IBM Announces Wii Chips In Nintendo Hands

simoniker writes "IBM has announced that the 'Broadway' CPUs created for the Nintendo Wii have been shipping from the company's East Fishkill, N.Y., fabrication facility since earlier this year. Nintendo, it would seem, is ramping up for the launch of their next-gen console in a month or two." Joystiq and Kotaku have the news as well. From the article: "Nintendo has also confirmed their reception of IBM's chip: 'The first chips are in our possession,' said Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director/General Manager, Integrated Research & Development Division, Nintendo Co., Ltd. 'Today's milestone marks the final stage of our drive to reach both core and nontraditional gamers with an inviting, inclusive and remarkable gaming experience.'"

Comments

Wii launch date

[DeanCubed]

Well, most analysts have predicted that the Wii would launch either mid-November (the 15th being thrown around a lot), November 1st, or sometime around Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. With this news that production has been going strong for almost two months, I think the earlier date is much more likely. If Nintendo can take advantage of a month's head start on the actual holiday season, it pretty much guarantees them second place worldwide behind the 360 until at least the end of summer 2007, and likely well into 2008. If the PS3 can't ship their 6 million before Nintendo ships theirs, it doesn't matter about demand. Plus, whichever console sees the most sales between November 2006 and March 2007 will undoubtedly get the most developer support, which will lead to an even stronger holiday season 2007. By January 1st 2008, the "winner" of this generation will have basically been decided. At that point, as we've seen with generations past, whoever has the most games wins.

Re:Wii launch date

[Heir Of The Mess]

Just releasing a product doesn't guarantee anything. It has to live up to expectations or else the first few adopters will trash it on the net and general media and then demand will dry up. Same goes for the PS3.

It's interesting how you assume that XBOX 360 will be number 1 and that the Wii won't get past it. I know many people who would have never bought a console who are definately going to be buying a Wii. Even my girlfriend has been bugging me every week asking me when we can go buy one. This could be Nintendo's finest hour.

Re:Wii launch date

[DeanCubed]

Well, I was assuming it wouldn't get past it before 2008. There's a huge head start, and may developers are choosing the 360 over the PS3 when deciding on what platform to put their game. Many of those games won't make it to Wii based on the Wii's audience, and it's hardware capabilities. And those 360 exclusives should keep it ahead for the next couple of years. If, however, the Wii has more games than the 360 by 2008, then there's a good chance that the Wii will overtake the 360 by the end of the generation in 2009/2010.

Re:Wii launch date

[KDR_11k]

I think the hardcore gamers are the ones that care the least about the PS3 because the hardcore gamers are well informed and have been complaining about graphics taking precedence over new ideas in gameplay for quite some time now. In fact I'd wager the PS3 aims more at the high-end hardware lover market, the kind that really wants HD. I wouldn't say those are hardcore gamers, a hardcore gamer is perfectly content playing a 10 year old 2d game over a modern 3d game if it offers superior gameplay. Of course noone cares about those hardcore gamers as they are too few and too hard to please.

Another market that cares about the PS3 is the large number of average and casual gamers that liked the PS2 and expect the PS3 to perform similarily, sometimes while harboring misconceptions like believing that the exclusive titles for the PS2 are somehow bound to Sony in a way that prevents their sequels from being on other consoles.

The Wii is hoping to sway that sector of the market (as is the XBox 360, of course) in addition to gaining the "non-gamer", i.e. the people that don't like the games currently made by the big players in the industry and would like a game that's controlled with a mouse and one button instead.

I think that in the end all three consoles try to compete for the same markets, when one covers a market the others don't the others quickly try to adapt and cover it as well. Maybe with the exception of Nintendo as they are always quite slow to react to their competitors' actions.

Re:Wii launch date

[Anonymous Coward]

and the Wii being a machine of lesser abilities hoping to cash in on casual and young gamers, you have to take more into account than release date. Even if SOny moves the PS3 relases date back to 2008, developers will still support it, and people will still buy it.

First off, I don't think the Wii is hoping to cash in on Young Gamers but that is besides the point; the Nintendo DS was a machine of lesser abilities hoping to cash in on casual and young gamers and it is leading (and extending its lead) in every market:

North America:
http://www.vgcharts.org/usaconscomps.php?name1=DS& name2=PSP&type=2

Japan:
http://www.vgcharts.org/japconscomps.php?name1=DS& name2=PSP&type=2

(sorry, accurate European numbers not avaiable)

Nintendo may "win" in the short run, but I would bet money that the PS3 will soon generate more game sales, in terms of units sold and units sold per console.

Now, the DS has captured the casual and non-gamer market in Japan (and is starting to capture the same market in North America) and look how software sales have gone:

North America:
http://www.vgcharts.org/usaconscomps.php?name1=DS& name2=PSP&type=3

Japan:
http://www.vgcharts.org/japconscomps.php?name1=DS& name2=PSP&type=3

Sure, some of what would be the PS3 market might buy a Wii, but most of them are not afraid to fork over big bills so they'll buy a PS3 when it comes out anyway

The thing that really bothers me about people who assume that the PS3 will be successful regardless, and Nintendo's strategy to broaden the gaming market is meaningless, is that they don't understand why the Playstation brand was so successful up to this point. The Playstation and PS2 catered to the mainstream market which is predominantely casual and non-gamers; when you consider that there is probably about 10 Million hard-core gamers (depends on your definition of hard-core) and you'd have to be pretty hard-core to spend more than about $200 (or maybe $300) on a console then it becomes clear that Sony is ignoring about 90% of the people they have sold their system to in the past.

the PS3 will be THE release of the year since it will be better (not adjusting for the crazy price, obviously), and it will be new. When it comes time to think about another generation of consoles, I bet we'll look back at the PS3 as the most popular of its generation ...

Much like the XBox and Gamecube were the release of the year in 2001, and both carried their more powerful hardware onto outselling the PS2 worldwide.

The truth is that the reasons why Nintendo is currently not the market leader in the home console market (they're the total leader, but that's not important) is that durring the end of the SNES generation and leading into the N64 generation they made several mistakes and Sony Capatalized on those mistakes; an upstart captured the market by producing a machine of lesser abilities hoping to cash in on casual market. As far as I can see, Sony has made some massive mistakes, including producing a $500/$600 system, alienating third party developers by screwing up the launch of the PS3 (not to mention the massive price, huge development costs, and Sony's insistence that games have to be of PS3 quality [in other words, those crappy looking games that made up 50% of the PS2's library are now not allowed to publish for the PS3]), and plain old hubris.

The way I see it is that the plague that has infe

Wii, PS3, Xbox360

[j235]

The console wars are over before they even start. IBM wins.

Re:Digitizers?

[stesch]

But using something like iTheatre (portable video glasses) could be a bit difficult, am I right?

Re:Choices

[G3ckoG33k]

Delays, delays, choices, perspectives, and more delays. Those in my view are big factors to market presence. Choices? Yes, should I buy this or should I buy that? It is not as simple as if should I buy a Wii over a PS3, or even an Xbox360? Maybe a new bicycle, monitor, or anything else worth a few hundred dollars, depending on season; that fishing reel was just an example of something _offtopic_ that may influence your buying pattern. Releasing a product the wrong season may be bad for your product's life cycle. And if Wii comes out before Thanksgiving it probably will start Q3 2008 with a better market presence than Sony will have. BTW, as was claimed in the article, Wii was shipped from Fishkill... Sounds darn close to a fishing reel to me, even if in essence wildly OT. :)