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What
Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony should focus on this year with their respective
consoles...
Sony
must continue to focus on building PlayStation Network into a service that can
rival Xbox Live. They are close, but just not quite there yet, and the recent
implementations of Home, Trophies,
and more movie options will take some time before they make a full impact on
console sales. Furthermore, Sony must continue to drive down manufacturing
costs, so they can reduce the PlayStation 3 price to be more competitive.
Microsoft,
who clearly succeeded in capturing the core market, must now move on to the
next step, and focus on capturing the mainstream and casual markets. Microsoft
made some great headway in late 2008 with a reduced hardware price and the
offer of free arcade-, kid-, family-oriented titles, and they should continue
to focus on this market.
Giving
advice to Nintendo is like advising Tiger Woods on how to putt. This is not to
say the Wii's and DS's execution has been flawless, as there certainly have
been some bumps on the road to their success.
Nonetheless, they are the kings
of both the home and portable hill, and as long as they can continue this
momentum in 2009, they will see an equal amount of success as they did in 2008.
If anything, Nintendo should be dulling out the advice, specifically, to
third-party publishers who have had trouble succeeding on their system over the
last two years.
What
game developers should focus on this year...
I
believe the majority of the publishers are finally on the right track, and 2009
should be a very profitable year for most of the big publishers.
Publishers
must continue delivering high-quality products to the core gaming market. On
the opposite end, publishers should not ignore the large influx in casual
gamers over the last two years. The casual, family and sub-13 age crowd all
share similar characteristics. They prefer games that have
branding/familiarity, easy-to-use controls, and fun.
During
tough economic times, it might seem best to only go with the less-risky,
established brands, but I believe avoiding risk in 2009 will lead to costly
mistakes further down the road.
The new intellectual properties of today are
the established brands of tomorrow. Publishers that avoid these risks, even
during the toughest of times, will surely be setting themselves up for failure
three years from now when the current set of established brands become stale.
Overall
prediction for the industry in 2009...
While
sales have grown over 60 percent since 2006, the largest increase we have ever
seen, we do not expect 2009 to follow the same path. We do expect the industry
to grow in 2009; we just believe that as pricing begins to level off, the
industry will become more reliant on pure unit growth.
Currently, we forecast
2009 growth to be under 15 percent, which is still a respectable figure,
especially during an economic recession.
 EA/Criterion Games' Burnout Paradise
Another
trend is downloadable content (DLC), which will likely play a bigger factor
than in previous years. Gamers are beginning to realize that DLC is a cheap
method to increase the replay value of some of their favorite games. We
consider DLC to be a must-have feature for all big AAA titles in 2009.
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Jesse
Divnich, 
THANK YOU! At least one of you gets what's going on. The first two analysts feel like there JUST looking at the numbers, but Ed takes a look at consumer reaction. All of these "budget" (read: crap) games are diluting the Wii, and Nintendo needs to address this problem. Thankfully, Sega is trying hard with House of the Dead and The Conduit. Here's hoping more developers see this and take action.
I wonder if Pachter is looking at anything besides numbers, and if he has anything to back up why he would suggest more people buy the Arcade unit of the Xbox 360. It is a worthless device solely because it does not come with a hard drive. I'm all for more and better games on XBLA, but these games are getting bigger and bigger, and the 256 Mb memory stick that comes with the Arcade unit will fill up WAY too quick, even compared to the 512 Mb hard drive on the Wii with Virtual Console. Sadly, Pachter suggests there are so many un-informed people out there that would purchase such a worthless device. Sad, but maybe true. Hopefully, the consumers prove him wrong, and Microsoft gets rid of the Arcade unit, and drops the 20 Gb unit to $250 - something that seems much more logical than trying to continue to push the Arcade sku.
That's not to say that the Arcade SKU is amazing, but I'd say "crippled" is a good word to replace your "worthless".
The arcade is selling at a higher pace than the Premium or Elite ones, that explains why the average retail price of the Xbox 360 has been dropping month after month (as stated at http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3906/npd_behind_the_numbers_december_.php?
page=2 ). Consider this: the amount of hardcore gamers is limited, and most of them have already bought a PS3 and/or a Xbox 360 3 or 4 years into the life of each console (especially if we consider a new console may be coming in just 2 years). Microsoft would have dropped sales from 2007 to 2008 hadn't it been for the price cut (which entitles casual users to buy it). That is where the Arcade is useful: attracting casual users. Sure, it may not match an Elite with a 120gb, but don't compare the hardcore needs with the casual needs.
Tom, that is how the casual market behaves. It only takes Oprah Winfrey mention a book to make it a best-seller, doesn't matter if it is actually good or interesting. Name recognition is half a sale. Having a game sponsored by Jillian Michaels is more important than one by Sid Meier. Also, you may give too much importance to industry insiders and hardcores. Without the casual market, the console leader would end up selling 30m-50m consoles only.
I'm not saying that's right though. I thought that the lower cost of production for Wii would create a wide variety of new games by indies. Instead, Wii has a staggering amount of crap. I wonder if the Wii had a more integrated Demo or User Rating mechanism built in if that would help at all.
Ask yourself a question: Is the Wii really not good enough for you... or are you a pretentious elitist "hardcore" geek?
Get over yourselves.
I'm fairly sure Nintendo doesn't care very much about 3rd party software on the Wii. It's not affecting their first party software sales, so I'm not sure what they'd do to "address the problem." They make off licensing, I believe, regardless of 3rd party game quality, so more of them is good for them.
"It is unfortunate developers and publishers are so rarely putting their best team on Wii games. I'd love to see what would happen if they did."
I've seen what happens when a great team is put on a Wii game... you probably wouldn't be as impressed as you think.
Especially in these days, market perception will eventually play into how well the Wii sells in the future. Is it a fad? When does it not become a fad? Will Wii Motion Plus split the divide of "hardcore" and "casuals" further, or will it pull a Wii-Play and sell like hotcakes through out the year?
The main point I want to re-express here is to give a nod to Barton because he's not only looking at the numbers, but sees that the perception of Wii among "hardcore" gamers and most gaming press is becoming somewhat negative. As a consumer, and a "pretentious elitist hardcore geek", I appreciate the fact that he's not just consumed by the numbers and sees that perception does indeed tie into market share and profit.
Just look at Sony, posting their biggest loss in almost 10 years. Now, there are certainly other reasons that negative perception that account for their losses (i.e. price, lack of "good" exclusives), but it has to be said that the perception of Sony ties directly into their sales. And hey, my failing might be that I'm giving too much weight to perception in a business that more recently prefers profitability over evolution (save the occasional Miyamoto game), but the fact that Barton acknowledges this shows me he is more in tune to the industry than Pachter or Divnich, and I thank him for that silver lining he gives us consumers.
Err... or we already have a WiFi network, and prefer that to running a physical cable 40 feet across the house. Some of us don't live in a bedroom in our parent's house anymore, Michael. OK, my old XBox 360 is cabled... right into the Airport Express one foot away in my home theater and then wireless bridge to the main WDS node. Seriously, what's the intersect between the set of people unable to figure out a cable and the set of people with a home wi-fi network and the ability to retrieve the hexed up password?