windbane said: Sports games are going to sell better on the PS3 and 360. I'd extend your complaints, though, to say that most of them did not understand the full picture.

Actually sports games are purchased by casuals, and with stuff like Family Play mode on EA games I really wouldn't be surprised at all to see the majority of future sports games sell signifficantly better on the Wii.

Dolla Dolla said: Ok, I'll give you Devil May Cry, cause that was the first in the series. GTA wasn't unproven though, it already had two incarnations from the previous gen (PS1). I have high hopes for Heavenly Sword and Uncharted, definitely.

 Anything that was GTA before GTA 3 is a whole other game that cannot be compared at all to the newer GTAs. Just look at the sales for one.

Well, according to VGC, GTA2 sold over 3 million copies and was never even released in Japan. I never said the games were comparable, but GTA3 was building from an established fanbase already.

naznatips said: windbane said: Sports games are going to sell better on the PS3 and 360. I'd extend your complaints, though, to say that most of them did not understand the full picture. Actually sports games are purchased by casuals, and with stuff like Family Play mode on EA games I really wouldn't be surprised at all to see the majority of future sports games sell signifficantly better on the Wii.

 I agree, if EA plays it cards right, it can expand the popularity of Madden et al, from the sport/gamer crowd to vertually the entire sports fan crowd.  And Family Play is a huge step in the right direction.  Look at how well Tiger Woods is selling consistantly, week to week, largely to non-gamers who see it as a golf sim.  (Even Pachter admitted his neighbour had fallen into this catagory).    I can see EA advertising Wii Madden to the non-gamer crowd to (hopefully) great response.

naznatips said: windbane said: Sports games are going to sell better on the PS3 and 360. I'd extend your complaints, though, to say that most of them did not understand the full picture. Actually sports games are purchased by casuals, and with stuff like Family Play mode on EA games I really wouldn't be surprised at all to see the majority of future sports games sell signifficantly better on the Wii.

Madden sells much better on 360 but for some reason you think the hard core that play it and their NHL franchise, etc, are going to go for watered down family modes for the games?  And especially games that rely very heavily on online play as well?  I really doubt that the PS3 and 360 have anything to worry about for those games.

Of the series, I think this was the worst of the bunch. Worse than the Nintendo section even. Primary reason is when did third parties only get defined as EA, Ubisoft and Rockstar? What about SEGA, Squaresoft and soforth? They spent more time talking about Rockstar, when they most likely won't share anything or have any real input to the conference, unless they surprise the hell out of everyone.

For this reason alone, because obviously none of the analysts are watching, I say that other third party publishers have a chance to steal the thunder of E3 if they have any truly unique and good games developed.

As to Sports games selling better on PS3 and 360 than the Wii, since when did "sports" only get defined as American Football? Madden isn't the only sports game out there. I'm pretty sure that golf games have sold better on the Wii, and I'll but money down that  MBL games will too. Hell, even real football ( ahem Soccer ) will sell better on the Wii thanks especially to Mario Strikers. I do think Online is the wild card of this debate though, but I don't see how this will tilt the scales too much as an erratic gamer won't be bothered with playing Online from the get go. Usually that is only for the established and enthusiasts.

Gamerace -  I had similar thoughts on Patcher, especially with the remark about playing games "the way they are suppose to be played." Obviously he still doesn't think Wii will have any real lasting qualities to the industry. Obviously he has been indoctrinated by all his analysis which proves his real "worth" as an analyst.

DoesWhatNintenDont said: As to Sports games selling better on PS3 and 360 than the Wii, since when did "sports" only get defined as American Football? Madden isn't the only sports game out there. I'm pretty sure that golf games have sold better on the Wii, and I'll but money down that  MBL games will too. Hell, even real football ( ahem Soccer ) will sell better on the Wii thanks especially to Mario Strikers. I do think Online is the wild card of this debate though, but I don't see how this will tilt the scales too much as an erratic gamer won't be bothered with playing Online from the get go. Usually that is only for the established and enthusiasts.

Well Madden is usually mentioned because it sells far more in the U.S. than other sports games.  For example Madden is at ~1.6 million on the 360 and ~400 thousand on the PS3 compared to ~360 thousand on the Wii and both the 360 and PS3 versions are still outselling the Wii version on a weekly basis.  I just can't see how adding a casual mode to the Wii version is going to attract fans of that series to the Wii.

You may be right about Mario Strikers though, if it can sell 3 - 3.5 million Worldwide it'll likely beat Fifa and World Soccer Winning Eleven on the other systems.

As for MLB I don't think so not if you're talking about EA Sports and other third parties versions but if Nintendo has a Mario baseball game in the works they might be able to sell a lot of them and take the lead.

Actually come to think of it I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't brought out a Mario Sports line for Soccer, Football, Baseball, Basketball, Golf, etc, but I have a feeling they might hesitate because EA might retaliate and drop their sports support for the Wii if that were to happen (and possibly all support for the Wii).

i think that they are right when they say that Rock Band is going to be the only game that's gonna make the news on national TV's...other big titles are mostly for Hardcore gamers that probably don't need E3 to know that game X is going to come out for console Y

Legend11 said: Well Madden is usually mentioned because it sells far more in the U.S. than other sports games. For example Madden is at ~1.6 million on the 360 and ~400 thousand on the PS3 compared to ~360 thousand on the Wii and both the 360 and PS3 versions are still outselling the Wii version on a weekly basis. I just can't see how adding a casual mode to the Wii version is going to attract fans of that series to the Wii. You may be right about Mario Strikers though, if it can sell 3 - 3.5 million Worldwide it'll likely beat Fifa and World Soccer Winning Eleven on the other systems. As for MLB I don't think so not if you're talking about EA Sports and other third parties versions but if Nintendo has a Mario baseball game in the works they might be able to sell a lot of them and take the lead. Actually come to think of it I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't brought out a Mario Sports line for Soccer, Football, Baseball, Basketball, Golf, etc, but I have a feeling they might hesitate because EA might retaliate and drop their sports support for the Wii if that were to happen (and possibly all support for the Wii).

Legend,

Yeah I know Madden sells way more than other sports games, but I feel we shouldn't make such broad speculation about "sports games" if we really are just using Madden as a barometer. And to be honest, Madden isn't really something to use as a Barometer to begin with as it really stands out to be an exception in the genre sales wise.

Nintendo will certainly have the upper hand in sales with a great many of their sports titles, which are bound to come as we have seen all those listed on the likes of Gamecube already, but I personally think that the sports games genre is the most obvious sector to get a beneficial boost from the Wiimote. I would be incredibly surprised, and nieve, if the likes of EA and others didn’t try and capitalize on that especially if Wii continues to dominate hardware sales. Regardless of what Nintendo is going to do on their own as EA has already lost money not having supported the Wii more strongly from the get go.

I know some established gamers find the advancement of the Wiimote as a hard step of evolution to swallow, but really, we’ve been playing the likes of Basketball, Hockey, Football, Soccer, etc. with our thumbs for years now...how realistic is that? Even playing paper football in school required more than just your thumbs!

Hell, look at how we have a Brunswick bowling game now in the works due to the Wiimote. I’m sure El Duderino must be really happy about this one! Notice how I’m not into the whole brevity thing ;)

 

Actually come to think of it I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't brought out a Mario Sports line for Soccer, Football, Baseball, Basketball, Golf, etc, but I have a feeling they might hesitate because EA might retaliate and drop their sports support for the Wii if that were to happen (and possibly all support for the Wii).

You can be really ridiculous, Legend.

There's no way in hell EA would be so threatened by Mario sports titles that they'd stop releasing games like Boogie or MySims.

If and when Nintendo does more Mario sports titles on Wii, they don't have to time them along with the start of a pro-season, and they'll only make one game per sport instead of rolling them out annually. Mario sports titles are little threat to EA Sports titles.

I think Nintendo will do less of the Mario sports titles this time around anyways. We know that during Wii Sports development they tested it with Mario characters, and got a worse responce than with Miis. (I believe that was in the Iwata Asks interviews.)

As a note: in a few months, Wii Sports will become the all-time best selling Sports title in Japanese history, passing the original Everybody's Golf.