Biggerboat said: Louie said: Biggerboat said: Louie said: The question is did the price cut affect the core gamers or the casual gamers? As I see it, the Wii is mostly buyed by casual gamers, gamers who want something new and Nintendo fans. Casual gamers would never buy a PS3 at 500$, no matter if there are a thousend Sing Star and Buzz games on it. Gamers who want something new wouldn´t buy the PS3 either because they are not so interested in it. And the Nintendo fans...well, they are Nintendo fans. I disagree with a few of your points. First is the, imo, misconception that Wii is predominantly bought by casuals. I simply see no evidence to suggest this.   Wii Sports Nintendo 1.87 3.72 2.42 8.01 Wii Play Nintendo 1.47 1.51 0.95 3.93 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Nintendo 0.56 1.77 1.09 3.42 Wario Ware: Smooth Moves Nintendo 0.47 0.60 0.60 1.67 Super Paper Mario Nintendo 0.48 0.63 0.00 1.11 Rayman Raving Rabbids Ubisoft 0.02 0.58 0.42 1.02 Red Steel Ubisoft 0.04 0.45 0.52 1.01 These are the million+ sellers so far. As you can see there are as many traditional games as casual & taking into account that Wii Sports is a pack-in in most of the world and Wii Play is effectively 5-10 bucks, the sales of Zelda/Paer Mario/Red Steel are significant. We also have DQ:Swords all but gauranteed to be at least Japan's best selling 3rd party game and could potentially join the above list. I would also question whether Wii Sports is a 'casual game'. It is intuitve and easy to pick up but it also offers plenty of depth and demands a lot of skill to unlock all of the medals. Excitetruck, Tiger, Madden & RE:4 have also racked up respecatble sales numbers. Numbers don't support your argument. Also there is the fact that people are still having to queue up for these systems, sometimes for hours at a time. Would you associate this behaviour with die hard gamers or casuals who think it looks a fun way to pass a few hours a week? As for casuals not buying PS3, I also disagree. The guy sitting next to me at work while I type this is about to buy one. On asking what games he played he answered Pro Evolution Soccer. On telling him that the 360 was also getting this game and that at this time it had a better variety of other games he replied that he had just always bought PS and that was that. I also know another person who purchased a PS3 without knowing anything about the games that were on it. I realise this is anecdotal but I'm sure there are plenty of PS owners who coughed up the money just beacause of the brand. I'd say this is more symptomatic of casual behaviour than somebody trying out Wii Sports, liking it and buying a Wii. Casuals who don't have spare cash wont buy PS3 but those that do and worship the PS brand(even though the games they like are probably made by 3rd parties) will.

Well of course that´s true. There are not that much casual gamers as it seems. But I think these guys who bought Red Steel, Zelda, etc. are the longtime Nintendo Fans. (Of course not all of them but surely a part of them is)

This guy next to you will probably buy a PS3 because it is cool an has it´s brand. But he is not a casual gamer in that way I meant it. Those casual gamers Nintendo is targeting for wouldn´t buy a PS3 because it is cool (as you already mentioned).

 In lots of reports about those people queueing up the mothers and fathers, housewifes and busindessmen were mentioned who where complaining because they had been looking for the system for months and finally decided to do this. So yes, I think there are a lot of casuals in Wiis audience (look at Japan: Wii Sports sells with 50% of all systems which is way too high for the core)

 Maybe we could meet somewhere in the middle - what you say is partly true and so is what I say 

I just don´t think  many people would turn from Wii to PS3 because of this price cut - the systems are way too different I think.

I think all the devs see the Wii as $$$$
"Hey, check out how many people have this system, and how simple the popular games for it are! Lets spend the afternoon making a some silly minigames and make a bunch of cash. Then we can get back to making cool games like Gears of War"

I see Nintendo coming up with some pretty cool games for the Wii, but everyone else seems to be in minigame mania. Big, epic games will always be on the console with a regular controller and better graphics.

 I agree and it's a shame. I don't think devs WANT to push the Wii to it's limits. They see it as a way to make a quick buck. All the PS2 ports with lame waggle controls added on seem lazy to me. I understand they were caught off guard, but even announced games aren't impressing me. The lack of creativity is disappointing and I don't think all this port business is what Nintendo had in my mind. 

It's too early to judge since games take time to develop, really.  If it's like this in a year's time, and I really hope it isn't, then we'll have every right to bitch. I doubt it though.  

I think its a little too soon for judgements about the quality of the games coming out for the wii. The nintendo DS had very little support at first, now its got a ton of great non-mini games out for it. You have to give the developers time to get the games out there. Look how long its taken the ps3 to get games out for there system. I think given enough time you will see great games coming out for the wii, from 3rd party.

Also since the wii is the cheaper console to develop for I am hoping they get more original games for the system.

I think that developers dont want the Wii to win simply because they benefit the most when consoles are close to each other. Example: Microsoft paying 50mill to rockstar for GTA downloadable content. When there is one console dominating then 3rd party developers simply have no choice but to produce for that console otherwise they are not going to make any profit. Nintendo earned a lot of contempt from developers from times when they were dominating and I am pretty sure developers dont want a repeat of that.

It seems to me that the original post is somewhat confused. It's not that the Wii winning is itself a bad thing for developer, it's that the Wii winning signifies bad things for developers.

All else being equal, developers would love the Wii to win. If you replaced every 360 owner's system with a Wii and released Halo 3 to them, the game would still sell just as many copies.

What might worry developers are the changing attitudes of the market. Japan is clearly moving towards nontraditional games, and there's clearly a sizable worldwide market for them. Some developers might think that the popularity of the Wii means that the market has moved away from their types of games.

This distinction is very important. If developers didn't want the Wii to win, they'd want to release games on other systems. If developers simply didn't like the market realities signified by the Wii, then there's nothing they can do and they might as well just release games on the Wii.

3rd party developers would rather develop for Wii, and the reason why is very simple (we're not talking about userbase size or demographics here). They would rather develop for Wii because it is easier and cheaper to develop for. The lower the cost to make it, the lower the risk for developers. Developers don't care about making great graphics, they want to make money. The only problem there could be for developers is getting used to developing for the wiimote.

Nope.

They don't want to make previous gen quality games, to many of them see their work as art. Who wants their art to be held back by weak hardware if much much more capable hardware is out there to use.

Most 3rd party devs spent alot of money designing game engines that the wii is to weak to run, which is why your seeing NO big 3rd party franchise making the jump from 360/PS3 to the wii.

Celb, you are quite naive to think that is the truth. Some people who design the games may think that (notice i say some), but the company does not care. Capcom didn't care about art (or business ethics) when they put Resident Evil 4 on the PS2. 3rd party developers aren't putting all their games on 360 now because of art, it's because clearly PS3 is not as dominant as they thought it was gonna be, and they can't easily port PS3 games to Wii.

It's all about money.

for that matter according to your logic the most powerful console should get the most 3rd party support, which is never the case.