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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."
This months Edge has a fact that the Japanese "teeny boppers" control fads out there..
If 5% of them buy it, then another 60% will within a month, or something to that effect!
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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.
so nintendo =/= teh d00m3d?!?!
oxymoron of the day - Xbox gamer
Can they really prove its Nintendogs that is causing this? Maybe just the initial excitement of PSP has worn off (or everyone that wanted one got one), and Nintendo just rose back to the top in the handheld console world.
Apparently, most would disagree with you. The desire to be a virtual care taker, whether of a family unit (Sims), an empire (Civilization), or a Pet drives more game sales than any other genre.
While Microsoft and Sony are pouring billions into hardware, which they expect to lead to game sales, Nintendo keep on doing what they always have done, making games their first priority, and hardware second.
Maybe Nintendogs is the next in the line of Pokemon/Zelda/Mario/Tetris, maybe it's not. The point is that Nintendo is putting it's effort into coming up with this stuff while the other 2 players are competing over how many extra polys they can render in their new WW2 FPS game.
I can see Nintendo winning the next gen war by making a good, cheap console with great games that PS3 and Xbox360 owners buy as their second machine.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
by the release of porn on UMD.
Because then you wouldn't be able to play DS games _or_ PSP games? If you're looking at it from the perspective of which next-gen handheld to get the presence of GBA games on the DS is motivation to get a DS rather than a PSP, not a motivation to get neither.
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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.
This doesn't take into account the quality of any of the games.
And quality is where it really matters. There are a ton more games for the PS2 than the GameCube. But I buy about the same ammount of both. So far, there have been several titles that have tempted me to pick up a DS, but nothing at all to make me even look at the PSP. So often people buy a console for a single game they like, then look around at the others once they have it.
Personally, I like supporting a variety of consoles. Having several big companies vying for my attention means a larger variety of titles for me to choose from.
Got Apathy?
Personally, I think the disappointing PSP sales have more to do with the fact that Sony seems to expect you to buy the thing without getting a chance to see it first.
Nintendo has made sure there are DS systems in every major store, showing the latest games. I've yet to see a PSP at all; all the stores have tons of boxes sitting in locked display cases, but apparently Sony thinks people will drop $250 on a toy without seeing it first.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Still, it's a step up over a real cat.
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.
...for my Nintendog to POOP ON!!!