You know what sucks. Getting into a topic late. It's nice to have intelligent posters, but that also means long post. In response to the article, he's right in some areas, but I could have told you all the stuff he said. Large price bad. Blue ray won't catch on quick(if at all). Pretty obvious stuff. Selling a system for 200$ more then the next cheapest product is never a good idea. In a way, he is right about the Wii, but also wrong. If wwe look at the DS you can see there are a ggood nummber of people making games for the DS. The PSP has also sold well, but you don't see people flcok to it. Few games are made for it. It shows even with Nintendo, 3rd parties will do OK. And, I'm glad the PS2 and the Wii are industry pushes. I like big budget games, but in the long run they suck. A game you play for 10 and have to wait forever for another one. Small budget games are still good and come faster. Plus, it gives more pushing power to smaller development teams.

I agree, ;look at experts, Telling us if we play a violent game that we will all buy guns and start shooting people. In society no one takes blame for their own actions, As long as there is blame, there will be EXPERT ANALYSTS , in all categories of life.

Funny thing is, these anaylsts all went to college and have no experience in real life. I believe you get more oyu of the school of LIFE, than you do a university-I speak from experience!

Oh, and your statement that no games = no sales isn't true either.  PS2 sold amazingly well despite launching with almost nothing.  Why didn't the PS3 do the same thing?  Simple.  $599 U.S. dollars.

You might be right, but I dont think we can use the portable market to measure the home consoles. I think for the most part, folks who buy portables are not graphic buffs to begin with. Those people probably have a game they want and simply buy the system that can play it. I am currently going through a dilemma in choosing between the PSP and DS. In terms of games the DS has a huge library which is why I would probably pick one up despite the fact that the PSP is a more powerful system. Regardless of which I choose however, I am willing to make a graphical sacrifice for portability because the portable is only there to pass time during situations when a big console cannot be used. In other words, I doubt that most people use their portable as their primary console but rather a fun and convenient alternative while away from their main console or if they simply cant get a big console for whatever reason. I dont think this type of thinking can be applied to home consoles because they will all have very large libraries unlike the anorexic PSP library which is probably holding it back a bit not that it doesnt have a few good games but the DS seems to have more a lot more good games to me.

In the home arena however, I think everyone would rather have the more powerful console if they have the same amount of good games and the prices are within range of each other. I agree that the Wii will not die but I think that to solidify their position now and on to the next generation they need to upgrade the Wii somewhat. As I explained, I wouldnt make a new console at all. I would just release a more powerful version with new graphical capability and a few scaling libraries so that programmers can make games that work on both the old model and new. In such a case no one is getting screwed. Old Wii consoles will still be able to play every Wii game released but this would give the graphic whores something to play with and it would make for a nice upgrade if someone wanted to get a new Wii console anyway. It would also prove to 3rd parties that Nintendo can & wants to support big graphical project if they wanted to make such games. Games like Oblivion would be a huge boon to the Nintendo imho. If the Wii had games like that it would probably kill all criticisms and give them a very strong foothold next generation very much like how Sony had all the 3rd party support this generation at the start.

Next week: a top analyst explains why PS3 owners have stupid faces, and 360 owners are dumb-dumb heads.

Most graphics whores are not home console gamers, they're PC gamers ...

Beyond that, I don't see much of a need for Nintendo to release an upgraded Wii until 2011; for the next 2 to 3 years the Wii userbase will continue to grow because it is the only affordable new console and will continue to sell in the years following that because of the userbase that it has already built will attract a lot of development.

That's why the Wii isn't going to go away.  I agree, more power, same price we are good.  But the PS3 and Xbox Pro will never be in the same range as the Wii.  And they'll never be able to duplicate some of the Wii's exclusives (gameplay).  As such, the Wii is very marketable. 

I think the people that buy portables are video game players and more likely than not have a home console at home.  And that logic works perfectly for the Wii.  It should be down to $100 by it's 5th year.  That's at the point where one game might be worth $150 (Wii + game) to play it.  That's something that the PS3 and 360 will never reach.  Their is a very tiny percentage of the population that will pay anything to experience one game.  And the 360 and PS3 are just too much, unless you are planning on buying 5-10 games a year for the life of the console. 

That would cost the Wii one of it's advantages though.  Developer costs.  I'd imagine that would push Wii games to the price of PS3 games in addition the time of development.  In addition, the Wii will have 250 games by the time a Wii HD could possibly launch.  These will have no graphical updates for the WiiHD.  I think the Wii is positioned well.  I'm a HD buff.  But I bought a Wii.  I'm soon going to buy a PS3 and start buying Blu-ray discs.  But their is no way I'm going to replace my existing DVD collection.  Much like I'm guessing that HD owners that have cable don't ignore the 60-70 non-hd channels because they aren't HD.

So in my opinion that is where the Wii is perfectly marketable.  Sure, you bought a PS3 or xbox 360 because you wanted high def.  But does that mean that you are going to ignore any system that isn't high def?  You can't play your ps2, n64, dreamcast or whatever because you've moved on?  The Wii costs a lot less, so you need less reasons to buy it.   And it's soon going to be the market leader, which means that the game library should look very nice compared to the 360, PS3 by Christmas '08.