@avinash

Your ranting.

Dude, the playstation expanded the market beyond any other system ever made, nintendo didnt do squat. In fact most gamers used to be considered geeks before playstation came out..

leo-j said: @avinash Your ranting. Dude, the playstation expanded the market beyond any other system ever made, nintendo didnt do squat. In fact most gamers used to be considered geeks before playstation came out..

 Dude all you are spouting is marketing nonsense, the facts show otherwise.

For example the Idea that the NES launched without competion is false, gaming PCs were out in force in NA when it launched gaming was alive and well, just on PCs, NES resurrected console gaming

Wii will have the greatest library of games of all time. Super Mario Galaxy alone makes the Wii a killer.

Avinash_Tyagi said: Picko said: Avinash_Tyagi said: europe-asia-hate-usa said: Garcian Smith said: Seconding/thirding/whatevering "neither." The closest analogy to the Wii is the PS1, but even that doesn't afford a full comparison. Like the PS1, the Wii is being, and will be, deluged by low-quality shovelware aimed at the class of people buying the system. It ended up taking the PS1 a couple of years to work up a decent library of games, because few developers trusted in its longevity. Once it proved to be a phenomenon, though, it picked up the vast majority of major franchises and paved the way for the PS2's near-monopoly on third-party exclusives. Now, what the Wii has that the PS1 didn't have is one of the best software development and publishing houses in the world backing it from the outset. As a result, while it took the PS1 a year or two before it found its first true "killer aps," Nintendo already has several: Wii Sports, Wii Play, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Party, and (in Japan and soon worldwide) Wii Fit. These titles are generating a userbase which will allow for a handful of millions-selling casual titles, a whole bunch of junky shovelware, and an eventually-huge library of more "gamery" titles." Contrast that with the DS (which has a good offering of casual and party games, but little else) and the PS1 (which wasn't able to expand the market nearly as much as the Wii).   I agree with everything except the last line.   The PS is the single console that has expanded the market in never before seen proportions. It sold 40 million more than the NES, the second biggest selling console at the time, made console gaming mainstreal and "cool" not just a nerd kids passtime. Once the Wii outsells the PS2 we can talk about market expansion but til then it has only shifted the market. Actually look at the hardware shipments for NES and PS1 and you'll see why PS1 sold more than NES, it had nothing to do with making gaming cool or anything about expanding the market PS Sony Mar-2007 0.00 / 21.59 0.00 / 40.78 0.00 / 40.12 0.00 / 102.49 NES Nintendo Mar-2007 0.00 / 19.23 0.00 / 34.00 0.00 / 8.56 0.00 / 61.79   Notice something? The shipments for Japan and NA are pretty much the same, the only difference being population growth but the numbers for the PAL regions are where you see the big gains for PS over NES, the reason isn't any expansion of the market demographics, but merely because Nintendo never tried to push the NES in the PAL regions to any great degree and it shows, while playstation was truly a global console PS clearly expanded the market. What you have failed to consider is that the NES essentially had a monopoly, whereas the PS operated in a duopoly market. The industry grew far larger in all markets during the PS/N64 era, and it seems reasonable to suggest that a large reason for this was the PS. The PS sold more units in both the Americas and Japan, whilst competing against the N64, which managed to sell approximately 33m units itself. Unambiguously, the PS drove a significant expansion of the market in the America's and Japan, in addition to the expansion that occurred in the PAL region.   No I haven't forgotten that, what you've forgotten is multiple console ownership, population growth between 1985 and 1995, PS didn't expand the market it took advantage of the fact that it was pushed further into global markets than any console before it, the fact that N64 sold 30 odd million as well has nothing to do with an expanded market, just a larger market thanks to more global coverage and more people alive, and the fact that adjusted for inflation console prices were lower and more people could afford multiple consoles

No you'll find I did not forget those effects, I simply chose not to overestimate their effect. Most gamers do not have multiple consoles, most people cannot afford to purchase multiple consoles. The "multiple console" effect can be assumed to be small for all intents and purposes. Furthermore, population growth in developed countries simply doesn't occur fast enough to have a material effect. Population growth is very slow and it simply cannot explain a signicant amount of the deviation between generations to suggest that the markets were not truly expanded. As for inflation and prices, low prices indicate an expansion of the market to previously untapped consumers. If you believe that this had a large effect then you are effectively saying that your own opinion is incorrect.

I didn't consider the expansion in Europe as part of my initial analysis, however I will include it in the analysis that follows. For the record though, increasing global coverage is expanding the market.

Now for some numbers:

NES: US - 34m Jpn - 19.23m PAL - 8.56m

TOTAL: US - 34m Jpn - 19.23m PAL - 8.56m

 

SNES: US - 23.35m Jpn - 17.15m PAL - 8.58m

MD: US - 17.80m Jpn - 3.59m PAL - 9.36m

TOTAL: US - 41.15m Jpn - 20.74m PAL - 17.94m

 

PS: US - 40.78m Jpn - 21.59m PAL - 40.12m

N64: US - 20.63m Jpn - 5.55m PAL - 6.75m

SS: US - 1.87m Jpn - 5.74m PAL - 1.15

TOTAL: US - 63.28m Jpn - 32.88m PAL - 48.02m

 

It can be seen that over three generations all three major markets grew substantially. The first number represents overall consumer growth from the NES to the SNES/MD generation. The second number represents the consumer growth from the SNES/MD to the PS/N64/SS generation.

US: 21% growth; 53.78% growth

Jpn: 7.8% growth; 58.53% growth

PAL: 109.58% growth; 167.67% growth

 

Clearly we can see that the arrival of a third player, the Playstation, occurred around the same time as a massive increase in videogame consumption. The Playstation, as the dominant console of that generation, can be assumed to have played the largest role in expanding the three markets detailed above. Given the weight of the numbers, it appears unreasonable to suggest that the Playsation didn't expand the industry well beyond those who had typically played videogames.

EDIT: Sorry, put the US in place of what should be "Americas". Honest mistake, but the US does account for the majority of the sales in the "Americas" it was an easy mistake to make :)

@Picko and Avinash_Tyagi

Just wanted to chime and say... What a wonderful and well reasoned discussion gentlemen. Thankyou :)

Mummelmann said: RolStoppable said: Most likely the Wii will become a combination of PS2, GC, DS (if we go by recent systems for a comparison): the most good games of the gen the best exclusives of the gen the best exclusives in new (sub-)genres and the best games for new audiences People, don't make the mistake to compare the full PS2 library of nearly eight years to the library of the Wii's first year. If you want to make a more realistic comparison, look what the PS2 had when it was in its lifecycle where the Wii is now. In a first year vs. first year comparison the Wii beats the PS2 with ease. Yes it does, if you like the Wii games.

Well that's a very meaningless statement that could be applied to any system.

Yes population growth isn't that fast, but it affects the demographic that was being targeted by the videogame industry the most and we can see that it accounts for most of the growth between the NES and the PS perfectly, remember its about which age group is affected the most, the young, and while you can argue that multiple console ownership is small, its not as small as you seem to believe, and does play an affect on sales, and the N64/PS era was when it became a bigger factor, in addition you also failed to take into account that the NES also had competition just like the PS did (the gaming PCs, master system, even the arcades might be arguable as competitiors at that time)

 

 

Again your argument is flawed because you fail to take into account the competitors to the NES, you are trying to show growth to the market without taking into account gaming on the PC's for example, this is why your argument is flawed you seem to think that the NES launched in a Vacuum without any competition and that is why its numbers were so large when in fact nothing is farther from the truth, the market in 1985 was much larger than just the NES, however by the PS era the influence of gaming on PC's had declined

Some points

On Nintendo and innovation --

Nintendo saved video games in the 1980s. Post-crash NO ONE wanted those things. If it had not been for the Big N, we would all be playing on computers not consoles.

Nintendo is currently expanding the market because a lot of non-game buyers (older folks) -- which is why the attach rate is lower.

I will give you that the PSX brought a lot of attention to Sony and broke new ground technologically.

On Nintendo was in a monopoly --

One word: SEGA. It was a weak competitor during the NES days. But it jumped to the next generation sooner with the Genesis/Mega Drive and almost outsold the SNES.

There were also competing systems from Atari and NEC during those generations.

On the reviews --

Happy Squirrel is right.

Reviewers tend to like certain things (shooters, action games) or have started treating games like movies. In other words, they want cinematograhy and score and story. (The lack of a fully-developed story is often cited by reviewers for not giving Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) a perfect rating).

Gamers -- true gamers -- just want fun. They can enjoy different types of games. Reviewers have not shown that flexibility.

Furthermore, reviewers more and more tend to be reviewing for those who have unlimited time to play games. Thus, games which have no story and can be played in short bursts tend to get poor scores from reviewers but are well received by players and sell really well (e.g., Mario & Sonic (Wii).

Mike from Morgantown

Gaming for over 30 years (since my first pong unit).

In all honesty who cares, any unbiased veiw would accept the the mid range to top games on either system are amazing. realisticaly though the output will probably end up some where in between

Welcome to the site iconeternal, even though you are probably Gballzack, blue3 and HUS combined (don't worry if you don't get it you will soon enough :().

Also, good for you on a good non-fanboy early post and hopefully you can keep on contributing such posts in the future.

As for your signature:
'You should try everything once in your life except incest, homosexualality and morris dancing' - Oscar Wylde (kind of)

I don't know about Oscar Wylde but I am pretty sure that Oscar Wilde tried the middle one (assuming that it is a typo and not a word I don't know).


As for the subject, it is not surprising that when comparing the Wii's first 12 months with the PS2's first 12 months that the PS2 has more 80= and 90+ games as the PS2 had the double advantage of the early Japanese launch which helped Japanese games to be better quality on average in the PS2's first US year as they would have had more development time and the advantage that the PS2 came hot off the PS1's success with only the Dreamcast as a competitor, with a major US publisher (EA) refusing to make Dreamcast games which would help the number of games total in the first year and thus the likelyhood of having more of them being 80+ (by the simple principle of throwing enough games out and see which of those stick at 80+).

On the other hand the Wii had the double disadvantage of coming cold off the GC's lackluster sales, thus ensuring low third party support in its launch year, and an unproven controller that not only developers are not used to (making them doing great controlled games with it first time out less likely and thus their first games having lower scores) but reviewers were not used to and even afraid of, thus making them less likely to award high scores to good games if they can't get used to the new controls.

With all that said I expect things to get much better for the Wii as many publishers have said that they were putting more effort towards the Wii so the number of games should increase and as developers can learn from both the successes and the failures of the first year games the average quality should go up too and as more Wiimote controlled games come out there will come a point where it is as natural for reviewers to use it as the gamepads they have used for the last 10-15 years and thus less points will get docked for it.

So in the coming months, when comparing the Wii's first n months to the PS2's first n months (or 360 or PS3) I expect the Wii to catch up to them (especialy around xmas '08) and then surpass them as combined with 3rd party support similar to the PS2 there will be Nintendo's better 1st party games (as compared against Sony, although they do have plenty of great games too) and a bigger number of casual games than the Ps2, which means a bigger number of 80+ casual games. All this combined probably will make the Wii have more 80+ and 90+ games than most any other console before.