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Analysis: The Console Fortunes Of 2009
by Matt Matthews [PC, Console/PC, Exclusive]
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January 19, 2010
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[Gamasutra analyst Matt Matthews looks at 2009's NPD results, here reviewing sales of all consoles since 2005 for comparison and an evaluation of momentum. Who may need a price cut next?]
Sony essentially relaunched its PlayStation 3 platform with the introduction of the PS3 Slim in August 2009. In September we suggested that Sony should be able to sell between 2.0 million and 2.5 million systems in the last quarter of the year, with the system coming in toward the low end of that range.
In fact, Sony hit the upper end with sales of 2.39 million systems in all of October, November, and December 2009. It's been a long time coming, but it now appears that Sony actually has a price/value combination that can reach a much wider consumer market.
During the same October – December period Sony's prime competitor, Microsoft, sold nearly the same number of Xbox 360 systems (2.38 million). For the sake of comparison, 2.65 million units of Xbox 360 hardware were sold in the final quarter of 2008.
The decline in final quarter sales comes in spite of Microsoft's modest shifts in model and price positioning.
The Xbox 360 Pro model was eliminated in August and the Elite model was simultaneously reduced in price to $300 while the Arcade remained at $200.
Here's a look at sales for each year since 2005 across all models of console hardware:
We feel that the pressure is now on Microsoft to avoid losing too much momentum. The last two years have shown that Sony means to be extremely aggressive with cutting its costs and the PlayStation 3 will eventually drop to $250 or lower.
Microsoft could conceivably afford a modest price cut of its entry-level Arcade model to $175. Combined with its strong library of software – both old and new – Microsoft could justifiably tout the value of its system over the competition during the period when Sony is unlikely to announce any further price cuts.
While the Wii experienced a drop in hardware sales from 2008 to 2009, we are actually optimistic about Wii hardware sales in the coming months. The key here is timing. Recall that as of the end of September 2009, the system's year-to-date (YTD) sales were 22% behind those of the same period in 2008. By year's end the Wii was only behind its 2008 total by 5.7%.
The takeaway here is that the right kind of price cuts can shift the playing field dramatically. After its price cut the Wii went from 22% behind to only 5.7%. Sony's Slim moved PS3 hardware sales from a 32% deficit at the end of July to a 22% gain by year's end.
In the handheld space, the reverse has been happening. Nintendo introduced the DSi and Sony launched the PSP Go, both priced higher than existing models.
At our last reading, we estimated that the Nintendo DSi had achieved life-to-date sales of 2.8 million units and would hit 5.0 million by the end of 2009. Given figures for the final two months of the year, we now expect that the DSi has actually exceeded 5 million.
The 11.2 million Nintendo DS systems sold in 2009 and referenced in the above table is a record for any handheld or console. While it is difficult to comprehend a second year of Nintendo DS sales at the 11 million unit level, we hesitate to speculate about the effect that a DSi price cut could have.
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I'm not going to argue with the specifics of your predictions as I have no predictions of my own. But there is something quite strange about your choice of words: "No one outside of Grandma buying Billy and Timmy Wiis for Christmas is going to buy a Wii", "suck the life out of the Wii".
Let's not forget that while the trends of sales *rates* shown in the graphs above may mean something, they still show that the Wii is currently selling about twice as much as the PS3 or Xbox 360, or alternatively about as much as the competition combined. Only when the actual rate of a console's sales rises above the rate of Wii sales will that console be beginning to "catch up". And only when the installed base of that console becomes greater than the Wii's will that console be "winning". And only when those sales generate significant profit for that console manufacturer will it even have been worth participating. As it stands you have to frame the competition between console makers in a very specific way, with caveats and assumptions about the future, to even make it look like a competition. Make no mistake about it. Nintendo is completely dominating.
Most of the gaming press is guilty of this too. Take this article for instance. The PS3 and 360 are covered first and given more text than the Wii. Perhaps this is a coincidence. Perhaps it is because the battle between these two consoles is deemed more interesting and relevant. But writers are sick of covering the Wii's success and giving credit to Nintendo for it. It's like they are just hoping it will go away. I know Gamasutra is about the art as well as the business as it says under the logo, but this particular article is clearly supposed to be about the business, so why the asymmetry?
I suspect the reason for this is probably the same reason Gamasutra managed to produce lists of anticipated 2010 games for the PS3 and 360 but not the Wii. People here are much more interested what they themselves want to play than what the general public want to play despite frequent pretentions towards professionalism. I've overstated that but I hope people take my point rather than take offence.
But, in doing so you also support my point about grandma and Billy. The Wii has been scooped up by non gamers. Three co workers in my office that have no other game console are Wii owners. As far as I know the only games they own are Wii Sports and Rock Band. My nephew's parents bought him a Wii. He is still logged into XBOX Live evry time I sign in, which is often. People that like games still buy 360 games and PS3 games, 360 games in particular, much more than Wii games.
From the beginning Wii had "fad" written all over it. I wouldn't have expected it to have lasted as long as it did, but Nintendo has obviously retained a lot of mindshare from the 80s and early 90s, as Super Mario Brothers Wii is one of the top selling games of the year. It didn't hurt that it followed the tried and true method of the intentional shortage to stimulate demand.
"intentional shortage to stimulate demand."
People still believe that? Conspiracy theories abound among the broken-hearted PS360 fanboys don't they?
This "intentional shortage" you are talking about it the fact that the Wii sold faster than they could churn out supply, correct?
Has it ever crossed your mind that the people who run game companies are not psychics? Nintendo had a really poor showing when it came to console sales for the N64 and GameCube. When the Wii released, I think it sold more consoles in the first year than the N64 did in its life time (don't quote me on that). To be honest I don't think anyone can really say that the Wii's production numbers were anything short of optimistic. They produced quite a lot. 6.3 million in the first full year. How you can say that was "intentional shortage" is beyond me.
As for the "fad", It is nice to see that conspiracy still thriving as well. If a fad can last for 4 years, it must be quite a fad. It has now surpassed fad and entered cultural standard. If the Wii were a fad, it would not be selling as much software as it it. It held over 50% of software sales for the games industry in 2009. Hardly fad evidence. A true fad would have sold the console with Wii Sports and very little else if anything.
Also, I am far from being a Grandma, yet I have bought myself a Wii this past Christmas. I look forward to purchasing a number on non-casual/party games for it. Perhaps you missed my list of games I look forward to playing this year: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EphriamKnight/20100115/4122/The_Most_Anticipated_
Games_Of_2010_Wii.php
I also look forward to catching up on a good number of games that have been released over the last few year that cannot be classed as casual/party.
So let me know how this fad works out for you. While you wait for it to fade, I will be playing many fun games.
I take it you mean that most of the people who were in the market for a Wii have one already. This may be true but argument is certainly one that applies to the 360 and to some extent the PS3. Really, it is an unknown. However, we do know that only one of those consoles knows how to expand the gaming market. Where does Sony expect to get new PS3 customers anyway? Do they expect people to begin a gaming habit by playing MGS4, Demon's Souls or Bayonetta? The only thing new gamers would get from that is confusion. Sony's most likely buyers are people who already own a 360 and ex-PC gamers, many of whom may own a PS3 already anyway! Sony have already realised this, which is why they have started advertising the PS3 as a multimedia entertainment system but I'm not sure how successful that will be. Ultimately, people will only buy a PS3 if they want to play the games on it. If we are making speculations, Sony's main source of new customers in the long run is likely to come through the Wii since it is currently the easiest way to enter console gaming.
In your anecdotal evidence you suggest Wii owners are disinterested in their consoles. It would naturally follow from this that Wii owners aren't buying games. Now let's look at some actual evidence: Wii software totals on a monthly level are about double that of the 360 and on a yearly level still higher. Well, that's the end of that theory. Nothing in the data signals a "death rattle". I hear only a "cha-ching!". Only by looking at games-per-console can you start to travel to a different conclusion. But it is a more subtle point and a less powerful one. Overall numbers are important.
You say that the Wii is a fad. Well, I will say this: Sony and Microsoft would cut off their own arms to have such a 3 year (at least) fad on their hands. In fact they may be cutting off more than that right now in order to maintain their reputations as purveyors of "quality" games. Nintendo on the other hand, simply remembered how they created most of the gaming market in the first place with the NES (which has still sold more units than the Wii). They have been solidly producing profitable consoles and games that people want to buy for decades, compared to Microsoft and Sony who have enjoyed recent success sometimes at their own expense. Fad?
New Super Mario Bros Wii is indeed one of the top selling games of 2009, despite being released for only one month of the year. It is also one of the top selling games of all time despite being released only 2 months ago. You don't need a crystal ball to see that in a year it will have beaten lifetime sales of the Halo's, the COD's and every other hyped-up flash-in-the-pan game that was supposed to be proof of gaming's rise to fame. Was there an engineered shortage? It can't have been that severe for the game to sell so much in 2 months.
What does all this hard data point to? The Wii is a fad? I'm not sure what could happen that would convince some people that this is obviously false. I suspect some people's sanity rests on this disproven assumption. After begging everyone to take gaming seriously, when they try to get into we dismiss their interest as a fad. Give people a chance to learn the ropes. For the vast majority of the people reading this: the first game you ever enjoyed was simple, and that's not just because you might have been young at the time.
PS3 is advancing, true, but its install base is still too small. Multiplatform games still sell more on Xbox 360 than on PS3, and that limits the growth of the console.
Pokemon is still called a fad, yet it generates revenues companies like Konami and Capcom dream to get ;-)
I think this statement means that you believe the people who are buying Wii games don't like games. That's a lot of people spending a lot of money for something they don't like!
I'm dead set against the console wars, I think the only thing it shows is the immaturity of the people who play games and those who make them. This industry has a lot of trouble keeping people in it after they reach 30 and 40 and 50. One of the big reasons is this juvenile "my console is bigger than yours" approach. More respect that people are different, like different things, spend different amounts of time doing different things, and have different opinions about just about everything, would go a long ways towards the gaming industry continuing to get past its adolescence.
People who buy Wii games get them b/c they enjoy them. I have about 30, I didn't buy them b/c I love throwing away money. I think they are great games. Does that mean you have to like them. No. Does that mean that my playing of the Wii nearly daily is more important than someone else's anecdotal evidence. No. What it means is that there are different people, who like different things, and why is that bad? Why is diversity received with such animosity in gaming? There are great games on every console, if I had time, I'd enjoy them all. I am always saddened by a myopic approach that keeps someone from seeing the good and having fun. These are games right? Why does someone enjoying things different than someone else lead to arguments and power struggles?
I wish a great 2010 for all the consoles and the games...and that we continue to have new and interesting stuff that comes from it :).
The non-sports gamer kicks and screams about how they don't like sports, how they don't know anything about them, or how the controls are too confusing. This almost always ends in posturing like those games are Kryptonite when put around them. That is unless the game is so removed from the sport that they are based on that the result is a striking resemblance to a Wii game (NBA Jam). What's sad is that the reality is that sports games are video games first, control like most other games, and are super simple with layers of depth (just like any other game). However, you're not going to be able to convince the non-sports gamer of this 9 times out of 10 because they can't get past that it's a sports game.
I would argue that the same is true for people who have chosen to only buy a Wii for their current gaming needs. They seem to enjoy playing a good game as much as the rest of us, but they are not interested in the "boy's club" dynamic that the PS3/360 has going on. They will not care, no matter how hard you convince them that the PS3 and 360 have games that they might find as appealing or better than what's on the Wii, because it's still associated with the "boy's club" which they have no interest in being a part of.
Saying that, I would have to say that Nintendo will continue to sit pretty next year too because they have the ability to draw "boy's club" members to them and still maintain an "Everyone" image. On the other hand, Microsoft has decided to change their image midway through the console cycle with the Natal. They catered to a mature market and are now trying to broaden themselves to families and children. I really don't see how that's going to work since they will need to beat Nintendo at its own game. And, we're not talking the Nintendo from the Gamecube years. We're talking a reinvigorated Nintendo with buckets of money to spend to go along with the most experience and most "E" brands in the business. I think they start to slide and this continual loss of momentum opens the door for Sony to let the sails out a bit.
It's not that I hate the Wii out of pure fanboyism. It's more my preference is for the type of games that are made for and sold for the other two consoles. Both Take Two and Ubisoft have already made my point. Wii owners aren't interested in "mature" titles. Nor are they interested in new experiences (with the exception of the WiiSports/WiiPlay games). Wii owners want Mario and a waggle game.
As someone who identifies himself as a player of videogames going back to the Intellivision games, I want to play the games I imagined as a kid, not the games I actually played as a kid with a waggle control. I posted four years ago on this very site about how it is the games that matter, and that Bioshock and games like that are the revolution, not waggle controls.
I was wrong about how successful the Wii would be, but I wasn't wrong about how backwards the Wii takes the game experience. Much how I hate the idea of Jay Leno and the death of quality prime time television, above and apart from prefering guys like Letterman and O'Brien, I feel like the Wii isn't taking gaming into the mainstream, rather than introducing millions of people to a new toy branded with Nintendo. I am not looking to replay games from my grammar school days, I want my mind blown.
As far as the console shortage stuff goes wake up guys, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony all do it. They purposefully launch before they have enough quantites to meet demand not only because they want their console out as fast as possible, but it doesn't hurt to make your product unavailable at the very moment it is getting tremendous hype. Can you imagine Honda "launching" the 2011 Honda Accord that way?
I continue to reply to you because I feel that your views roughly represent those of many self-appointed core gamers who feel that their demographics owns a controlling stake in the games industry, apparently out of a sense of entitlement.
But first, the matter of "intentional shortages". It takes money to set up manufacturing capacity (factories) for building consoles. If you set up a capacity to produce 10 million a year and sell 10 million in the first year that's great and you have "met demand". Then if demand goes down to 6 million. You've got a wasted production capacity of 4 million. It would have cheaper to create 8 million each year and make some people wait. It may by easy to demand our products whenever we want them but cheaply producing them at the right place at the right time is hard. These problems are looked at by smart people and cannot be completely solved.
I agree with sentiments that console wars are silly. There's nothing wrong with comparing the quality of games on one console to the other but where it gets really silly is when people start talking about money. People's own prejudices regarding what are good and bad forms of gaming completely skew their view of the industry as a whole, so much so that all they see in the data is how hard the Wii is about to fall despite success after success. Johnathon, your posts are crammed full of value judgements (us vs them, mature vs toys, waggle) that have no place in the discussion of money. I'm not saying that the industry should be judged without considering the games and why people play them. Just that it should not be pre-judged on game preferences.
This would be fine if confined to forums and comments, but it seems to have infected thought in the corporate world too. Massive business decisions are being made on the basis of these prejudices. They are scared to do anything to upset a minority and ultimately everyone is suffering. There is space in the industry for many types of game, if only we let it grow. It's almost like people who watch indie films being offended by anyone spending money on blockbusters. Perhaps they were once but they grew up and got over it, realising that the existence of one does not necessarily damage the other.
There are players much more hardcore than you whose games have been dumbed down for your benefit. "Bioshock? Psssh, that's for teens. What about System Shock?". "Xbox 360? In 90s PC games you actually got to use your brain.". These real hardcore games became less profitable when your type came along and you killed it off. I am making some assumptions about your gaming habits, but I'm sure that whatever they are, you will see that there are suitable examples. There's no sense in bleeding millions in order to cater exclusively to an already over-served few.
You say you feel the Wii isn't taking gaming mainstream. What 360 and PS3 console games are attempting to do this? There are no games on those systems that might be appealing to an adult with no experience of gaming. They are all so mired in their own quirks and gaming shorthand that what appears on the screen before the non-gamer is an impenetrable mess of shiny things moving faster than their eyes can track accompanied by tiny HD text which is trying to tell me something, dammit! This doesn't mean the game is bad. It just means it was made for a person with years of experience playing and learning games, who has also built up digit dexterity way beyond average. It is made for the person whose brain was rewired from age 8 onwards to play games! Either that or the 8 year old beginning to rewire their brain.
Whatever happens, there is such a large potential market jumping at the opportunity to spend money on games they understand that the market will be expanded in a big way, but not in the way that you want. I don't know if Nintendo could mess it up now even if they tried to. Don't worry, a significant chunk of those people will move on to more "advanced" games. You will just be considered ahead of the curve instead of an obsessive gamer.
If making gaming more accessible is going backwards, I am glad to be a part of that. Gaming built itself into a box over the years and it was nearly impossible to break out of the market we had. The market gaming had had almost no room for growth. They had to break out or risk stagnation or death. Nintendo realized this long before Microsoft and Sony and adjusted accordingly and it all paid off.
"I am not looking to replay games from my grammar school days, I want my mind blown"
Then you will be thoroughly blown away by New Super Mario Brothers. That is unlike any Mario Game ever made. You will also be blown away by many of the games that serious Wii developers have been making and will be out soon.
That said, I don't think Super Mario Brothers is going to help anyone take video games more seriously. Whatever led Nintendo to realize that there are a lot of people who want to play "video games" but can't deal with a video game controller, more power to them. It was a stroke of genious and paid off handsolmely for Nintendo. Is there room for growth in that business model? I don't know. Clearly those newly minted Wii gamers aren't interested in the games that the previously existing gamers are into. Dead Space is one example, Mad World another of games that if built for the other two consoles are probably million sellers at least.
It's great that people in retirement homes are playing "video games" but it doesn't help me any. I actually like video games, and I don't want to play a Sonic game or Mario game, I know what they do and I was tired of them ten years ago. I want something that can blow my mind in the way that Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard can, or even that D.H. Lawrence can, and that is not something that Nintendo is at all interested in.
And, don't forget the Nintendo Wii might never reach the sales totals of the PS2 before annointing it the "console that saved the videogame business." And what Nintendo is offering is something that no one else can jump on, since no one else has brands as non-threatening and "mainstream" as Nintendo. But, again, I think that is drying up for Nintendo, and non holiday sales wil plummet this year.
And am I missing something here, does Mario not jump on things in Super Mario Brothers Wii?
Also, please be more specific in what you mean or don't mean by mainstream. CODMW2 has sold over 10 million copies accross PS3 and 360. That is pretty mainstream. GTAIV and Halo 3 also did unreal kinds of numbers. What non Nintendo property or Wii Sports/Fit game has sold well on the Wii? The Wii brought Nintendo games to a mainstream audience, but Mario and even Zelda were already pretty mainstream, and are more nostalgia trips than an evolution in gaming. I think at least in the states the gaming biz is healthy, and is reaching a point of acceptance where it can appeal to "core" gamers and still be taken seriously by the general public. Also, I think that things like Netflix and Facebook are letting MS and Sony get there systems into more homes and leaving a little more room for both the non gaming and gaming audience.
@ Johnathan, your words show your prejudice: waggle, fad, toy. You say you want to play games that "get your mind blown", but have you considered that other people just want to play for the fun of it? Why can we not have both? What has Microsoft and Sony been doing to these past few years? Trying to turn everyone into "hardcore" gamers? Now they are playing catch up with the Wii.
The Wii led sales for 2009. Consumers have spoken with their wallets.
Peace!
"No one outside of Grandma buying Billy and Timmy Wiis for Christmas is going to buy a Wii"
well, I just bought a Wii for Christmas and I am really enjoying it, especially third party titles like "Cursed Mountain" or good old "classics" like RE4 or Okami...
Of course the Wii has reached a peak now: sales can't get higher and higher forever. Still, it's selling like the other consoles combined. That's quite an amazing feat, I think.
I think we have different definitions of what is considered "mainstream" Yes MW2 sold over 10 million copies, but how many of those were bought by people who have never gamed before in their life or whose last experience in gaming was with the Atari or NES? Probably in the low thousands if being generous. The games you listed as mainstream are only "mainstream" to the same people who have been buying games since the PS1, Dreamcast and N64 days.
A game like New Super Mario Brothers Wii is mainstream as it is being bought, played and enjoyed by people whose first entry to gaming was Wii Sports, Wii Fit or who haven't gamed since the Atari and NES. Not only is it selling and being enjoyed by them, but it is being bought and enjoyed by people who have been playing and buying games since the PS1 days as well as those who have PS3s and 360s. Yes it is like the original Super Mario Bros in the Same way that MW2 is just like Doom or Quake. The same core mechanic but infinitely more playability. I suggest you get together with 3 of your friends and/or family members and play a round of four player NSMB and come back and tell me it is just like the NES Super Mario Brothers.
"I actually like video games, and I don't want to play a Sonic game or Mario game"
Guess what. You are in luck. There are hundreds of games tht are not Super Mario Brothers or Sonic. Many of them are actually quite fun to play and can be considered "hardcore" by people who are not obsessed with HD graphics.
"Dead Space is one example, Mad World another of games that if built for the other two consoles are probably million sellers at least"
You really think so? Did you happen to miss all the reviews of Dead Space panning it because it was an On Rails Shooter? Did you happen to miss all the reviews of Mad World stating that it lacked substance and tried to make up for it with gore? You didn't list Conduit, but I guess you missed all the reviews stating that its level design and ai were sub par for an FPS? You see, even "hardcore" gamers don't take the "hardcore" offering of the Wii seriously. You would think that if Publishers would listen they would have made different choices.
I am taking a liberal guess here but I suspect that of the 10 million copies of Cod sold, each copy is played on average by one person, therefore we can estimate the number of players of Cod at approximately 10 million (not counting for piracy).
I suspect that for every copy of NSMB sold the average number of players is 4. Thefore my estimate for people playing NSMB wii is approximately 40 million.
That in essence is the difference between traditional and mainstream.
If you take Wii sports it would even be more exagerated, because of the 50 million copies of the game sold I would suspect the number of unique players of that game to be in the hundreds of millions.
I own a Wii and a PS3. The 360 has very little that I would ever want to play since I don't like FPS games. So I have no interest in it. So far I have only rented games for my PS3. I just got it in September, but in that same timeframe, I've bought 4 Wii games. I do plan on a couple of PS3 game purchases, but I've really enjoyed it for the Blu-ray movies. (For anyone who hasn't watched a blu-ray on their HD tv, IT'S AWESOME!!!!!) I will replace every DVD in my collection, with BR discs. I've downloaded games on my Wii, but none on my PS3.
I don't understand your argument about the Wii not being mainstream. At my place of employment their are 22 employees aged 20 to 63. 16 of us own Wii's, 1 owns a PS3 (me), and 1 owns a 360. The 16 of us trade games, share our personal reviews on titles we've rented and talk about how are muscles are sore the next day. The 360 owners sits and whines about us, and extols how he is playing "real" videogames on the internet. He sounds infantile and is completely out of touch with what is really going on, and what the "mainstream" really wants from a fun game. We're having fun while he seems resentful, bitter and angry. He sounds like you.
I'm sorry but you made Deadspace and Mad World your examples and anyone that uses those games as examples are really lost. First lets look at Deadspace. This game was not a bit hit on the 360. Sales did not really pick up for the game until the price for it was dropped. The gamers that did buy and enjoy the 360 game really had no reason to buy a on rails Wii game. That is like trying to sell fans of a fighting a game an adventure game that features those fighters. We all know how that usually turns out.
Now we come to Mad World and well that game was not going to be a big seller on any system. Just look back at the sales of God Hand or even ManHunt on the PS2 and see what I mean.
If you don't like the Wii or what it stands for that is fine, but even in it sales slump it sells twice as much as the 360 and PS3. If the Wii is in trouble then the 360 and PS3 are in sales hell. I would like all 3 consoles to do well because it would make for a much healthier market. The main problem with the industry right now though is that people that make the decisions seem to share your view of things. For that reason I think we will keep watching studios close up this year and the next and so on.
Wake up and smell the coffee my friend.
The people have spoken. Nearly half of all gamers in the world have chosen the Wii.
Realize this: your likes and dislikes get in the way of your reporting.
At the same time, I don't like the idea of playing Wii Fit and Brain Training but I am happy that people are getting into any form of gaming. When gaming approaches the mainstream appeal of films, then it will be large and diverse enough to support niches that really appeal to individual groups. I am not saying this means that games should necessarily be cinematic or similar to films. I am just talking about popularity. Currently our deepest experiences are in games like Bioshock. I got a chance to play it for about an hour on a 360. Honestly, I wasn't that drawn in. I admit that I didn't give it a proper chance but I'm sure that in the long-term there will be games that provide a richer emotional experience, and not just *good for a game*. I don't think this will be a common occurence until the market for this niche is much larger. The only way to make this niche larger is to turn non-gamers into new gamers into experienced gamers.
I actually look at the PS2 as the console to emulate. It had several features that were forward thinking at the time but also was able to service all types of gamers from casual to hardcore. It embraced new technology like dvd playback and later online play. I think Sony attempted to be this again with the PS3 but were beat to the market by the 360 for hardcore gamers and had too big of a price gap with the wii for casual gamers.
While I think its silly to say the wii is a fad, I don't think its far fetched to call the motion controls, the wii's most attractive feature, a gimmick. Its the sole reason for its success. Other than motion control what really separates the wii from the gamecube? In fact Nintendo essentially admits this themselves with their series of gamecube re-releases with motion controls tacked on, probably the laziest thing they could do. That is what is extremely frustrating about the wii. They are exhibiting less effort and reaping bigger rewards. Animal Crossing is another example. Did Nintendo develop a whole new game created for the Wii, no they basically ported the DS version.
Besides NSMB was their another high profile wii game last year that didn't come with some new peripheral? And speaking of NSMB, what new innovations does it have that LittleBigPlanet didn't offer a year prior?
I guess its just frustrating that Nintendo is enjoying all this success at the expense of alienating a lot of core gamers.
Please stop thinking that I am attacking the kind of game that you like or hope for in the future. This is not personal. Nintendo don't compete with those games anyway. If they die off then it is their own fault.
And it's immature to assert that Nintendo make their consistent huge profits despite a lack of effort. Firstly, you don't know the extent of the effort that has gone into their games and hardware design. You are just assuming it is small because the games look poor by your own definition of value. Secondly, if it were that easy to make that much money everyone would be coming up with their own "gimmick" and raking in the cash.
"I guess its just frustrating that Nintendo is enjoying all this success at the expense of alienating a lot of core gamers."
What do you want the world to do to ease your frustration? Walk into the living room of a family innocently enjoying their Wii console and tell them stop ruining things for everyone. Then you'll see how crazy it sounds.
I am one of the Wii owners, that doesn't fit into your picture and I will explain to you why. I played games for the better part of my life. I started with the VCS2600 and the ZX-81. I really liked those times and those games. Over the eighties I played games on my 8 and 16 Bit Computers. Consoles weren't an alternative in europe at this time.
In the 1990s after the demise of Atari, I picked up a PS1, then moved on in late 1990s to the PC and from that to the GC and finally to the Wii. Over the years, I collected many 8 and 16 and 32 Bit consoles and I played also on various handhelds from Nintendo, Atari and Gamepark.
I say all this to show you, that I am the usual type of gamer, you are refering to, that moved on to the PS3/360, but over the past years, I became more and more bored with the so called "hardcore" gamer games. I don't think the successful games on the PS3/360 are complex in any way.
Games like MW2 or RE5 or GOW are simple action games, that lack any complexity. They are designed, that everybody can pick up the pad and play them through in a short ammount of time. The basic gameplay in these games is very limited and simple and lacks innovations. I began to loose interest in gaming in general, when the DS was released. The fresh approach in games on that system helped, that I didn't quit gaming as a hobby.
Most AAA games on the HD console bore me today, I've tried several of them on my PC. For every "Bioshock", which I loved for it's fantastic design and story telling, there are thousands of dumb first or third person shooters, that are the equivalent to movies like "The Fast and the Furious" pr "Transformers". Movies like that are made for 14-18 year old male teens, I don't watch them and I don't wanna play the gaming counterpart of this movies.
I prefer new experiences, that the Wii can offer. I wouldn't say the motion controls are a gimmick. You say, the Wii is a Gamecube with motion controls. Yes and a 360 is a XBox1 with better graphics. This argument leads to nothing.
I was attempting not to sound as if I were taking it personally. I too want more people to enjoy games, I just want every niche or group to be serviced. I readily admit that this probably an irrational fear as Microsoft and Sony continue to put out high quality (for me) games.
As far as my comments about Nintendo giving little effort, I think the my examples speak for themselves. The series of gamecube rehashes with motion controls is lazy on Nintendo's part. The port of Animal Crossing to the Wii is lazy on Nintendo's part.
@ Christian
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about he complexity of PS3/360 games vs. Wii games. I will concede that the games you mentioned, some of which I play(ed), can be equivalent to the blockbuster movie. But just like with movies I can enjoy various genres for what they are.
I will argue with you about the Wii and 'new experiences'. For starters 'new' does not always = better/good. The motion controls are an interesting and cool idea, but I think a lot 3rd party developers see them as a way to mask their crappy shovelware. And does anybody want those games with high sales, even big Wii fans? Surely not. I would think Wii fans want to see more experiences like Super Mario Galaxy, a fantastic game by the way.
The reason I call the motion controls a gimmick is because they are what sell the wii, despite the console being a minor gamecube upgrade, which did poorly in sales. So the increase in sales is purely based on the motion control experience. While yes, the 360 is an Xbox with better graphics, I do think the games are what sell that system. I don't think people are buying the wii for any particular game, but more for the experience. Parents and grandparents are not buying wiis in order to play Mario, they just want to swing their arms around in a simple sports game. Is there anything wrong with that? No. People can buy whatever they want for whatever reason they want, but for those types of people they are buying it for the gimmick and not for the game experiences. You seem like you have the gamer mentality, so I'm assuming your wii experience does not stop at Wii Sports and Wii Fit. So my comments are not necessarily directed at you, but instead all the people who only buy new wii games with they come with some new peripheral.