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Forums - Gaming - can we finally agree the wii was a fad

rolltide101x on 08 January 2014
drake4 said:
sonicfan1373 said:
drake4 said:
Cobretti2 said:
Lets see

Running total sales at ed of each year approx

2006 = 3.2m
2007 = 20m
2008 = 44m
2009 = 67m
2010 = 84m
2011 = 94m
2012 = 99m
2013 = 100m

yes fads last for 6 years lol.

yup wii sold 100 million, it sold great for about 4 years, but that's what fads are they sell great then disappear quickly, looks at console sales history, you don't go from selling 100 million consoles then the successor that selling worse then dreamcast, it just shows how big of a fad the wii really was, and that the market has moved on.


By your logic the Playstation 2 would also have been a fad considering that its successor sold far less than it did and had a rough start for the first two years. For the first six months of their successor's lives the DS and Gameboy Advance were fads because how their succeding system sold far below expectations during the early protions of their life.

Of course, neither of these systems were fads because they sustained long-term momentum (much like the Wii did for 6 years) and I feel there are other reasons why the Wii dropped off so quickly at the end of its life. Firstly, notice the big drop-off that took place between 2011-2012, it coincides with the drop-off in first-party Nintendo software the last major Wii title to be published from Nintendo for Wii was in 2011 (Zelda: SS). Secondly, Wii software continued to sell over its life and even now that the system is close to death (this year we saw continued high sales of Just Dance and Skylanders), if people only bought Wii for Wii Sports then Wii software sales would have been far lower than they are now. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are both continuing to see sustained support from both first-parties and third-parties alike which is why they have not dropped off so quickly. Furthermore, I attribute the lack of Wii U sales to the price of the console and lack of content to justify its price to most people (software and price is what sells hardware) rather than its predecessor being a dead fad; if you were to ask me why the 3DS, PSP, PS3 did not do so well at the start of their life I would give you the same reason why the Wii U is not doing so well.   

the wiiu is not in the same position its not even close to being a ps3, its a dead console in the us and in europe, and the main reason ps3 sales declined was the price and the 360, the 360 had better graphics on mulitplatdorm games, a much better price, better online and a controller that was far better then the ds3.

You can argue the rest but to say the 360s controller is "far better" than the DS3 is complete non-sense. The 360s DPad is god awful

As for the Wii being a fad I think it was, it fell apart after a while and its successor is not doing well.



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Viper1 on 08 January 2014
fordy said:
All consoles are fads...

This guy gets it.

ALL consoles are fads.  They start selling great and then they stop selling.  Period.

Don't use some arbitrary time period as the guideposts to qualify one console a fad and not others just to fit your agenda. 



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Acevil on 08 January 2014
Viper1 said:
fordy said:
All consoles are fads...

This guy gets it.

ALL consoles are fads.  They start selling great and then they stop selling.  Period.

Don't use some arbitrary time period as the guideposts to qualify one console a fad and not others just to fit your agenda. 

Pretty much, people don't seem to understand product life cycles in relative to a fad.

A fad in terms of product life cycle, is something that is in for very short term, and by short term usually ranges from couple of months to a year, but even that defination is out the window, because it would mean Iphones are fads, and tablets are fads. 

What happened however is Nintendo was sucessful with the Wii, and aren't sucessful with the Wii U. 



 

hinch on 08 January 2014

The Wii wasn't a fad. The main aspect of the console (the controls) however, I'd say, was. If you looked at how the casual audience flocked to the Wii Sport/Wii Fit craze.. for them only to move onto Kinect in the later years of the 7th gen, then drop it was nothing. Is very fad-like. The console itself though, I wouldn't call a fad.



BMaker11 on 08 January 2014

everyone saying "it sold X amount of Y years" and that's the justification for it not being a fad: do you think people would have bought it in droves if it didn't have motion control?

Would its library, which was pretty identical to the GCN (Melee to Brawl, Sunshin to Galaxy, etc) plus a ton of shovelware, justify 100M people buying it, if not for the gimmick of motion control?

Why do you think Kinect and Move came out?

Also, "haha it sold great for 6-7 years, it totally a fad" sarcasm is faulty. Boy bands sold millions of copies of CDs for many years.....still doesn't mean boy bands weren't a fad



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yo_john117 on 08 January 2014

I'm locking this thread since it appears to be nothing but flamebait.



BMaker11 on 08 January 2014
hinch said:
The Wii wasn't a fad. The main aspect of the console (the controls) however, I'd say, was. If you looked at how the casual audience flocked to the Wii Sport/Wii Fit craze.. for them only to move onto Kinect in the later years of the 7th gen, then drop it was nothing. Is very fad-like. The console itself though, I wouldn't call a fad.

That makes no sense, since without the control scheme, you can't play the games. And games define a games console. You can't separate motion controls from the Wii itself. The Wii is motion control. So if you agree that motion control is a fad, you, by default, have to agree that the Wii is one as well



benao87 on 08 January 2014

Sometimes I picture the Wii as a nasty raper from an obscure hentai movie, the amount of butt-hurts from all these years is amazing.

OP fails trying to deliver a good argument when all it has to say is that he doesn't like the Wii. The fifth iteration of Just Dance is charting this week, and it has sales that so many developers would want for their games.

The problem with the last years of the Wii, and the launch of WiiU, has more to do with the managerial skills of Nintendo than the lack of potential of Motion Gaming.



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