Paul_Warren lives in a parallel universe, he's narrating how things go over there. Thanks!

I dont think even he believes in that stuff that he is posting.

Paul, Why so serious?

What you don't seem to understand is that the majority of wii owners are not like the gamers on xbox360 and ps3. They don't go online chatting and looking at videos of upcoming games. They buy like 2 games a year which means that there is a lot of great wii games they havent experienced yet. And considering that games like wii music, animal crossing, wii sport resort and even some third party games like Guitar hero WT are coming they will have far than enough games.

And even if the PS3 has a lot of great games coming, how do you really think that the "casuals" will find something like killzone 2 more appealing than lets say wii fit?

It is sad to see that fanboys still say that the wii sales will soon die. You rarely see these things even on general gaming sites like IGN. But to then see it on a videogames sales site is just so very sad. I tought fanboys gave up on this point and started saying instead that wii doesen't have any games.

one more reason the ps3

"Have you been right on anything in this field since the Wii launched?"

Most recently, I was right when on the very same night that GTA IV received its 10 from IGN when I said over there that Metal Gear Solid 4 was also going to receive a 10 from IGN. I was also right when I said that an 8.7 from IGN for Ninja Gaiden II indicated that the game was going to sell disappointingly, and that if MGS 4 did come out and receive a 10 review score as I predicted that it would, then the PS3 would beat the 360 for the most units sold during the summer '08 months. I also said this would continue until a game like Too Human came out with good review scores and that if Too Human or Tales of Vesperia either one received poor review scores then PS3 domination of the 360 had the potential to continue in America at least until Gears of War 2 is released. Right now, I am predicting disappointing review scores for Fable 2, so unless Halo Wars turns out to be the best rts ever released on console then I still believe I could be right in that prediction.  Of course the new 360 Arcade price will also generate improved sales (sp?) for the console.

Now I am predicting that if Little Big Planet and Resistance 2 both do well critically 9+ review scores for each and that if a game like Mirror's Edge also follows suit, the PS3 could very well be the console of Christmas '08 as I don't think that either Animal Crossing or Wii Music will do so well. Wii Music should receive less sales than Rock Band 2 and the next Guitar Hero to only be the third highest selling music game of the holiday season and in my opinion the jury is still out on Animal Crossing. Whichever of these three games Animal Crossing, Little Big Planet, or Banjo Kazooie  Nuts and Bolts gets the highest review score this Christmas season is going to greatly benefit the console that it is on.

Are people still predicting doom and gloom for the Wii? You would think, after all this time, they'd catch on...

Nintendo has made a new sub-market. They have no competitors in that sub-market. Ergo they will not be "doomed" by the actions of the main market. This isn't the first time this has happened, and a lot of the same arguments are being made as back in the late 1980s. Just replace "360" and "PS3" with "C64" and "Amiga", and replace "Wii" with "NES", and there you go. Complete repeat.

The only way Nintendo will be in any trouble is if either a.) somebody disrupts the market and makes a new, better sub-market, or b.) somebody successfully invades their sub-market. Until then, these doom-n-gloom declarations are about as realistic as the claims made back in 1987 that the Commodore 64 and Amiga were going to clean the NES' clock any day now (even though the opposite was clearly already happening).

"b.) somebody successfully invades their sub-market. Until then, these doom-n-gloom declarations are about as realistic as the claims made back in 1987"

The plan with Little Big Planet is to do just that. If it lives up to what is supposed to be its potential, then it should be a current gen combination of Super Mario Bros platforming with Excite Bike's level design, yet chewier than both.  And Sony successfully did this type of thing on the PS1 with Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot stealing the thunder from games like Mario 64.  And there's nothing stopping the PS3 from having its own fitness game, for example, that could take advantage of the PS3's technological capabilities.  All they would have to do is build a controller for it.  It could even have more exercise types than the Wii because the PS3 has all the space made available by a Blu-Ray disc to do so.  Heck, they could design a game that was a complete tutorial in mediatation and yoga leading from beginner difficulty to advanced levels of competency.  Look at the DS it started to become popular because of its Brain Training games, well the PSP went out and got its own brain training games and in recent months more software has been selling for the PSP than the DS, and there have been quite a few weeks where it has beaten both the Wii and DS in consoles sold in Japan this year.

I don't think you quite understand WHAT the Wii's sub-market is. LBP is about as much threat to the Wii as the Dizzy series was to the NES. LBP is the embodiment of the hardcore gamer fantasy of having full control over the game's design and interface, to the point that they're making their own game. But that's not what Average Joe wants. Average Joe (who outnumbers the hardcore about a million to one) prefers to just play the game, not make it.

So we have to wait until Christmas 2010 to congradulate you for your <50M by March 2009 prediction?

Actually, it occurs to me that most people don't really get what the Wii's sub-market is. Not surprising, there are few developers who have even figured it out. So I'll outline it.

The Wii's sub-market is a combination of intuitiveness, immersion, interface, convenience, and pick-up-and-play appeal. The complexities of getting into the game are alleviated by controls that make sense without having to consult the manual. The gameplay feels more satisfying because you're actually doing what your on-screen character is doing. The interface doesn't try to overload you with options and extras. The games don't leave you feeling like you have to put aside half a week to finish them. And you won't have any qualms about just popping the game in for a quick 15 minutes at any time.

You may have noticed that most of this seems to have nothing to do with the system itself. But there's the rub: all of those pieces are necessary to effectively compete against Nintendo in the new market. If you don't have controls appropriate to the goal, it doesn't matter how well you fit the rest of the criteria. Similarly, the controls alone won't cut it. Even the Wii's non-game interface reflects all of those values. Nobody is going to scratch their heads in confusion at the Wii Menu, but I've seen a fair few have to be taught how to handle the Cross Media Bar for PlayStation systems.

The short of it is that neither Sony nor MS can be an effective threat to Nintendo's sub-market at this point. They lack the controls, the interface, AND the games that it would take.