SM64 was a launch title that sold 11m+ units. Nintendo had the top tier games to match everything on PSone, but it didn't have the huge catalog behind it. The Wii is the only system developers can make any money on with a "B" game without porting it. Its also selling faster than either of the other consoles in the early going. Its the only system which is realistic for a smaller or marginalized developer to work for. If Wii remains the fastest selling system, publishers will be down with it.
Round 3:
What about Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade? Both are HUGE mediums for both systems that allow developers to make games on the cheap, distribute them cheap, and keep their costs low. Yes, a PS3 game will cost a huge amount to make, but there are other means to bring the games to the gamers.
On another note, I really wonder what the true costs of making a PS3 game to a Wii or any other system will truely be.
About publishers adopting the Wii: Remember how long it tpok for the DS to get major 3rd party support? 2 years from DS's launch. And thats the DS - one of the fastest selling systems in history. How quickly will devs jump on board for a system that has a 1.1m user base in America that only had a 14m userbase last generation? This is a questions dev's have to answer before they act.
Its much cheaper to develop on Wii's controller than to develop for HD. You've got third parties estimating it will cost 6.5 million extra to upscale graphics on PS3 over PS2 games, and sell 500,000 copies to break even, and then you've got one man development teams getting games out in time for Wii's European launch.
Again, having that 20 or 60gb HD will come in very handy. IF people really like games that aren't pushing the envelope with the hardware, the PSN will do very well to entice developers to develop games. Programming for a PS3 with 7 cores is hard, but you can always take the Saturn route, and program with 1 SPU. Remember, 1 PS3 PSU is twice as fast as the CPU in the Wii, therefore the graphics would STILL be better, and dev costs would be very very small.
What are you talking about? Look at the yearly summary charts on this very site. They say that N64 NEVER led PSone in either Japan or NA, and never beat it in a single year, either. N64 had a superior launch, due to being an established brand, but thats it. The big lack of games hurt N64 from day one.
Look at the MONTHLY charts first, buddy. The PS1 launched with 144k units, then only went on to sell roughly 2m units in the next year before the N64 launch. The N64 launched with nearly 400k units in sales, and beat the PS1 every month except for 1 from that September to the next August. It nearly overcame a 2m unit deficit that the PS1 had gained in the hear. However, in the next September FFVII launched and the rest is history. Get your facts straight - N64 had a superb launch, but eventually the lack of 3rd party support killed it.
A lot of them will go to Wii, because they can afford it and because they can play it with their girlfriend.
Nintendo has lost a big part of the existing gamer base over the last 2 generations already, when that was the chief thing they were competing for. The existing "middle road gamer" is still the second large group that they'll hit after the "non-gamer" (which is by far the largest group of all: game systems have never reached even 40% penetration in households.) These "middle-road" gamers are the type that might be "waiting for the price to come down" on PS3, seeing that there faith is still in that brand, but that gives the cheaper systems (both of them) a looong time to get some interesting games out there, while peoples PS2s start collecting dust.
Yet the fact is, I seriously doubt that in the US and Europe, the non-gamer really wants to buy a game. Thus why they are a non-gamer. Yes, I am sure non-gamers would be interested in the Wii, but are they really $250 interested in it? Lets look at the facts, during the Wii launch in the US and Europe, Zelda: TP had a 85% attach rate. Zelda is NOT a non-gamer game. It is a hardcore Nintendo fanboy game. Japan has a huge casual market, thats why TP didn't do nearly what it did in the US. Not only that, we cannot actually see who makes up the Wii purchase base in the US, since Wii Play isn't out, and Wii Sports is a pack-in. Now, if Wii Sports wasn't a pack-in, and it outsold Zelda, or got very very close, we could assume that casuals bought the Wii, but we cannot. However, again, when 85% of Americans and Europeans bought Zelda, that tells me its mostly hardcore consumers that waited in line because Zelda was coming out. Not john and suzie casual.
Aren't those examples of systems which didn't catch on in Japan, and were never able to become the worldwide market leader? My examples were systems which did catch on in Japan, and then later moved into firm leads in every other market too.
But certainly not in the same way. I can say the same thing about the US: No system has won the world without winning the US. PS2's fanbase in Japan actually was less than that of the PS1. Despite that, PS2 outsold PS1 in Europe and the USA. Japan isn't the trendsetter anymore. It's a huge, very important market, but it isn't the be-all end-all of gaming anymore.
Well Nintendogs has now outperformed all those titles except GTA, and is nipping at GTA3s heels. NSMB outperformed all those titles except GTA too, and the Sims is the second best selling (non-pack-in) game of all time. With all the expansion packs, the Sims franchise has actually slightly outsold the GTA franchise. That's right: the ultimate "casual" franchise on PC already outsells the supposedly all-important console franchise of last-gen. Hm.
We're comparing DS titles (which Nintendo has ALWAYS dominated the handheld market since they invented the market itself) to console titles....Huge difference.
Actually, World of Warcraft is threatening the Sims, and has a 8m PAYING MONTHLY userbasis. That earns Blizzard far more money than Maxis does with the Sims. I don't remember Sims: Hot Date selling 2.64m units w/w in 24hrs like Burning Crusade did, did you?
Also, your comparing 1 Sims game with 50 expansions to just upto 3 GTA games....Huge difference there. Thats like saying "every game with mario, added together has outsold every game with Halo characters in it".
We did see the PS1 competing with the Gamecube, despite an even greater difference in power. It outsold it in 2002 in NA. Hmm. FF7 was important for its "cinematic" style, which became pervasive over the last 10 years. Gears of War won't be remembered nearly as well as Wii Sports.
Then why has Gears of War outsold Wii Sports, despite 1.1m copies being giveaways?
Good business moves are universal, and ALWAYS work if they are followed through on. No console has ever been able to attract developers or consumers in the later years of its cycle due to being more powerful. The only time a more powerful console led in worldwide net marketshare was with the SNES leading the Genesis. But the "war" between those two consoles was full of mismanagement on both sides. The Genesis tried to push those attachments to make it more powerful than SNES, and SNES focused so much on first party, that third parties ran away in relief towards the PS1 as soon as they knew SNES would be phased out. Every other time in history when the philosophy behind a system was that power would garner sales or developer support, it has failed to win the market.
Power has absolutely nothing to do with sales, nothing. No system sells due to power, or lack of it. Systems sell because of games. Power helps augment things, but it does not hurt it (unless the system is $600, like the PS3).
Again, as I have stated, I don't think Sony is using a great strategy. Again, I believe the PS3 will lose 40% of Sonys entire fanbase. That is ungodly. No system has EVER done that poorly. Nintendo was on a downward trend from SNES to N64 to GC, but none of those systems saw more than a 33% decline in fanbase. The PS3, however, will see that. But again, my belief is that all the gains the Playstation brand gained in the past 10 years won't entirely be lost. Tons of it will, but I still just dont see it being enough to "dethrone" it from #1. However, Sony will take such a beating this generation from the Wii in Japan, and the 360 in the US to only give the PS3 a shadow of its former self.
GAMES make or break systems. With far less third party support, and without the supposedly important DVD player, first party games propelled GC nearly as far as XBox. Why do you think, of all the companies to fall from first place in the console wars, Nintendo has had the slowest, most graceful decent?
Your comparing Nintendo, a company that has been around for 100 years, helped create a major console market, and has atleast 5 of the top 10 franchises in history, to Microsoft a no-name console startup that recieved tons of bad publicity and negativity surrounding them cash-cowing into the console market, and asking WHY the GC nearly beat out the Xbox? Like you said, Games. GC didn't have them then, and I don't think they have them now.
A quick search shows 3 third party 2-million sellers on N64, and one on GC... Which happens to come from that dead franchise Sonic, btw. Third parties do produce the bulk of games, and the bulk of games they produce are not FFs or GTAs. Look at the giant list on this site of over 170 million selling PS2 titles. Then consider that all those million sellers account for well under half of all PS2 sales. Then consider that you have developers saying they have to sell 500,000 copies of a game on PS3 to break even. Where are all these little games going to go? To the system they can be most profitable on: one which has sold faster out of the gate and is cheaper to develop for...
And the vast majority of those 500k to 1m units were sold and established on Playstaiton systems.
Again, devs would have to sell 500k to break even if they were spending $10m or more on a game. I still don't believe games like Guitar Hero 1 or even 2 cost that much, and despite that, sold very very well.
A dev has to consider what system is cheap to develop for, and what systems you can port to. The PS3 has the advantage of getting major support from multi-ports that the 360 and PS3 will get, but not the Wii. There is still a huge list of games that will be on PS3 and 360 but not the Wii. Most of these games will help repair that negative Playstaiton image.
You must think Nintendo games are a lot better and a lot more important than I do... and maybe think they have some sort of supernatural power if you think, all other things being equal, a given game will sell worse on a system with Nintendo games than on a system without them. So the secret to the console wars is to not be Nintendo? C'mon... Nintendo are looking for third parties to provide the "B" games instead of looking for the AAA games as they have in the past. They are stacking their 2007 lineup full of AAA games both for the existing GCN customer, and for the DS "casual" customer, to try and propel early sales as far as they can themselves. With greater potential profit per unit sold, a greater installed base, and Wiimote development kinks worked out, where do you think every smallish studio with smallish games is going to go?
Nintendo games are alot more important to Nintendo systems compared to Sony games on Sony systems, and/or Microsoft games on Microsoft systems. Nintendo has a huge publishing basis, and they need that, and always have since the SNES era. Sony and MS have video game divisions of a much larger company. Nintendo isn't a side-business by a larger company (atleast for the most part), and they need games to survive. Sony and MS really do not.
Every smallish studio is going to go for the medium that gives them the most profit, and I don't see it being 100% on the Wii. I believe with the strides the PSN and XBLA are trying to do are steps in the right direction. The Wii has limited multiplayer support versus the 360 and PS3, and I believe that will kill them in the long run. More and more homes are able to support larger and larger functions for downloadable content and games, and the Wii just cant do that. The PS3 uses a 20/60gb storage medium compared to a 512mb medium that the Wii uses. Devs won't be able to use that as a storage medium - not when VC is already out and snatching up a large portion of that drive. Yes you can easily upgade, but not everyone will want to, as people are lazy.
Examples: Look at Xbox Live Arcade. The Nintendo fanboys get happy that the VC has sold 1.5m games. Geometry Wars alone has most likely sold that number or more. And thats just 1 of the 60-odd games that are on XBLA. PSN has the same advantage. Yes, the Wii has VC and promise to allow devs to make games and distribute them, but the hardware functionality really isn't there to truely take advantage of it like the PSN and XLBA systems are.
-About 'lightgun': Time Crisis 3 for PS2 isn't a superhit for PS2, ¿How many games can be profited for lightgun?, PS2 and PC gamers NOT demand a lightgun for play. the people was not turn crazy for lightgun. Maybe is great for first person games but for the third person games such as GTA or Resident Evil suchs whit lightgun.
-The analog control, no much comments (if it was introduced is for cheap and comodity), is the 'cheap mouse' of the consoles.
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