| Groucho said: If the Wii has 2x the releases that cost half as much to make as the 360, and a much lower % of them recover a fair portion of that cost, how is it that the Wii consumer is benefiting? I can see how Nintendo benefits... but not the consumer, nor the 3rd party publishers. Consumer satisfaction is kinda important for a console's continued health, and frankly, so is 3rd party support. |
An interesting hypothetical. Any proof that it's the case? And is there any data showing a lack of customer satisfaction, or an imminent dearth of third-party support?
| Infamy79 said: I think the numbers are skewed for the Wii due to the massive success of it's Top 5-10 titles. The 360 and PS3 don't have anything like MarioKart, Wii Fit or Wii Play which just keep selling at almost a direct attach rate for the life of the Wii so far. SMG which is considered a moderate success sales wise for the Wii is about the same as the 360s Halo 3, which is about double the PS3's leading game in MGS4 and sales for that have pretty much stopped. When you have first party titles selling 12million+ it's always going to throw out the numbers further down the table |
A good point, but Mr.Stickball was correct when he pointed out that a situation where sales are monopolized by a few titles is not a healthy situation for a console to have. So far, that doesn't appear to be the case, though: the Wii's top titles are disproportionate, but they don't seem to be excluding the other titles from selling as well.
psrock said:
For now, it's fine, but when 3rd party starts to really invest in the wii, do you think things will change ? The wii demographic doesnt care about high budget games, they want to have fun. I think its going to be hard to compete against the Nintendo games. |
A similar argument was made regarding the DS, before it began taking off. My belief is that when the traditional games begin to arrive in higher numbers, they'll bring the traditional gamers with them. I base this belief on the history of the DS, as well as every other successfully disrupted industry.
I concede, however, that it is just a guess about the future, which is always amorphous. For now, I prefer this thread to concentrate on the past and present.
| Zucas said: nonmae- true but I think we know that mostly Wii is dominated by Nintendo's core franchises. But this is not unusual in a market for a majority of titles to dominate. Usually its well established franchises selling loads better than the rest. Well established franchises usually are a minority but always encompass a majority of sales. Why does this happen? A few things. First, your majority buyers are mainstream buyers. Actually the funny thing is that mainstream buyers probably represent 80% of your gamers. Mainstream includes your casual gamers as some refer. The rest are your long time gamers or hobbyist. Yall call them the hardcore. Thus the mainstream buy the well established franchises and the rest buy the other good ones. NOw that doesn't mean it works exactly like that but you see the picture here. Second, the majority of games don't get proper advertising nor are meant to gain huge sales. What we call shovelware. Sent out there to hopefully get a few thousand in sales and thats it. Sometimes games from smaller developers have similar effects like Mushroom Men. While a small percentage of games have the huge budgest and large marketing and take up the majority of sales like Need for Speed and Call of Duty. Finally, establishing a new franchise is so difficult right now. Because the majority of your gamers are mainstream, selling a new product is almost impossible. Unless it's something like Assassin's Creed or Gears of War where it's so alike to everything else in its genre, then your not going to get anywhere. Thus these large new IPs go out and don't do to well despite have huge production value. Dead Space right now is the one that jumps out at me the most. EA has already complained about that one in similar terms. But this is a problem in the whole industry and not just Wii, as some would like to think cough Stick. How to fix it is simply continue to make gaming more mainstream while transforming your average mainstream gamer to a hobbyist. Something Ninty has been trying since the DS. |
The only part of this post I disagree with is that you place the mainstream buyer at 80%, while I would place it much, much higher. I also disagree that establishing a new franchise is any more difficult now than it's ever been: Activision's CEO once said that over 90% of a year's successful games have always been sequels or spinoffs, rather than new IPs. The difference is that now the cost of taking that gamble has risen dramatically.
Other than that, though, we seem to be of one mind here.
(mostly)
