can't find the DS so with all that old GBA stock waiting to move they pick up GBA's. Some games are still made for the 6 year old many faces of the GBA and we have concurrent handhelds running like concurrent consoles. Whereas before a new GameBoy model would outmode & immediately replace the old GameBoy model now we have two different Nintendo handheld models running side by side even if the newer one can do everything that the older one can do in most respects.

I totally didn't realize the coming of the PSP. GBA might not have stood as strong against PSP alone. The DS was put up partly due to Nintendo's own self-moitvated volition and because they needed a system that could hold up to the PSP, virtually a portable PS2, compared to the GBA, virtually a portable SNES. A virtual portable N64 and a little more—the DS with its "little more" kept Nintendo's handheld turf from being invaded by Sony.

Nintendo: 3 John-Boy: 0.

By now I had to take myself aback and say I'm not the one with decades of experience in the game field. Every decision the company makes isn't gold (e-Reader, Virtual Boy, GB Micro) but more often than not they get it right. Best I reserve kneejerk judgment take a quiet observative attitude to what's going on and really learn something about market strategy. Follow what they do and look at the merit behind their decisions stepping out of the comfort zone of the usual way things are done.

The Revolution brought back my interest to the current game scene. My friend sent me some stuff by e-mail in early 2005 about Nintendo's upcoming Revolution. I thought to myself "well it's about that time.The 5 year span is coming up so they're about due" And that's all I thought about it and sort of forgot about it after he sent me screenshots of the system. I looked at it as nothing more than the next-gen Nintendo. Would be willing to buy it because I like Nintendo games but I wasn't so excited by it. Months went by with my friend occasionally sending me Revolution info and pictures. I'm like "Cool." Opened the email. Skimmed through it. Closed it. Forgot about it not long after I read over it. It was just another system to me. I knew it would be good quality but I had no big ideas on it. Just waiting on its release to play Nintendo's newest offerings.

Don't know why but all of a sudden in the summer of 2005 I started looking at those emails my friend sent and started to wonder what this was all about. The excitement of my friend must have slowly rubbed off on me so I began to get a little curious and typed in Nintendo Revolution on the search engine. This is how I found sites like Joystiq.com and a host of places that led me to Kotaku and even here at VGChartz. I love message boards and forums and read through the comment boards of the places I visited. This one guy at Joystiq named RevPatentLeaker really upped my excitement with his cryptic forecastings of Nintendo's upcoming console. He talked in such poetic deep code that I think he even confused himself! LOL! "The green one and the blue one cannot s*e*e* (*1*2*8). Kiodai has relayed this to me but I am not him. We are 1*one*1 under the blu*light. Broadway is where we perform. Hollywood is where we gather" LOL! Just a top-of-the-head example of how he would talk. But his words and his approach in talking more about the art of the system rather than cold specs intrigued me. He had built up a following of people trying to decode his Nostradamus sagelike tellings. His accuracy was pretty spot on too for the most part and the way he strung his speeches together really made you take notice. You really had to see it. Made you think he was an insider at Nintendo he was so uncanny with his forecasting of what would happen.

His words mirrored my core beliefs about gaming. Maybe this is why I lost interest in the main gaming scene as of late. It's about the connection and the art of the thing. It's larger than just little electronic pictures on screen and more than recitations of complicated specs; it's a social thing, a cultural thing, essential to human expression and creativity. A couple of months listening to this mysterious guy and his followers & I was suddenly pumped! MORE pumped than my friend who sent me all this stuff over the months. And right on time too because soon that September the remote would be unveiled. RevPatentLeaker called this dead-on about Iwata pointing out of the darkness and the control would come. He disappeared not long after after announcing he would no longer speak on the forums. I INSTANTLY saw the potential in the remote. Had no qualms about this whatsoever. Knowing Nintendo's controller history and how it shaped its competitors designs I knew right then and there that this was the Future of Gaming and the Revolution took on a whole new meaning for me by this point.

Went to YouTube gathering clips about this new console contest and starting making my predictions of the future of the market (only one mistake in this was not counting in Sony's self-sabotage) contributing heavily to the forums with my input about the industry and its direction.

THEN they announced the name change to Wii. And I slightly went back on my word not to doubt Nintendo's business direction so readily. I knew Revolution was too clunky too biggety and didn't fit RevPatentLeaker's dialogues of what the Wii stood for. Wii felt weird to me as a game name though I didn't doubt the system itself at all. I suddenly realized how game systems were named throughout history with overblown grandiose technical hyperbolistic names:

ODYSSEY (like the Greek story. Games across the Iliad!), ATARI 2600 (big numbers to sound robotic and futuristic), INTELLIVISION (intelligent television-playing on the technical and overblown), NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM (oh my THE system of ALL entertainment from Nintendo...grandiose), SEGA MASTER SYSTEM (yes massa! yes massa! WHIP!! hyperbole!), SUPER NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM (oh my it's THE system of ALL SUPER entertainment. LOL!), TURBO-GRAFX 16/PC ENGINE (technical technical technical), NEO-GEO (it's Neo. that means it's from the future and it's Geo which means it's bigger than Earth itself), 3DO (numerical technical), JAGUAR (don't bite me Atari! overblown and silly), SEGA GENESIS (in the beginning there was Sega and it was good. LOL!), SEGA SATURN (Sega..in Space! can I escape the orbit of Sonic and the moons of Phantasy Star?), SEGA DREAMCAST (it's thinking ya know. that swirl hypnotizes you. and it broadcasts your dreams! beat THAT intellivision!), NINTENDO 64 (Nintendo to the 64th power! Now you're playing with it! Ultra cool!), SONY PLAYSTATION (the location, the locale, the place where games are played. nowhere else) XBOX (I got two words for ya: Hostile Takeover! X marks the spot. lock & load! BMF3000!!), XBOX 360 (that's two XBoxes up in a circle with a twist and a kiss -see In Living Color's Men on Film skits)

Suddenly "Wii" made more sense to me. And them telling us to roll around with it, live with it, sleep with it, shack up with it made it more funny to think about. Your mouth is in a smiling position when you say the word Wii. It's short and unique-looking making it instantly recognizable. Won't get confused in a search engine because it's not quite a real word. It plays to Nintendo's adopted darkhorse strategies in looking non-threatening. The name appeals to females more than XBox ever will. It's cute. The triple and quadruple entendres that come from the name are part of the fun. They can tell us it's about 'We' all they want but our dirty minds will think of male genitalia, urine, and pigs squealing and start laughing. This reinforces the smile position the word Wii makes you perform. You smile and then you laugh. It's perfect for the Japanese audience who like to play with English words and roman characters yet it's a name they can easily pronounce as well. Not to mention it was once a kanji in old Japanese. The name works on high-brow and low-brow levels making you smile laugh and think. Plus the shift of the name right before E3 was perfect timing and kept people talking about it for months and months helping to build even more buzz.

Nintendo: 4 John: 0

See how I became so seemingly optimistic about Nintendo's direction? I was proven wrong plenty of times and had to know my role and shut my mouth. Wii sounds so natural now that I now doubt how I could ever hear anything else. Revolution sounds so old hat and predictable now. It required a mindshift and a willingness to step out of the comfort zone.

Reading articles by Sean Malstrom only underlined me following what Nintendo was aiming for.

It was a process, NorthStar. It didn't happen overnight. I once doubted Nintendo too. Doesn't mean I won't doubt them again but I don't trust my views as much as I used to based on the things that have happened. It's time for me to go to school and learn from the master.

John Lucas

P.S.: I also doubted the USA launch price of $250 thinking Nintendo has violated their magic $200 number. That is until I realized that we've been paying $260-$280 to actually play games on the last two systems when you add it all together. And we get a pack-in 5-in-1 game as well as built-in memory, true full backward compability with GC and a free online service. Wii actually gave us more for our buck than either the GC or N64. It was STILL essentially $200 if you removed the game.

Nintendo: 5 John: STILL 0 

I'm a realist as Erik Aston and I are about the only 2 predicters that are anticipating an actual GROWTH in the video game industry this generation, whereas everyone else is predicting a 20% decline in video game sales.

 Some might view my 55m X360 and 70m PS3 predictions as being overly optimistic, but even if the Wii would get 60m or so, that'd put the market at a 10% increase over last generation, whereas most people, even with those thinking the Wii1 does 100m+ never realize that even if the Wii does 100m, there still needs to be around 100m MORE systems between the 360/PS3 to equal the most recent gen.

mrstickball said: I'm a realist as Erik Aston and I are about the only 2 predicters that are anticipating an actual GROWTH in the video game industry this generation, whereas everyone else is predicting a 20% decline in video game sales. Some might view my 55m X360 and 70m PS3 predictions as being overly optimistic, but even if the Wii would get 60m or so, that'd put the market at a 10% increase over last generation, whereas most people, even with those thinking the Wii1 does 100m+ never realize that even if the Wii does 100m, there still needs to be around 100m MORE systems between the 360/PS3 to equal the most recent gen.

If those numbers are achieved then surely the industry would have grown if not in unit sales, then by $ value. I cannot see the PS3 coming down in price to even the PS2 launch price anytime soon, so the total amount spent on videogames would be higher even if the actual unit sales are lower. However, I still think there is a finite amount of money that a gamer will spend on their console, so the proportion spent on games (which they make money on) to consoles (which they don't currently make money on) will be lower, this would surely mean decline in video game sales.  

The proportional spend between games and a PS2 console would have been higher, so there may be more money available to spend on games, it would be interesting to know if this arguement actually bears up.

 I would like to be realistic but that seriously involves many factors that people have no control over. So I am optimistic because I think this industry is only going to grow larger.