Slashdot Mirror
Will the Wii Work?
Today BusinessWeek is running an article asking Will Nintendo's Wii Strategy Score? With the Tokyo Game Show this week, they run down the trials facing Nintendo's little-box-that-could both here in the States, and in Japan. From the article: "Few expect truly dedicated gamers to choose the Wii over the PS3 or Xbox. And ultimately, the advantage may go to Sony. Yuta Sakurai, an analyst at Nomura Securities in Tokyo, expects the PS3 to sell 71 million units by 2011, compared with 40 million units for the Wii. Microsoft, meanwhile, is planning a stripped-down version of the Xbox without a hard-disk drive and other accessories that will cost about $250 in Japan, where the U.S. software maker has endured disappointing results."
I'm a 23 year old PC gamer. The only consoles I own are PS1, SNES, and NES. I do all my gaming on my PC (Wintel). My room mate got a PS2, which I never play, and while the 360 looks killer, I won't buy it for the price.
A $250 Wii? HELL YES! The price point alone is what does it for me. That and the new controller just makes it a lot more interesting then the same old systems with new graphics.
I think this will work really well for them. This will be the christmas present to buy for years to come.
I live with 7 other people, and we have a shared food fund, which overflows into a house fund, and I'm totally going to lobby that we purchase a Nintendo Wii with it. I have only ever purchased (or my household purchased) an NES, a Gameboy, and a Game Gear (with its whopping 14-second battery life), and yet I am called to this glorious machine.
My four-point argument for the Nintendo Wii:
1. Legend of Zelda with sword-swinging.
2. Metroid Prime with controls that rival PC controls. (Oooooh! A slogan: "Metroid Prime: get inside Samus")
3. 4gb flash memory for under $50.
4. $250
I however do not really like any of the Mario Kart sequels nearly as much as the original. So yes, Nintendo can break my heart. Will they? I hope not. I don't even think it probable.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I'm a PC gammer. I've been a PC gammer for almost 20 years now. And I have never owned a gaming console.
That said, the Wii is the first console I've actually considered buying. If the first 6 months look good for it, and someone makes a light-saber game that works with the Wii-mote, I just might buy my very first console.
What I am not interested in is a $3,000 system, which is what the PS3 or XBox is to me. $400-600 for the console. $1,4000-1,800 to replace my 48" projection with a similar sized HD projection. $200 for a few games and a controller, and $200 for new HD or Blue ray movies to take advantage of the HD tv and player.
For $250 I can hit the ground running with the Wii. Another $200 for a few games and a controller and I'll be pretty set for entertainment for the year.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Somewhere along the line "dedicated gamer" seems to have been hijacked (by the media presumably?) to mean something like "compulsive graphics whore who will brainlessly follow whatever the newest trend is." Maybe it happened back when FPSs became the big thing when every "dedicated gamer" seemed to be upgrading their graphics card every other week in order to be able to play the latest game. Regardless of when it came about however i don't think that interpretation has ever fit me, and i like to consider myself a dedicated gamer, though perhaps one who has somewhat lapsed in recent years as i've had to learn how to balance gaming, a social life and a career. There may may be a few people out there that fit that negative stereotype but i really hope that the gamers who are actually _dedicated_ to their hobby are actually intelligent and thoughtfull people who will put more thought into their purchasing decisions than that. But perhaps i'm beeing hopelessly optimistic.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
This is the perfect console for ALL gamers. Casual will get into it because it's unique, die hards will get into it because it's new. I'm sick of block buster graphics and little gameplay. I'd rather an interactive/VR system than having more ground breaking graphics.
Graphics are good in theory, but new ways to play games work far better.
Hear, Hear!
If the Wiimote actually works as expected, then I think both the "hardcore" gamers AND the casual gamers will snatch this console up. The hardcore gamers will get it to experience a truly innovative gaming style (and for only $250, why not??) and the casual gamers will get it because a) it's cheaper than the others (again, only $250!), b) it's got Mario Brothers/Zelda/etc, and c) the Wiimote looks cool.
The Wii will Win. 'Nough said.
Favorite
I don't disagree with that. Many gamers are tired of the same old formulas. BUT The only problem with Nintendo trying to change things up is that they just can't shake their image of making 'kids' games. Tell anyone you know, hardcore or casual gamer, about the Wii and they'll say "But Nintendo just makes kids games."
Nintendo has to get some SERIOUS third party support or stop making games that look like pre-school shows. I love a lot of Nintendo's games, including almost all of the Mario titles, but hardly any of my friends will touch them because they look like they're for little kids.
Think about how popular a game like Mario Party would be if it were done in the genre of GTA or WWII.
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
Wii. Wiimote. Lucas Arts. Jedi. Lightsaber. Game.
It's coming. And it will mean Wii will be the platform to beat. The Lucasfilm presentation at Comic-Con showed some of the other aspects of coming Lucas Arts games, like the Euphoria system which allows for truly unpredictable NPCs, and introduces a little bit of volition in the Player Character as well. The demo only made sense when you thought of it in the context of the Wii and its Wiimote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjlFTihRwAk
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
My thoughts exactly. My only hope is that the relatively large and powerful (read: spends lots of money) "core gamer" or "dedicated gamer" marketshare doesn't look at the Wii and say "oh, it's a stupid toy, it's not serious about serious video games like my 360/PS3 is." To people who play video games, "dedicated gamer" can mean something very different than what it means in the marketplace.
Have you read this Penny Arcade? http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/09/15 At the bottom of Tycho's first post, he makes an interesting point and links to a video of some people at a game show playing Metroid Prime with the controllers. The interesting part is that you can hear them talking about the controls as they play and essentially complaining that it's not what they're used to.
I have a feeling that what the "dedicated gamers" may see is something that essentially isn't a games console because it doesn't have a console controller. You can't play games on it like you can play games on an Xbox, PS1/2/3, SNES, or any other console that has come out before it. A dedicated gamer suddenly feels not so dedicated and not such an expert when they pick up the newest toy that's branded as a games console and they have to relearn much of what they knew about video games, and especially for those who care about "asserting their pwnership over the medium" as Tycho puts it, this will likely lead to lots of "elitist" video game players shrugging their shoulders and passing off the Wii like it was a new DDR dance pad: a toy related to video games, but not an actual game.
I think a greater concern for Nintendo, who is trying to shift the idea of gaming into the average joe's spotlight, is that over the past few years, the ways that video games have developed may leave the average joe feeling this way too. Everyone and their dog has played Halo, and that to them is a video game. Look at what has happened in the development of the ridiculous "PC vs. Mac" arguments: any average guy can jump into the flamewar and say "The Mac is just a toy, it can't run my games and doesn't do what *I* want it to," and more or less be right, because it doesn't do what he wants it to, which is look, sound, act and feel like Windows, which is what he has grown accustomed to over the past x years of working with computers. "A 'computer' runs Windows, and anything else is a stupid imitation and a waste of time." Well, the technically inclined among us know that that simply isn't the case, and the same goes for the Wii: truly dedicated gamers, the ones who enjoy playing games for what they are and that rate low on the fanboy scale, will agree with what you've said and will embrace the new console because it offers the potential of something different. The average person that is not overly concerned or interested in the video games marketplace, that in actuality makes up much of the "core gamer" or "dedicated gamer" demographic that market analysts refer to, may act similarly and write the Wii off as a pale imitation.
It is in the truly dedicated gamer's interest that the Wii is a massive success. Actually, I take that back: it is in the greatest interest of every single person who has ever even picked up or tried a video game, or ever will. Why? If the Wii fails, it may fully drive home the notion that although small ragged bands of true gamers here and there complain about stagnating gameplay and the lack of innovation, their voice really doesn't matter, and what will sell is sequels and rehashes and new graphics. Sure, people have tried innovative stuff before, but in my memory at least, this is the first time in the video games industry that an industry juggernaut has jumped into the fray to directly compete with the market dominators with something truly unique and different (I don't count the Virtual Boy: I don't believe it was ever designed to directly compete with the other major consoles. Maybe I'm wrong).
If the Wii is an abysmal failure, Nintendo will be kaput, regardless
I agree. If lets say for each PS3 sold, Sony loses $100 per console, whereas the Wii costs $130 to build but they sell at $250. This number is based on how much it costs to make the GC if they keep on making them the cost of making one is actually around $80, so the Wii costs $50 more to manufacture. Now lets say that Sony sells about.... 10million consoles before its first pricedrop, the same with the Wii console, they sell about... 5million (realistically) before their first pricedrop. And lets say that the time it takes for the prices of the consoles (lets say that they drop the price at the same time) is 2 years.
So, lets put all the numbers together. In two years Nintendo and Sony sell 5 million and 10million consoles, respectively. Nintendo makes a profit of $600million in 2 years. Sony loses $1billion. So, as far as hardware sales go, Nintendo wins. But what also counts are software sales, wehre the real money is made and helps offset that huge lose. Predicting possible software sales figure of each console in 2 years really can't be predicted so we pretty much have to wait and see.
As you can see, from a hardware-only perspective Nintendo succeeds whereas Sony loses. However, both companies also sell software. Nintendo has to make a profit on the hardware in order to compete with Sony and MS, because MS and Sony have the capacity to loose money. If nintendo were to make 25% less sales than Sony in that time (which is in rare for Nintendo if you look at recent sales trends) then their net-profit will match or exceed Sony's net-profit. That is, of course, if the current sales trend continues for Sony.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
I'd consider Green Eggs and Ham the superior book. I hate Jane Austen.
The Dragon Boat was a bit silly, yes. The age of the hero- who cares? Its the gameplay that matters, and the gameplay was damn fun (except for the sailing parts).
You say to stop assuming people mean gore when they say mature. I've never seen any other definition put forth by those wanting it to be more "mature" other than blood and guts. Please tell me how changing the age and graphics style of Zelda would have made it more fun- because I honestly can't see it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
All the Wii controller does is replace the two thumbsticks of the X-Box with a controller which you can either move or tilt.
Uhhhh no. The Wiimote + Nunchaku has a thumbstick + move and tilt on the wiimote + move and tilt on the nunchaku + mouse/lightgun-type functionality via the sensor bar. You can be moving the nunchaku up (say to raise your shield in zelda) while using the thumbstick to move your character, while moving the wiimote in 3D space (say to slash your sword), while pressing a button on the wiimote (say to activate a power up for your sword slash). That's more freedom than just two thumb sticks.
If nothing else, the Wiimote will be able to simulate a mouse-like interface far better than a gamepad. But there are many possibilities beyond that - the much heralded rumor that LucasArts will make a lightsaber fighting game where you use the wiimote as your saber, for example.
One thing that I thought of that would be an interesting use of this controller setup for FPSes is if they use the nunchaku to control movement, and the wiimote for weapons... you use the wiimote to aim and fire, and the nunchaku thumbstick could be your directional movement, with it's buttons being crouch/jump/etc, AND the degree to which you tilt the nunchaku could make your character lean over to look around a corner, lean back to try and dodge (a la that scene in the matrix where neo leans over backwards to dodge bullets), etc.
However, this all assumes the controller works well. I haven't played one yet, nor have many people that aren't developers, so few people really know if it works as advertised. If it doesn't work well, or is annoying to use for longer than 30 minutes, I doubt the wii will be a success.
The only difference is that you need to wave your arms around like somebody doing Tai Chi with a sever muscle disorder in order to manipulate your on-screen character.
This is misinformation. IGN has a video from Leipzig of an IGN staffer playing several games, and he barely has to move his arms to do all game functions on a variety of games. I'm sure Wario Ware and Sports will require more wild motions, but that's because of the kind of games those are - party games have always required you to do dumb stuff. Mario Party had a warning on it about repetative motion, for example.
Most people I know with PSPs are techies that use them to play movies they downloaded from the net, or emulators.
Most people I know with DSes play games on them... mostly casual type stuff liek tetris or nintendogs, also.
The PSP is a slick looking device, but it doesn't seem appeal very much to people who don't know/want to be bothered with homebrew/emulation. The official PS1 game download service thing might change that though. More games would also help - or if they could convince rockstar to not release LCS and VCS for the PS2 for $30 less than the PSP price, that would help too.
There's no mention of the opening unit count for PS3: 400,000. According to this article, that's 10% of the number of Wii's expected to ship this year. Sony will have a hard time recovering from the glut of bad press surrounding PS3's near unavailability, combined with the inevitable "game stores hock their PS3s on eBay for $$$$$$$$". It happened with Xbox 360, it'll happen with PS3. Id bet that there's at least 400k hard-core console gamers between the US and Japan... it's possible that 60% of the units end up on eBay for prices upwards of $3000 (360 auctions peaked at around $1900, iirc). No less-than-hard-core console gamer (who happen to have a pile of cach on hand) is going to get their hands on a PS3 for months.
Then there's the PS3 sub distribution: 80% of all PS3's will be the more expensive units that can display HD content. HD isn't going anywhere as fast as the media indistry hoped. Sony is betting on a miracle.
Meanwhile, MS is going to keep pushing products that fit in with the market they watched boom for 10 years or more with little change. MS doesn't even fully understand games. They don't innovate anywhere, they're certainly not going to start here.
Nintendo has once again realized that the console market has stagnated, and have taken upon themselves to pull out of the rut. The original NES was innovative, and the Wii is more so. Every console system since 1985 has been based partly on the NES (mostly the controller). I fully expect console gaming 20 years from now to be ready to pull out of the rut created when the entire industry decided to copycat the Wiimote.
Verdict:
I'm not a console gamer, but I have some common sense
I think the Wii stands a chance in the marketplace. Will it be number 1? Probably not. Will it do very well? I think so.
IANAFanboi of any console or platform (I really don't care about the box, as long as I can enjoy the game - we have PS2, XBox, PC, and Mac games we play from time to time...)
Why do I think it stands a chance? My kids summed it up quick: It's not a zillion dollars, doesn't come in a zillion "versions", some of the games sound neat, and they think the controller interface(s) is/are cool and different. I happen to agree with them. I don't think I'll be doing Dance Dance Revolution (or anything like that, I'm not that graceful), but I'll enjoy doing something different with how I'll interact with the games. Besides, I can get a new plunk-around guitar for the difference I won't have to pay between a Wii and a well-equipped PS3.
A Passionate Independent Musician
Good enough graphics are fine. Good enough control is not. I don't care how innovative a controller is if it doesn't provide accurate control. I am not going to make any assumptions. I'll just wait to try it first. Thing is, everyone I have read in this thread is simply assuming the controller works as advertised.
I love a lot of Nintendo's games, including almost all of the Mario titles, but hardly any of my friends will touch them because they look like they're for little kids.
OK, so maybe Mario won't hit it off as well in the 14-20 self-conscious male demographic. As a 25 year old male who had a blast playing Mario Kart and Mario Party 6 with another 25 year old male last night, I beg to differ regarding the "kids' games" claim.
Only in recent years has Nintendo been labeled a maker of kids' games. People lately (especially people of the teenage persuasion) seem to equate anything less than total ultra-realism and non-playfulness with "it's for kids." Without giving it so much as a second glance. This seems especially true in the U.S. I, for one, appreciate Nintendo's penchant for whimsy and silly playfulness while continuing to make stuff that's fun to play.
Think about how popular a game like Mario Party would be if it were done in the genre of GTA or WWII.
It would suck. I, for one, wouldn't buy it. Just as your friends associate Nintendo with "kids games", I associate WWII games with "graphically pretty suckfests that are boring beyond words to play if you don't get kicks from blowing people's heads off." And, just like your Nintendo-bashing friends, I usually do so without even so much as giving the game a try. I, however, have this opinion from experience, while they are more likely trying to avoid having their lifestyle called into question for playing a game with colors other than green, black and brown on the box.
There are more Mario games than you can shake a stick at... they're plenty popular, and I think that it's largely their NON-(GTA/WWII)-ness that makes them so.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I agree that it's entirely possible (although far from certain - it depends on how well the nunchuck will sell, and since it isn't too expensive, it might sell so well that developers won't have to worry) that many multiplayer games will go for a control scheme which won't use the Nunchuck. And this is a pity.
I also agree that the controllers cost too much. Maybe Nintendo should have tried bundling the nunchuck with the Wiimote for the current price of the Wiimote. I guess they did not do that because the Wiimote probably costs quite a bit to manufacture.
However, I don't agree that the Wii ends up costing too much. If you buy a Wii with three additional Wiimotes, that's 370 bucks. And you get Wii Sports, which is a multiplayer game that is playable with the Wiimotes.
If you get the Nunchucks, that ends up being 430 bucks. Still well below a PS3 with one controller and no games.
And finally, the idea seems to be that people buy "their own" controller and take it to their friend's place, so for lots of people, it's probably a non-issue. Not for me, not for you - lots of my friends aren't going to buy Wiis, and I want to play against those people, too.
It's an issue, but it's not as big an issue as you make it out to be.