I'm working on an article about the effects of competition on the different consoles on the market. As it seems people are evenly split between whether the Wii competes directly or indirectly with the other two, I thought I'd round up everyone's opinion in one thread.

This is merely a thread about your opinion on the subject. As such, I'd ask that no one go all out to disprove any other person, whether they have a drastically different position than you do.

So the question is: Do you believe that the Wii competes directly or indirectly with the PS3/360? More specifically, if the Wii didn't exists, would the other consoles sales increase significantly (more than, say, 2 million between the two), or would they be at similar levels that they are now? Assume that Nintendo either went multi-platform 3rd party, or released a similar console as Sony/Microsoft called GameTriangle (which probably would have failed miserably).

You can give your opinion and then (if you wish) give reasons as to why you have that opinion. You don't have to go by my exact definition of what "increased sales" means, but you say something along the lines of "the 360/PS3 would have more users by more than a million each, but I still don't think they are competing directly with the Wii," even though you would almost be contradicting yourself (so you'll need a good explanation).

Thanks everyone.

I could have sworn people had different views on this.

From other threads:

Should I just consider those sum things up? lol

People seem to shy away from my threads. /shrugs 

I just realized that I put this in the "Gaming" section instead of the "Sales" section.

So I'm gonna bump it one more time to see if I can get any responses. Otherwise I won't bother doing the article because I'm starting to think they're too long for people...

I write books! MUHAHA.

Anyway.

I'll say indirectly. the PS360 target market seems to be the normal "hardcore" gamer, while the Wii targets some "hardcore" gamers, but also a new "casual" market.

of course they are com,epterting. It isn't as blakc and white as "hardocre" and "casual", it si fvery grey, and that doesn't even count "maintstream" gamers, the ones that buy 4 or 5 "hardcore" games for the fduration of a cosnoels life. If they aren't competeing, then this generatiion is pathetic. in it's 3rd year and less than 30 million consoles sold (if you exclude the wii from actually competeing in this generation). If the wii isn't a real "next gen" console, then the "next gen" genertation is a massive failure in sales.

Well I got 2 responses. And then one of them got (for now) deleted.

The wii is suppose to expand the market not replace the more active gamers( I guess hardcore) with the less active ones( I guess Casual.) It takes potential hardcores from the other consoles which means it competes.

I do think that Wii is in direct competition. While it has positioned itself to be a great second console for hardcores and to appeal to those who aren't interested in another console, it's also a great single console for a hardcore gamer to pick up to the exclusion of other consoles.

People who try to say that Wii doesn't compete with other consoles usually just don't want you to compare it to another console for some reason or another. Either they want to defend some of the features that the Wii lacks or they want to define the console war as being HD only. Such efforts are intellectually dishonest, IMO. They're just trying to frame the debate to their advantage.

It seems to me this gen is a series of extremes - Nintendo have gone for an all out attack on the casual market and MS are still doing the same as what they did last gen with targeting FPS and action fans with a couple of driving games to boot but the PS3 is seeing more 360 type games so far with a bunch of FPS being ported from the 360 and very little exclusives.

To me this is a combination of the Wii being so different (physically not demographically) and the other 2 being so similar so that companies can port and hit both, where the only market last gen was PS2 or PS2 / ports this market also seems to be split with 2 with Wii or PS3 / 360.

This Wii is competing with the other 2 no less than the PS2 was competing with the gamecube last gen imo as it's splitting the developers target platforms as I believe without it there simply wouldn't be as many PS3 / 360 ports and more exclusives, this effects sales of each console in it's own right.