theRepublic said: I referance one of Sqrl's posts and he shows up four minutes later to comment, lol.

 

Oh sweet!  I was looking for that post.  I honestly hadn't noticed your post, glad you said something =) Don't mind me I'm apparently really out of it tonight =/

SnowWhitesDrug said: yeah I completly agree with the wii totaly dominating this gen for years to come and nothing will cut into its market share, thats obvious unless all nintendos factories burnt down. I guess the more I think about it though if wii users or new comers shifted to the cheaper x box (you can get the 60gig for a better deal in Aus then a wii) nintendo has alot of good stuff around the corner like you said xponent and that will keep its sales high even if 360 sales stay up. the only way I see the HD market winning this gen is for the ps3 to have a price drop and I had some hopes it might come down but if you guys dont think it will then I couldnt see a shift from SD to HD any much bigger then the small one that will occur from the cheaper 60gig 360 So when you mention the HD consoles fighting it out, are you saying that if 360 sales increase ps3 sales with decrease and vice versa as the market demand for a HD console stays the same, just split betwene the two?

Yes. I think any price drop from an HD console will have more of an effect on the other HD console given that they target a similar buyer. I think the recent Xbox boosts have hindered potential PS3 sales. Wii sales however, just keep getting better.

If the HD consoles were both priced similar to the Wii then I'm sure they would steal back some marketshare, but I just don't see this happening.

 

On the last point (highlighted in red above) I would have to say that this is true to an extent.

It's important to understand that consoles sales, despite competing for the same gaming dollar, is not a zero sum game. For those not sure what that means, a zero sum game is any situation in which the gains of a person/thing must exactly correspond to the losses of one or more 'opponents'. In effect it's saying that there is a fixed amount to be won or lost and that anyone's gain is someone else's loss.

The console market is not zero sum because the loss in this case happens at the consumer level but the consumer is not a player in console sales "game", only other companies are. So when Sony sells 100k units it doesn't mean that there are 100k less sales available for Nintendo and MS, but it does mean there is less money out there to be spent on their systems.  The difference being that the pool of available money becomes extremely stingy before being exhausted rather than ever running out, where as in a zero sum game this diminishing sales effect would not exist and a 1:1 ratio would.

The point I'm driving at here is that while yes there is going to be a fight over sales between the two HD consoles there is also a fight between each HD console and the Wii as well. The difference is that every HD sale will likely have more of an impact on the other HD console's ability to sell another unit than it will the Wii's ability to sell another unit for the obvious reasons. The converse is also true where the Wii selling one unit will have less of an effect on the HD consoles than they do to each other.

This is probably a bit confusing given how tired I am atm, but the key to remember is that there is a finite, albeit unknown, cap on the amount of cash that can be spent on any given day, week, month, or year. And every sale within that period serves to further exhausts the overall pool and effects the ability of other competitors to make their own sales. But it's not a 1:1 ratio of gain to loss either, so we won't exactly be seeing a bloody pit fight unless two of the competitors decide they really want to go at it ...in which case the third competitor will very likely be the benefactor of their fight.

You must consider the possibility that what is the future will be real time motion control. People who start with motion control are unlikely to ever like the archaic analog controller.

It will be far easier for Nintendo to go HD, than for the current competition to impliment motion control.

Esa-Petteri said: Uh, why does a thread like this get so much hate?

Beacuse it's the same SH*T we have been seening over and over and over and over and over again and again and again.

 

I'll add that I'm pretty sure now that there will be no shift from Wii to HD.
There would be if eveything else was equal. But it's not the case at all.
Before my PS3 BRD player died, I noticed that HD definitely makes no sense as an incentive to buy sth. HD is just an improvement, but add very little value to sth.
The more I was looking at HD content, the more I was convinced that it was useless.
I'm now nearly ready to go back buying DVD. The only HD content I bought were exclusives. Meaning their value was NOT in beeing HD.

HD is a plus if everything else is equal, but apart from that it's completely useless, and doesn't give enough value to make people shift focus.

The only thing that will shift users are true values, like exclusive content on HD consoles. The problem being that it comes from developers/publishers.
Now, the problem is, will the Wii or the publishers fall first? Because the publishers are the one that started their war of attrition on Nintendo. Now, everything seems to be pointing to the fact that the publishers are falling first, left and right.
Nintendo still enjoys everything, with the Wii and DS. The SD market is actually far higher, as it includes at least the Wii and the DS, and it's selling far more games.

SnowWhitesDrug said: Well in comparison to the 2 giants of this generation it seems to go unappreciated and unplayed when they’re both on the same TV cabinet.

Please explain to me how the PS3 and 360 are the 2 giants of this generation when the Wii outsells their combined sales week in week out.  I am curious to understand what you mean by giants.  Are you refering to the fact that the consoles are huge while Wii is the size of 3 DVD cases?  Otherwise I don't think you know the meaning of giant.

 

SnowWhitesDrug said: clerk said: I tried to give a reasonable answer, to something we all know you just wrote up to try and provoke. I've already seen you do it several times, and your pattern is kinda easy to see through. You've gotten exactly what you wanted out of this thread, so stop your pathetic sobbing.    your the one trying to provoke, and as for seeing me do it before, one of my pet hates it when I asked a question and I get a million and one responses from people repeating what I just asked as if they came up with it them selves and im wrong for no aparent reason. @ stoff Im not looking at any shifts in the industry curently, im just asking the question,"price was one of nintendos big factors to successfully selling their system, so will these new price drops then alow the 360 to play on a leveler playing field with the wii?" Im also wondering if this will then 'cause' a shift of wii gamers who baught into the wii because of its price and are fed up with SD gaming and want HD gaming now its cheaper. And I'm wondering if there will be alot of these people out there because in my own little world the people I've spoken to seem to prefer the HD gaming over their wiis. I also want to know if this price thing has covered up a 'fad' nature of the wii or something entierly different if it so does turn out to be true that people were more inclined to purchase a wii for its cheapness

 

Not everyone believes that the difference between SD and HD is that big of a deal.  Everytime I say something like that, someone always comes in saying "then you must not have seen HD," and they're always wrong.  I felt the same way about laserdiscs back in the day, and laserdisc snobs always burned to hear it.  If you love HD and can't imagine life without it, that's cool.  But for me (and others)?  Not that big a deal.

So, honestly, the idea of people getting "fed up with SD gaming" sort of doesn't compute for me.  There are a lot of people (one might say, perhaps, an "ocean's" worth) who still play retro games, or flash games, or Solitaire/Minesweeper, etc.  The idea of their being fed up with, oh, Diner Dash or Bejeweled because it isn't pimping cutting edge tech just seems sort of silly.  And anyways, the Wii is actually offering something new and cutting edge in the market with its often derided motion controls.  I could talk about people becoming "fed up with analog controls" and it would probably make as much sense to you as being fed up with Standard Def makes to me.

Much of the Wii's market is made up of customers who feel the way that I do -- they're not obsessed with graphical output, and weigh it against other values in the games that they play.  So, do I anticipate some massive "shift" from the Wii to HD consoles when those HD consoles drop sufficiently in price?

No, I don't.  I expect that many to most of them will be perfectly satisfied with the console that they opted to buy in the first place.  While I believe that a lower price removes barriers from a sale, I do not believe that a lower price causes a sale, per se.  People could have bought an 360 for a while now, and if they instead bought a Wii and have been buying Wii games since, I suspect they did so for a reason and that they're likely to continue buying Wii software. Further, where new sales are concerned, it seems as though even those places where the 360 is currently cheaper than the Wii that the Wii continues to outsell its competition by fairly significant margins.

To suggest that the Wii continues to sell in the increasingly record-breaking fashion that it does, and contrary to any reasonable expectation given the sharp global economic crash late this year, simply because it's cheap and trendy, and not because people genuinely, actually want to own it... well... it seems to be a pre-determined conclusion, and not based on any of the data we have thus far.  Right now the numbers say that the Wii is on track to become the most successful home console ever.  If we want to predict future gloom for it, that's fine, but at the moment we can only do so because we want it to happen for some personal reason, not because of any hard evidence.  If we want to continue to find ways to label the Wii "a fad," then I think that we stretch the word to its breaking point, and will have to call all prior and contemporary video game consoles fads, too.

Finally, if you feel you've been getting a negative/hostile reaction (or if Esa is mystified at it), I think it's because there are people who like the Wii, not because it is cheap, and not because they've been drawn in by some faddish hype, but because they like it.  And those people have had to hear these same criticisms, and the same negative predictions, since before the the Wii launched.  The criticisms and predictions continue to get repackaged, but they always sound the same at their core: the HD consoles are somehow the real consoles, while the Wii is not; the Wii will be revealed as a fad as soon as X happens.

If you look carefully at your original post, you'll see these same ideas appear to be there, too, for instance when you refer to motion controls as a "gimmick" or call the PS3 and 360 the "giants of this generation."  Giants in your mind, perhaps, but not in everybody's.

Well this post is based on nothing else then assumption, if people wouldnt want to play the Wii, it wouldnt sell the amount of software that it does (and it does sell most overall). Putting anecdotal evidence and a bit of HD fanboyism wont make the OP point valid.

We'll see loads of Posts of people claiming that Wii is nothing but Dust Collector yet somehow it is a most popular console that sales loads of software, and people are not switching to the HD if they satisfied with the Wii (and thats majority). Because every week Wii increases market share.

Sorry if i may sound naive, but i think Wii is a great first choice, or an excellent second choice for many 'hardcore" gamers out there... and will also be the only choice for many "casuals", which explains the actual mass success...

The real choice this gen is between a Wii/PS3 combo, or a Wii/360 combo: the 2 HD consoles fight each other for the same consumer's money with (nearly) the same games, while the Wii offers a real alternative, with way more exclusive games, plus an exclusive control method...

The "shift" the OP is thinkin' of may happen from PS3/360 to Wii just as from Wii to PS3/360... and it's impossible to know the exact numbers of multiple consoles ownership: so, what's the point?

Wii's mass appeal is here to stay, but the market will be viable for ALL the best games on the THREE home consoles: the Wii is not excluding the HD consoles the way the PS2 did with the original Xbox or the GC...

So why can't everyone be happy with the current gen? Why would you like to have three consoles with the same power, the same control method, and the same games? Two is more than enough, and the Wii offers a plus, "something else", at least for the people with an open mind...

Some gamers may find the actual Wii's library too weak, but there's no doubt the quality will improve in the next years... just like with PS2, btw: most of the really GREAT PS2 games were released between 2003 and 2006, and not in the first two years of the console's life... why is it so hard to imagine the same will happen for the Wii, and that the Wii's library will soon have a kind of "universal appeal" for all the kind of gamers out there?

Anyway, i find the so-called "console war" boring, and most of the fanboys arguments pointless... and even if i'm interested in hardware and software sales, i think many people take it way too seriously, and should rather be happy with the choice they have, and all their favorite games...

If you're happy with one console only, that's fine, if you you're happy with two or even three, that's fine: who has the right to judge anyway? HD or SD, does it really matter? We've seen movies for decades in SD: were these movies bad because of this? Some of us play games for more than 30 years now: were all our beloved "classics" totally worthless because they were not in HD? For me, the answer is very easy to find... but to each his own...

My last point: the Wii is a first step in a new direction, a more interactive way of gaming... it's only a first step, it has its hits and misses, but for any "real" gamer out there, that direction is not a bad thing, it's like an old dream which may take 10 or 20 years more to become a reality, once the technology will be there, with a "mass appeal" entry price...

Nintendo tried too hard, too soon with Virtual Boy, and failed... and now they try again with Wii, and have a huge success in their hands... so, let's hope they can build something even better on the Wii's foundation... any "real" gamer should be excited, and not disgusted...