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Nintendogs Pummels Sony Products
Gamespot has the news that the hit DS title Nintendogs has allowed the Nintendo DS to pull ahead of the PSP and PS2 consoles for over a month straight. In the week Nintendogs was launched, the DS outsold the PSP and PS2 combined in the nation of Japan. Several weeks after its initial launch, the DS is still outselling the PSP by 5,000-sum units. Those of us in the states still have a little while to wait to see the cuteness firsthand. From the article: "The game is sold in different editions, each housing roughly five types of puppies, from Chihuahuas to Labrador retrievers. As a virtual owner, gamers will pet their pooches using the stylus, order commands through the integrated microphone, and let their canines sniff other gamers' Nintendogs wirelessly. Nintendogs is scheduled to roll over to the US on August 22."
The screenshots (GIS) sure look interesting though. Very clean, polished PDA-like interface that sort of reminds me of an 'OS X' application. I thought they would market a game like this towards a younger target demograhic (ie. kids ages 4-14) but, judging from the UI, it doesn't appear the case.
Very good point. This last week, Nintendogs didn't even make it into the top ten in Japan. A Gundam game and a puzzle/quiz game did.1 17771961
http://www.nintendojo.com/infocus/view_item.php?1
The PSP has a release date of September 1 in Europe, This obviously skews the number of units sold in comparison to the DS that is available worldwide.
Except that the article only used sales figures for Japan.
AND the PS2 is more than half a decade old almost everyone who has ever wanted one has one now.
Again, read the article. For the time periods referenced, the PS2 sold very closely to the PSP. Out of the three weeks they gave actual numbers for, PS2 outsold PSP on two of them. So, while it might have been better to summarize saying that the DS sold at more than twice the rate of the PSPs, mentioning the PS2 was very valid.
Check out this little flash presentation...
p hp
:)
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/nintendogs.
Sooo cuuuttte
On the surface, it's nothing more than an advanced Tamagotchi (which, by the way, are still on sale in Japan and still very, very popular with younger - under 10 - kids), but the more you play it, the more you can see how much work went into it.
I picked it up right around the time it came out, and really got into it. I bought it on a lark, and was surprised how much I liked it. You do the basic pet owner stuff - walk your dog, teach it tricks, feed it, bathe it, play fetch, etc. - as well as enter it in dog shows, frisbee contests and athletic tournaments (an obstacle course kind of thing). Winning competitions earns you cash that you can use to buy more stuff for your dog (toys, food, collars), upgrade your apartment or even get more dogs. (You can have up to three dogs at once.)
What makes the game work is how well everything is dog. The animation is very fluid and natural. The AI is done well, and different dogs seem to have different personalities. My dog (a Shiba Inu named "Sushi" ^.^) likes to play with a lot of his toys and will chase them all over the apartment or bound around the park when I take him outside to play. However, there's one he seems to be scared of. It's a squeaky ball that makes noise when it bounces. He growls and yips at it, but won't go near it. I've talked to other people who have the same toy, and their dogs all love it. Sure, it could just be that my dog has one line of code (hate ball = yes) that set up this behavior, but it seems very realistic when you see it in action.
So while it's easy to dismiss the game as yet another virtual pet, there's a lot more going on under the hood than has been done in the past. I'm not sure how well it'll do in the US, but I'm sure it's got a market there.
And as for the DS sales surging when Nintendogs came out, I doubt it hurt that the Pink and Blue DSes were released on the same day that Nintendogs came out.