Also, props to J_Jay2000. Damn, you made my point much better than I did. Something else I forgot to mention; someone mentioned that Sony could take a hit from the PS3 failing. I don't know if any of you follow the stock market, but Sony's other properties have been underperforming recently which has caused Sony to take a hit in its stocks. And for those of you not familiar with the stock market, stocks are tantamount to a company's balls. A hard enough hit there is enough to bring it to its knees.

Those that didn't support it didn't even start supporting the GC. Most went to the PS1 in N64 time, and didn't support the GC from the start, as the PS2 was out already. This is not true at all. It's a mistake to think Nintendo is putting everything on the Wiimote. Their strategy is far better than that. If you don't see it, then perhaps their competitor won't either, which will make their strategy as much more effective. Wiimote is just adressing gameplay and exclusives. Improving the perception of other member of the family about videogames, and more specifically Nintendo consoles, is another. This is more important than you think. There is more of course, like improving the incentive for 3rd party devs to go on Nintendo console. But the family is important, so the word can pass that there's this videogame console that is like no other one. Because you can't show the Wii games like you can show a DS game. That's just not true at all. Beside, it's easy for you to say that now. The consensus was completely backwards before Nintendogs really launched the DS. It was said that the DS was a useless gimmick for GBA games. Couldn't be more wrong. Nintendo 1st party titles appealing mostly to kids is a teenage male FPS playing gamer's view. Basically, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Of course they appeal to kids, as they appeal to just about everyone. As for the support from 3rd parties, I suppose you mean japanese 3rd parties. Because the support from western 3rd parties was really poor, especially compared to the PSP which launched later and had less units. Until after Nintendogs skyrocketed DS numbers, did they go like mad to develop for the DS. But they can't release poor games if they want to sell well now, it's too late. As good games take at least 2 years to make, and the Nintendogs success was just 1 year earlier, you won't see good western games before end of this year. You make excuses now for the gamble Nintendo made, which is easy. You just forgot to portray the spirit of the time, which was that PSP would *destroy* the DS in sales and games would be far better. Nintendo basically disrupted themselves in their best market which is handheld, which is VERY difficult to do, most companies can't do that. And you try to say it wasn't a big challenge or risk ? The producer of Okami would be even sadder that you prove to him that innovative games have no chance with gamers like you. Well, it's his fault too, as a game like Okami would have had more chances on the Gamecube than the PS2, despite the overwhelming number of PS2. I'm sure it would sell far more on the Wii too. New quality franchises can't always appear from AAA games. These established games are important for the market leader, which gets most of them, and sell thanks to them. But when you're not the leader, you need fresh concepts. Nintendo hope to get these fresh ideas with the Wii, from the small publishers that can't support a loss on a PS3 or XB360 game. Auto fulfilling sentence !! You're saying the reason casual games sell so well on the DS is because they are on the DS. Uh, we didn't learn anything. The reason they sell so well is because Nintendo made its marketing towards those casual gamers, which no one else has ever done in the videogame industry. Except EA with the Sims perhaps. And the games delivered what was marketed, which is even more important. Nonsense ! It's Wii Sports that carries this console. You can't understand Wii's success, because you're still stuck in your hardcore FPS gamer's view. You think Zelda:TP is more appealing to casuals than Wii Sports, and can't understand it could be the other way around. You don't even see Nintendo's strategy either, as you couldn't be more wrong on all counts. Zelda DOESN'T compete with Rayman or Elebits or Excite Truck. I told you about catering to 3rd parties. Then I'm sure that had Mario Party been out, Rayman wouldn't have sold. Had Mario Kart been out, Excite Truck (well, that's not 3rd party) wouldn't have sold. Elebits is on a league of its own, but wouldn't have been out with high costs for HD involved.

"Its possible "casual" gamers don't buy as many games because so few are made for them. With tons of casual games on DS, software sales are killing PSP's "hardcore" games." Because the install base is larger? Or because the sheer fact that there was not that many games worth owning on the PSP until recently? I think 2007 is going to bring in very different attach rates for the PSP. "Are we talking about business or reviewing games? Red Steel got lukewarm reviews because it was pushed for the launch window, but a solid sales performance for the game despite the reviews will encourage other devs. More encouraging then... What is the PS3s big third party hit? Uh... Madden?" I wasn't even refering to the reviews because I played it myself but it is more about faith in the console. I consider raving rabbids ( and zelda) to have one of the best FPS sequences on the wii. Which is sad because I felt that would be the best function. So are you really wondering how good exclusive games might affect sales versus bad ones? "Those charts align the launches. Of course N64 had a bigger launch, seeing it was an established brand. But align those charts by date, and you'll see the N64 never caught up to total PSone sales at any point in either territory." Your right the PS1 really did kill the n64... sorry. "Good for you. But a game like MGS4 isn't going to have a draw of more than 6 or 7 million -- like say the biggest games on XB or GC -- and thats by far the biggest franchise you listed." And that would only be important if the PS line only banked off a few big hitters. The PS line hits its stride because of many titles selling 1- 2 million +. I am just guessing here but maybe..... just maybe...... that has what kept the PS line at the top all these years. "Nintendo has somewhere from 6-10 billion in the bank. They could take an XBox-like hit and survive, but they aren't that foolish." I am not even going there. " In profits? Maybe in sales, because they were more expensive, but Nintendogs' sales are on par with all of those franchises, even GTA, and the game likely has a higher profit margin per game." Grand Theft Auto: Vice City achieved 13 million units sold and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas achieved 14 million units. This is on the PS2 alone and not including the xbox or PC counterparts. Are you seriously going to imply that rockstar did not even recoup thier cost more than enough? "Nintendogs has sold 11 million and counting. Its outsold every FF game, both Halo games, and will probably pass up GTA3 this year." Now clear this up for me. Are you talking about nintendogs alone or Nintendogs: Dalmatian and Friends , Nintendogs: Best Friends Edition, Nintendogs: Lab and Friends, Nintendogs: Dachshund and Friends,Nintendogs: Chihuahua and Friend all together? "Compare the amount of third party releases on the systems. I mean, games can't sell if they don't exist. The Wii is not the Gamecube, and the PS3 is not the PS2, and now that some vastly superior Wii sales numbers are out there, along with the fact that Wii development is faster and cheaper, its going to mean lots of Wii support. We're hearing about studios starting Wii development seemingly every day right now... If Wii is the best selling system, it poses the least risk to 3rd parties, regardless of the GC." Target audience is the main deciding factor so just because it is easier to make a game no dev is going to do just that without catering to some sot of audience. The audience they would most likely try to capture will more than likely be enamored with the more familiar nintendo franchises. Nintendo themselves are the biggest threat to third party devs. "The PS line has absolutely been successful because of games. Agreed. But third party devs are not making returns on PS3 games right now... Not in the least. Why do you think there are so many ports from PS3 to 360, and why do you think developers are holding back games until later? Why do you think after the domination of the PS2 that support is evening out between the systems already? It was evening out even before launch. Its not because there's a lot of profit potential on PS3. The known heavy hitters will be very important indeed, but if they were all that mattered, then Sega, Sony, MS, etc never would have even been able to establish themselves. Genesis, PSone, XB all created new important franchises, and PSone totally reshaped the whole landscape of important franchises. It can happen again." I guess you haven't kept up with the news. Quite a few companies met and or exceeded thier quota's for the PS3 including EA and take 2. I am pretty sure they aimed low because of Price point of the system but I do not think any dev is afraid. Even Epics head honcho had some very postive statements about how he feels the PS3's position in this market is. Also i am sure alot of games were pushed back to take advantage of the new SDK that allows access to the PS3's hardware scaler. I wan't to let everyone know I own all of this generation systems. I owned all of last gen systems. I am only a fanboy of games. But because of that My view of gaming trends and market may be a little different. I am not saying that the Wii will not come out on top or the 360 will die but what I am seeing is the Wii getting ready to aim to the same crowd the GC was aimed at. The "fun" crowd. Gameplay amped up to the max, weak stories heavy on the party vibe. The 360 has an overabundance of shooters now and varying flavors of shooters coming down the pipe. If anyone here has not noticed some of the best selling games of recent generations has had a combination of gameplay, graphics and story. I think that is very telling. What "most" people prefer is a combination of the best elements of a game instead of being forced to choose over some. I will be eagerly supporting all 3 systems but I have higher hopes for the PS3 because of the previous systems library. and Prod http://biz.yahoo.com/indie/070130/596_id.html?.v=1 http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/06q3/ Check out Segments and Affiliates Q3 FY06. I really do think that Sony can take a loss from the gaming division and keep on chugging. Sony is not a small company and after inverstors see this data there is no reall reason to back off of sony's stocks.

By the time the PSP was released in america the DS outsold it by 3 times the amount. In japan the ds was released only 7 days earlier and sold near 6 times more than the PSP. I know everyone loves for nintendo to be the underdog but when the DS was released it was recieved well. You may not have felt that way but many other people warmed up to it immediatly and the sales show it. I keep on hearing how the DS was not liked when it first was released but when It was released all the students in my college seem to get one. I do not buy into the underdog hype. And wii sports may be more attractive to casual gamers but (and plleas correct me if I am wrong) hasn't zelda outsold wii sports?

I think the poor performance of multi-platform titles shows how many multi-system owners the GC had. Remember Wii is designed to get exclusives instead of multi-platform games though, or to incorporate faux-exclusivity into some games like Tiger Woods for example. GC operated on the same terms as PS2, Wii does not. Sigh... This is getting highly tedious. You're not going to believe it until you see it, I think. Suffice to say, it isn't about the Wiimote, its about the business plan behind it. Those casual games are many times outselling Ninty's traditional franchises. Nintendogs has outsold Mario, Brain Training and Animal Crossing have outsold Mario Kart! Its Zelda carrying Wii right now in the West... This is true... But... Wait.

I mean a higher attach rate. Bottom line is that with a ton of casual software on DS, it has a higher attach rate of software. Being a potentially good setup for FPS games I think was a fluke for Wii. I don't know if great FPS games will come or not. Its not a major part of the strategy behind the system, but obviously every game helps. Some 55%+ of the total PS2 games sold were non-million sellers. There were some 2500 games released for the system and about 170-180 of them sold a million copies. The best selling GC software had a much higher attach rate than the best selling PS2 software... Like 1:3, as opposed to 1:6, ~. Right on down the line... The top 5, 10, 20 games for GC accounted for a much higher percentage of total game sales then the similar games on PS2... Now, ask yourself... WHY did that happen? Hint: brand name isn't the whole story. I'm sure they raked in the cash. Nintendogs could pass up all the GTA games in sales this year (big "could"), though. And it may have a higher profit margin too. I mean all the versions combined. If Nintendo flying solo could eat up all the potential game sales on their system, they wouldn't have any problems, would they. Nintendo themselves may continue to get the most mega-hits on their system, but there is ample room for third parties. Nintendo should work with third parties to strategically position their games. They actually might want to launch alongside certain killer apps, so that they can get some of the spillover and be the "second game" a lot of people buy along with Mario or whatever. But its ridiculous that the big complaint about GC and N64 was "the long drought between games" and now people say that "third parties are scared to compete with Nintendo titles." Lets wait til Epic announces a PS3 project. Maybe you haven't kept up with all the news either. 2 third parties, albeit huge ones, doesn't describe the whole picture. Majesco, Atlus, Atari, Hudson... These little companies can't afford to look anywhere but Wii, or maybe XBLA (or of course DS)... Majors like of course Ubisoft are bringing the Wii support, and THQ rolled out a bunch of liscensed crap for Wii launch while ignoring PS3... Then you've got Sqaure saying outright they don't want Sony to win, the maker of PS3s biggest upcoming exclusive, MGS4's Kojima, can't shut up about Wii and even market leader EA has pretty obviously been preparing for a Wii support ramp-up. The fact that two mega-publishers can make money on multi-ported sports franchises isn't surprising or indicitive of the way the tide is turning overall. Oh, they can afford it. They've got 60 or 70 billion in the bank too. But they could afford to fund the digging of a giant hole, and literally throw money into it too. They aren't going to subsidize a division which takes loses in the long term. I think Sony's PS division has a "corporate restructuring" in its future.

Who makes Unreal Tournament and the Unreal Engine then?

All in all the DS is the example that I was trying to point out. The attach rate has to do with the amount of good games. Casual or not, it is about the amount and you have described why having such a large number of games leads to better attach rate. There is no question the PS2 has the highest attach rate for any console. That is because in addition to a plethora of stellar game titles the had a large amount of good games and quite a few that garnered cult like attention. The strength of the 360 and the Wii looks like they are going to rely on their most popular franchises ( while trying to create a few new ones) but it is almost a very telling sign how quickly a successful game turns into sustaining franchises on each of those systems. I can rely on the heavy hitters to return but expect quite a few unkowns to grab my attention on the PS line. While the xbox and the nintendo lines catch me by surprise when there are good titles that are outside of thier most popular franchises. It comes down to games but the numbers will show that the PS follower have been open to titles. Most PS2 games did not need to sell a million + to make a profit. Quite a few games were low budget and turned a profit.. like disgaea. Alot of games didn't need to sell a million but obviously they sold enough to keep these companies happy. If you look at the list of games that are in production for the PS3 you will notice that quite a large number of them would not be considered large dev companies. So here is how I see the case of dev costs..... it is a choice. There are plenty of devs who have gone on record and describe how easy it is to dev on the PS3 and quite a few have said how much easier it is to dev on the PS3 than it is to dev on the PS2. Team 17 ( the creators of worms) who just adopted lemmings for the PS3 did not find the process difficult at all. It jsut goes to show that it depends on which direction each devs is heading towards that describes the complexity of deving for the PS3. After being so long winded I am just saying is that there is no real indication of the Wii taking the industry by storm because the advantages that it provides for the devs are the same as the GC offered. The only new factor is the control setup and I for one do not think it will matter as much. I have yet to play a game on my wii that I think uses the controler to bring you into the game more than a regular controller can and yes I am also talking about zelda.

EA, Eidos, Namco, Ubisoft. Those same developers continued supporting the Xbox, but stopped with the Gamecube because their titles sold far worse on that platform. This has been well established, and it's why those other devs never started supporting it to begin with. The business plan revolves around the Wiimote. If you take away the Wiimote, then you basically have a Gamecube with online play. Less-than-stellar online play, at that. The Wii without the Wiimote would be a weaker PS3 and 360 just as the Gamecube was a weaker PS2 and Xbox. Developers have even criticized the Wii for its substandard hardware and online service, and that's what these devs would have to work with should the Wiimote novelty wear off. I'm not saying that the DS would have been as wildly popular without the stylus, but it would have still been successful. It was Nintendo's first-party titles that skewed the Gamecube towards kids. Why do you think the general consensus was that it was a "kiddie console" with "kiddie games"? I just told you that Nintendo's first party titles would have sold it. It would have been seen as the successor the the GBA(even though that's not what Nintendo originally wanted), and the third parties would have come onboard just as they did with Nintendo's other handhelds. Sony wanted the PSP to specifically target older males whereas the DS has a broader appeal(although most of its userbase is still kids). No points here, really. For your information, I never criticized the DS. I really didn't even care about it(or the PSP) when it first launched, so stop assuming things based on nothing. The rest of this paragraph is just you restating the same thing I replied to in the first place, so I'm not going to waste my time. What are you even trying to say here? This doesn't address anything that I've said. [QUOTE Auto fulfilling sentence !! You're saying the reason casual games sell so well on the DS is because they are on the DS. Uh, we didn't learn anything. The reason they sell so well is because Nintendo made its marketing towards those casual gamers, which no one else has ever done in the videogame industry. Except EA with the Sims perhaps. And the games delivered what was marketed, which is even more important.[/QUOTE] No, that's not what I said at all. Seriously......... Why are arguing against a point that I didn't make, and why are you still making retarded assumptions? First of all, I never said that Zelda competed with those games, so that's a strawman argument. Second of all, I don't even play FPS's. So go ahead and feel stupid right about now. Why am I even repying to this? Your posts lack any structure and you don't even really have a point to make. You've done little more than take what Eric said, restate it with different vocabulary words, and then you're using this unfounded assumption that I'm some close-minded, FPS-loving elitist gamer to buttress the rest of your silliness. Erik Aston Those casual games are many times outselling Ninty's traditional franchises. Nintendogs has outsold Mario, Brain Training and Animal Crossing have outsold Mario Kart! 1) Animal Crossing is a Nintendo flagship titles that was established back on the N64. 2) New Super Mario Brothers has outsold Brain Age by almost 2-1. 3) Mario Kart DS has also outsold Brain Age. You are right about Nintendogs, but even that is a first-party title.

Hi, Static " What exactly are you trying to prove? MS took a loss on the xbox by 4 billion but they are stilll here. Sony can take extreme losses before making the "choice" to back off. Nintendo and sega are mainly game companies. Sega couldn't take the losses and I highly doubt nintendo can as well. " MS took that extreme loss on xbox without exit the market because they can afford it ( MS is the wealthiest company in the world ). With 4 billion $ loss Xbox sold only slighty better than GC, it's tragicomic. Xbox1 was NOT the success that many americans think ( thanks to MS's PR ). 4 Billion $ is a tremendous loss that even MS can't suffer for long time ( Now Peter Moore's key word is : Profit.Profit.Profit.). MS is aiming for PC's digital distribution market. Do you know who is the biggest threat to this market ? PS3 because Sony with this console/computer/player want to do a Paradigm shift : Sony want to shift digital distribution from PC to living room. So Xbox projects are MS's retaliation to Sony's revolution... Here the cashflow ( A.K.A war chest ) of MS, Sony and Nintendo : MS ( whole company not just MSGameStudios ) = about 31.8 billion $ Sony ( whole company not just SCE ) = about 4,7 billion $ Nintendo = about 6.6 billion $ Here where I take these data: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/10/console_wars_a_.html Nintendo do only VG and it's not so crazy to take that loss. Sony main income in the last years was made by SCE whereas SonyElettronic department did very bad. Sony CAN NOT take extreme loss on VG department. " When did the amiga have two very sucessful console before it? The called the PS2 a computer when it was released as well remember? Did that affect it sales? Why is the Wii like the NES? " Are you kidding ? Amiga was made by Commodore. Commodore was , at that time, the most successful home-computer maker. Commodore's Commodore 64 sold so well that many in '80 thought that the future of VG was in home-computers and not in console ( for example, Trip Hawkins president of EA ). PS2 was called "computer" but it wasn't a computer. Ps3 functionalities tend to replace those of PC. Again, Wii is like the NES because both of them have the same goal : disrupt a market. Remember : Iwata's Nintendo is very different by Yamauchi's Nintendo. For the rest, there is Erik's post .... For Mamec: " Which strategy had Nintendo?, the strategy to lost in every generation 14millons of systems and reduced at 50% the software sells?. " No, Nintendo's strategy is "Taking names and kicking asses" ( I'm just kidding ). Nintendo's strategy for both Wii and DS is "Disruption", so this strategy has nothing to do with those of N64, Snes or GC. If you read Erik 's posts and mine maybe you can understand it.