Come on guys, this is pointless...

We have faced the same arguments every month for the last year and a half...

Wii is a fad and will suddenly stop selling in 20XX year...
PS3 will gain momentum and the sales will hit the sky with X game...
PS3 has a 10 year plan...
Wii is a toy...
People will want HD graphics in 20XX year...
Wii is last gent...
PS3 has better AI and Physics...
People care about HD...
WiiToo (Wii2-WiiHD) in 2009...
I'm right you are wrong...

Etc...

Is the same old death horse, but this time comes from a guy with "Education" thats all, he refuse to listen, to take real data, to take the opinions of some devs in the forum...

His predictions are just that, predictions based on his logic (avoiding all data provided), is like a hunch from leo-j... thats all...

yeah, there isn't much diff in bruce and leo

just that he's older and been around the industry for as long as leo has been alive

but his viewpoints and reasoning isn't much better

it's always interesting to watch the 'old guard' of an industry as a company changes the industry dramatically...they keep holding on to old tenets and try to will the industry to stay the same

they look at the wrong indicators and factors when analyzing the market, etc etc

it happens in every industry, not just video games

btw, a little hint for bruce and others...

disruptive technology is usually less state-of-the-art than what it is replacing

laptops are a prime example; less powerful than desktops, yet increasing market share all the time due to the fact that average consumer only needs so much power and the portability of laptops (even if only toting around the house only) is more important to consumers than having more powerful computing capabilities

kinda like how accessible controls are more important to consumers than having more powerful consoles...the average consumer is fine with the wii's level of graphics/physics/ai/etc

Bruceongames said: Sqrl said: Bruceongames said: Wii mania For the last two weeks the PS3 has outsold the Wii in Japan. Now a lot of this is down to Sony introducing a cheaper version of the PS3. But the biggest factor must be stock availability of the Wii. Nintendo just cannot make enough to keep up with worldwide demand. And with Super Mario Galaxy just out and being proclaimed by many as the best game ever that demand is just going to get worse. The last production figure that Nintendo released was 1.8 million units a month but, confusingly, they say they are shipping an extra 3.5 million units worldwide for christmas. Which could make a total of 7.1 million units over November and December. And they will easily sell them all. The situation in the UK is close to manic. A lady I know put her name on several shop waiting lists and was finally only allowed to buy one if she bought six games at the same time! There are website that tell you of stock availability, but as soon as they say a retailer has some that retailer’s website crashes under the demand. Amazon sold 1,400 units in just ten minutes and secondhand Wiis fetch increasingly higher premiums on Ebay. These are amazing times and they are the consequence of Nintendo making gaming fun for all the family instead of the niche demographic that video gaming has traditionally catered for. The annoying thing is that the industry could have made this massive leap years ago. But lacked the will and ability to do so. Of course this represents a fantastic opportunity for game developers. But they cannot produce the games that they produced before. The audience and it’s expectations are different now. I have posted this development guide before and it is very relevant: 1) Don’t do shovelware. You are just damaging your brand(s). 2) Write Wii specific titles. Don’t port. You have to respect the interface difference. 3) Understand that most Wiis live in the lounge. And most other consoles live in the bedroom. 4) Polish, lots. Then polish some more. 5) Realise that you have to provide entertainment for the population at large. FPS titles are not a good idea. 6) You need to market completely differently. PR in women’s magazines will work a lot better than adverts in game magazines. 7) Talk to your wife/girlfriend. They understand the Wii better than you do. It will be extremely interesting to see what happens after Christmas. Maybe the Wii is a seasonal gift item and sales will fall flat. Or maybe the release of system seller titles such as Wii Fit will keep the demand going.   I agree with this article for the most part, but it does raise some questions when referenced with your most recent article you posted in the OP. Most notably you seem to agree that this craze isn't going away any time soon and since I don't have any indication that you think the 360 or the PS3 will suddenly jump to Wii level sales I am going to go out on a limb and assume you were attempting to write the article in a way that wouldn't immediately reject or repulse anti-Wii readers from finishing it. If that is the case I can definitely understand why you would do it, you are afterall attempting to create a readership, yes?   I write to provoke thought not to create a fanboy pavlovian reaction. The audience for Bruceongames are industry professionals. Wii is an amazing creation of Nintendo and has a fantastic but short future ahead of it. Imagine if someone brought out a console that only displayed in black and white because that is what televisions used to be. This is the situation Wii will be in by Q4 2009. Nintendo are not stupid, they know this, so new product announcements are inevitable.

Of course they will: if the Wii stops selling.

Your predictions are probably incorrect. The Wii is an entertainment phenomenon already, and is still the hottest item in the consumer electronics market.

Also, i'm sure you'll find that most people on this forum know more about the video game market than the so-called "professionals" that read your blog. ;)

Bruceongames said: Avinash_Tyagi said: Cousens is upset because he knows he can't compete with Nintendo on the Wii, his company's games are garbage by comparison, so he fears a Nintendo dominated market   He also has 25 years industry experience. That is 25 years of working 40+ hour weeks, knowing all the key people and making a lot of important decisions. His nail clippings contain more game industry knowledge than several people on this forum put together. As has been demonstrated in this thread. Yet you think you know better. I bet you do brian surgery and design halon colliders in your spare time. There is a massive difference between fanboys and industry professionals but you don't have the education to realise it.

Hello Bruce!

I must say, I'm a bit puzzled by your posts. Not your positions: those would be fine if they seemed to come from well founded analysis, but you have provided no data whatsoever to support your position (do you have any data? I would be absolutely interested in seeing it if you did!), but instead, your posts seem to lack the professionalism and logical rigor you seem to constantly insist you have.

Again, I'm not even talking about the actual arguments themselves here. Little things, like massive syntactical and grammatical errors in your posts -- "brian surgery" is an irony that's a bit difficult to ignore -- or your use of lots of exclamation points!!!! after your topic titles, which actually led me to believe you were a teenager until I read your autobiography. Your poor sentence structure and punctuation would be fine if you were such a teenager (we've seen much worse around here, I'm sure you know), but given your consistent history of pointing out your knowledge and professionalism, it's rather odd that you can't put coherent sentences together on a consistent basis. Do you proofread posts? You should -- you are, apparently, a professional, and this is your field.

But the poor grammar, which initially led me to assume you're a teenager, is only the tip of the ice berg: you lack critical knowledge that frankly shocks me. For example, in this post you claim not to know what Nintendo's production quota is, even though they had announced repeatedly by the time of this posting (Oct. 17, according to your website) that they were producing 1.8 million Wiis a month. Why did an industry professional not have this information? If you are a professional analyst, how could rudimentary information like production quotas evade your notice? I ask these questions honestly, because I would assume that such basic data woudl be the cornerstone of rigorous analysis. And of course, this doesn't even approach complex analysis such as geographical breakdowns of sell through or attach rates by genre or any other statistic that may be more difficult and time consuming to calculate. I noticed several other instances where you seemed to lack knowledge I would assume as a given for a professional industry analyst, and it's discouraging to see you unaware of (seemingly) essential statistical information, even of the basic kind.

Lastly, I noticed you did not respond to two key posts in this thread, which I thought were particularly insightful and worthy of discussion on your part, and it is always discouraging to see a poster of any kind -- let alone a professional in the inudstry -- ignore the more pointed questions that may challenge their point of view. I shall quote them for you below in a separate post, for purposes of readability.

xbebop said: Bruceongames said: Sqrl said: Bruceongames said: Wii mania For the last two weeks the PS3 has outsold the Wii in Japan. Now a lot of this is down to Sony introducing a cheaper version of the PS3. But the biggest factor must be stock availability of the Wii. Nintendo just cannot make enough to keep up with worldwide demand. And with Super Mario Galaxy just out and being proclaimed by many as the best game ever that demand is just going to get worse. The last production figure that Nintendo released was 1.8 million units a month but, confusingly, they say they are shipping an extra 3.5 million units worldwide for christmas. Which could make a total of 7.1 million units over November and December. And they will easily sell them all. The situation in the UK is close to manic. A lady I know put her name on several shop waiting lists and was finally only allowed to buy one if she bought six games at the same time! There are website that tell you of stock availability, but as soon as they say a retailer has some that retailer’s website crashes under the demand. Amazon sold 1,400 units in just ten minutes and secondhand Wiis fetch increasingly higher premiums on Ebay. These are amazing times and they are the consequence of Nintendo making gaming fun for all the family instead of the niche demographic that video gaming has traditionally catered for. The annoying thing is that the industry could have made this massive leap years ago. But lacked the will and ability to do so. Of course this represents a fantastic opportunity for game developers. But they cannot produce the games that they produced before. The audience and it’s expectations are different now. I have posted this development guide before and it is very relevant: 1) Don’t do shovelware. You are just damaging your brand(s). 2) Write Wii specific titles. Don’t port. You have to respect the interface difference. 3) Understand that most Wiis live in the lounge. And most other consoles live in the bedroom. 4) Polish, lots. Then polish some more. 5) Realise that you have to provide entertainment for the population at large. FPS titles are not a good idea. 6) You need to market completely differently. PR in women’s magazines will work a lot better than adverts in game magazines. 7) Talk to your wife/girlfriend. They understand the Wii better than you do. It will be extremely interesting to see what happens after Christmas. Maybe the Wii is a seasonal gift item and sales will fall flat. Or maybe the release of system seller titles such as Wii Fit will keep the demand going.   I agree with this article for the most part, but it does raise some questions when referenced with your most recent article you posted in the OP. Most notably you seem to agree that this craze isn't going away any time soon and since I don't have any indication that you think the 360 or the PS3 will suddenly jump to Wii level sales I am going to go out on a limb and assume you were attempting to write the article in a way that wouldn't immediately reject or repulse anti-Wii readers from finishing it. If that is the case I can definitely understand why you would do it, you are afterall attempting to create a readership, yes?   I write to provoke thought not to create a fanboy pavlovian reaction. The audience for Bruceongames are industry professionals. Wii is an amazing creation of Nintendo and has a fantastic but short future ahead of it. Imagine if someone brought out a console that only displayed in black and white because that is what televisions used to be. This is the situation Wii will be in by Q4 2009. Nintendo are not stupid, they know this, so new product announcements are inevitable.   Of course they will: if the Wii stops selling. Your predictions are probably incorrect. The Wii is an entertainment phenomenon already, and is still the hottest item in the consumer electronics market. Also, i'm sure you'll find that most people on this forum know more about the video game market than the so-called "professionals" that read your blog. ;)

If the people on this forum know so much, why don't they set up in competition with the existing professionals who have built this industry up from zero? The truth is that you know very little but think you know everything. If you actually did know what you were talking about you would be working in the industry instead of being a fanboy. It is interesting that all the professional industry forums are members only. Not only can you fanboys not join, you can't even see what is written in them.

From "TheSource" at 17:47 on 1/08/08:

Bruce what do you make of Japan where PS3 is available for $367, Wii is available for $230, HD adoption rates are far higher than in the West, and DS and Wii still dominate the hardware and software charts? Nine of the top ten titles in Japan were on DS or Wii in 2007? I would argue part of it is the absence of strong competition from the Xbox 360, but at the same time, how dominant does HD have to be for the switch over to strong PS3 sales to occur if HD-rates are already 40-50% in Japan?

 

 

 

From "Sulllah" at 15:50 on 1/08/08

Hi Bruce and welcome to VGChartz. I've tried to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but your arguments are getting less and less convincing. Your assertion that the Wii will slow down and stop selling soon would be a lot more convincing if this were 2006... but unfortunately it's not 2006 anymore. It's 2008, and we've consistently seen the Wii (dramatically) outsell its competition, in every region, at pretty much all times.

You may not know this, but your arguments for why the Wii will suddently stop selling are exactly the same as what we've been hearing here at VGChartz for over a year now. We had some older forum-goers named Kwaad and Hus who insisted, over and over again, that people would stop buying Wiis as more HDTVs were sold. That certainly hasn't happened so far. One reason some of the responses here are getting prickly is because this topic has been debated to death already.

It comes down to this. On the one hand, we have 14 months of HARD sales data, in which the Wii has been successful everywhere and has become the fastest-selling console of all time. On the other hand, we have vague theories and speculation that at some indeterminate date in the future, it will lose popularity and stop selling. Which do you think is the more likely scenario, based on the facts that we have at hand right now?

 

 

 

 

 

Could you respond to these posts please? I would greatly appreciate it! As Sulllah said and I would like to reiterate, I'd be very interested if you have any sales data or statistical analysis of any kind to support your position. That isn't intended to be insulting: I really would be interested. Thanks in advance!  

Bodhesatva said: Bruceongames said: Avinash_Tyagi said: Cousens is upset because he knows he can't compete with Nintendo on the Wii, his company's games are garbage by comparison, so he fears a Nintendo dominated market   He also has 25 years industry experience. That is 25 years of working 40+ hour weeks, knowing all the key people and making a lot of important decisions. His nail clippings contain more game industry knowledge than several people on this forum put together. As has been demonstrated in this thread. Yet you think you know better. I bet you do brian surgery and design halon colliders in your spare time. There is a massive difference between fanboys and industry professionals but you don't have the education to realise it. Hello Bruce!   I must say, I'm a bit puzzled by your posts, Bruce. Not your positions -- those would be fine if they seemed to come from well founded analysis, but you have provided no data whatsoever to support your position (do you have any data? I would be absolutely interested in seeing it if you did!), but instead, your posts seem to lack the professionalism and logical rigor you seem to constantly insist you have. Again, I'm not even talking about the actual arguments themselves here. Little things, like massive syntactical and grammatical errors in your posts -- "brian surgery" is an irony that's a bit difficult to ignore -- or your use of lots of exclamation points!!!! after your topic titles, which actually lead me to believe you were a teenager until I read your autobiography. Your lack of poor sentence structure and punctuation would be fine if you were such a teenager (we've seen much worse around here, I'm sure you know), but given your consistent history pointing out your encylopic knowledge and professionalism, it's rather odd that you can't put coherent sentences together on a consistent basis. Do you proofread posts? You should -- you are, apparently, a professional. But the poor grammar, which initially led me to assume you're a teenager, is only the tip of the ice berg: you lack critical knowledge that frankly shocks me. For example, in this post you claim not to know what Nintendo's production quota is, even though they had announced repeateldy by the time of this posting (Oct. 17, according to your website) that they were producing 1.8 million Wiis a month. How could an industry professional not know this? If you are a professional industry analyst, how could rudimentary information like production quotas evade your notice? This doesn't even approach complex analysis such as geographical breakdowns of sell through or attach rates by genre or any other statistic that may be more difficult and time consuming to calculate. I noticed several other instances where you seemed to lack knowledge I would assume as a given for a professional industry analyst, and it's discouraging to see you unaware of (seemingly) essential statistical information, even of the basic kind. Lastly, I noticed you did not respond to two key posts in this thread, which I thought were particularly insightful and worthy of discussion on your part, and it is always discouraging to see a poster of any kind -- let alone a professional in the inudstry -- ignore the more pointed questions that may challenge their point of view. I shall quote them for you below in a separate post, for purposes of readability.

This November article in my blog discusses Nintendo production quotas: http://www.bruceongames.com/2007/11/28/wii-mania/

Bruceongames said: Bodhesatva said: Bruceongames said: Avinash_Tyagi said: Cousens is upset because he knows he can't compete with Nintendo on the Wii, his company's games are garbage by comparison, so he fears a Nintendo dominated market   He also has 25 years industry experience. That is 25 years of working 40+ hour weeks, knowing all the key people and making a lot of important decisions. His nail clippings contain more game industry knowledge than several people on this forum put together. As has been demonstrated in this thread. Yet you think you know better. I bet you do brian surgery and design halon colliders in your spare time. There is a massive difference between fanboys and industry professionals but you don't have the education to realise it. Hello Bruce! I must say, I'm a bit puzzled by your posts, Bruce. Not your positions -- those would be fine if they seemed to come from well founded analysis, but you have provided no data whatsoever to support your position (do you have any data? I would be absolutely interested in seeing it if you did!), but instead, your posts seem to lack the professionalism and logical rigor you seem to constantly insist you have. Again, I'm not even talking about the actual arguments themselves here. Little things, like massive syntactical and grammatical errors in your posts -- "brian surgery" is an irony that's a bit difficult to ignore -- or your use of lots of exclamation points!!!! after your topic titles, which actually lead me to believe you were a teenager until I read your autobiography. Your lack of poor sentence structure and punctuation would be fine if you were such a teenager (we've seen much worse around here, I'm sure you know), but given your consistent history pointing out your encylopic knowledge and professionalism, it's rather odd that you can't put coherent sentences together on a consistent basis. Do you proofread posts? You should -- you are, apparently, a professional. But the poor grammar, which initially led me to assume you're a teenager, is only the tip of the ice berg: you lack critical knowledge that frankly shocks me. For example, in this post you claim not to know what Nintendo's production quota is, even though they had announced repeateldy by the time of this posting (Oct. 17, according to your website) that they were producing 1.8 million Wiis a month. How could an industry professional not know this? If you are a professional industry analyst, how could rudimentary information like production quotas evade your notice? This doesn't even approach complex analysis such as geographical breakdowns of sell through or attach rates by genre or any other statistic that may be more difficult and time consuming to calculate. I noticed several other instances where you seemed to lack knowledge I would assume as a given for a professional industry analyst, and it's discouraging to see you unaware of (seemingly) essential statistical information, even of the basic kind. Lastly, I noticed you did not respond to two key posts in this thread, which I thought were particularly insightful and worthy of discussion on your part, and it is always discouraging to see a poster of any kind -- let alone a professional in the inudstry -- ignore the more pointed questions that may challenge their point of view. I shall quote them for you below in a separate post, for purposes of readability.   This November article in my blog discusses Nintendo production quotas: http://www.bruceongames.com/2007/11/28/wii-mania/

Thanks Bruce! Although by the time of the original post -- October 17th -- I would assume you would be aware of Nintendo's production levels, as Nintendo has been quite open about their increases in production capacity for some time. But again, this is only a single example: the numerous lapses in knowledge or intuition that I would assume an industry analyst would have (for example, even in the post you just linked, why would you be confused by Nintendo's stated goal to ship 3.5 million extra for the Christmas season? Clearly they were stockpiling supply, which could readily be inferred by simply taking worldwide shipment totals from July onward and seeing that they had not been shipping 1.8 million/month despite reportedly producing that much during that period onward). It's a bit discouring to see such basic knowledge get missed (in the former example) or somehow misinterpreted (in the latter), especially when someone so consistently points out their professional industry ties.

I would also be interested in responses to other portions of my post, if you could please! As I and others have said, I'd be interested to see the sales data and statistical analysis that led you to assume the positions you have taken.

The November entry was fine (except for the last paragraph). And some of the other articles are fine, too. But you seem to put two and two together and make it five. With all of the facts (even the ones in your own blog) pointing to Wii getting to be a huge success, it seems you just want to put your head in the sand and dream about about the PS3s great tech resulting in big sales.

I'll quote your November entry:

Talk to your wife/girlfriend. They understand the Wii better than you do.