davygee said:
I posted this elsewhere, but thought it required a post to it's own. This is very interesting and should be read by people continually downing all things Sony. According to MetaCritic (they include a whole host of reviews and scores to come up with a definitive score for each game)..... The Wii has 11 games in the green (75% and above) The PS3 has 21 games in the green (75% or above) This is very interesting....the PS3 has the better games that the Wii then? Oh and this..... The DS has 57 games in the green (75% or above) The PSP has 86 games in the green (75% or above) So the PSP has better games than the DS then? |
That has no bearing on sales or commercial success, though. Reviews be damned, at the end of the day what separates the Wii and DS are that they offer more unique game play experiences that consumers have never enjoyed before, and they're simply more intuitive and user friendly.
I have been buying, playing, enjoying, and collecting home consoles since the 70s. If there is one thing I know, that has been repeated time and time again, it's that consumers only care about three things: Price. Reliability. Ease of Use.
Everything else is just message board fodder, today. The "best" technology or the tech with the "best" gaming library rarely wins out in the end. Really, that argument has never worked in any avenue of consumer tech, and I've got the 8-tracks, Beta cassettes, MCA DiscoVision carts, LaserDiscs, and CDi/3DO MPEG-1 CD-Videos to prove it. Customers want a subtle versatility at a low price, not a jack of all trades, master of none swiss army knife appliance foisted on them. This is why a simple device like the iPod can show up about five years late to the portable music player party and promptly kick the tar out of every single competitor, many of them well entrenched and technologically superior under-the-hood in virtually every single regard (like the Rio, Nomad, and Archos).
In that vein, where the PS3 and PSP (and even the 360) fall short is not in their gaming library or their versatility, but in the daunting complexity of all they can do, which competes directly against each other, plus the hobbyist driven HTPC market, and PCs themselves, while frightening off the average consumer. The PlayStation 3 and PSP have many very, very solid titles that have been commercially popular and critically successful, but please, I've had my fill of auto racing, first/third person shooters, and I've already got 15 other copies of Madden (each visually more stunning than the last -- but where does it end?).
"Hard core" gamers (I loathe that term, but everyone knows what it means), audiophiles, and videophiles do not support their respective markets. Joe 6-pack does.
The deep, dark resentment of Sony console fans, which they've never wrapped their heads around, is that people didn't buy 100M PS2s to watch DVDs, listen to music, or play Grand Tourismo, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear and a prettier Madden. What sold the PS2 were Joe 6-pack friendly pick-up-and-play sim games like DDR, Guitar Hero, and SingStar. When those games hit the market and the PS2 was slim downed and relaunched for under $200, that's when the PS2 really became the ubiquitous giant it is today.
All those games are available for every platform now, and there's really nothing exclusive about any racing sim, RPG, or shoot'em up centered around WWII scenarios or space marines once you think about it. The names of those games change and the graphics get prettier each successive year, but we've all played them before.
This is why people perceive the PSP and PS3 lineups to be bad. Of course the games themselves aren't bad, per se, but nothing in that shiny PS3 case at my local brick-and-mortar is worth spending over $700 to play, either.
Lastly, the single greatest issue that I think people fail to take into account is the natural generational divide and the aging of the marketplace. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, the "MTV Generation" is all grown up and has money to burn. The significance here is that today's 30-somethings with the wads of disposable cash all have one thing in common -- they grew up on Nintendo. The generation behind them, the so-called "Generation Y," which grew up on Sony's platforms does not have the general purchasing power (yet), but more importantly, does not have that same sense of brand loyalty.
This is the distinguishing characteristic that has decided this console war so far. Nintendo has produced a cheap console that not only appeals to the same core of gamers that launched Nintendo-mania in the 80s, but that cores' parents as well -- the Baby Boomers.
Sony has produced a console targeted squarely at the market segment least equipped to afford it, the technophiles of Generation Y.
Sadly, quality of games really has nothing to do with it.
