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7-9 Million Wiis by 2007?
Gamespot is reporting that Nintendo's production of the Wii is actually going better than expected. Analyst firm UBS is now estimating that 7-9 Million Wii units should be off the production lines by 2007. From the article: "Citing industry 'checks,' UBS analysts Alex Gauna and Steven Chin claim that Nintendo already made 2 million Wiis by the end of September. They go on to predict that, 'at least 7 million and potentially as high as 9 million more units are in the build plan for Q4 06. This production ramp handily exceeds a publicly announced target for 6 million units to ship by year's end.'"
I'll take mine for $200 thank you! :D
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Now if we could only get 300 million of them, and ship them all to the US, all our base could belong to us!
Any idea on how many games the 7-9 million Wiis will have? Are we looking at only 30 million, or will it break 100 million by the end of 2007?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
And when the dominant platform is the one at $200 developers will develop for it to sell more units.
And then the prices will go down, the platforms will be unified (Or at least logically diversified [high end low end mid range etc]) and all will be good with the force!
I know four people here who are going to buy a Wii. Assuming that everyone else in the UK knows 4 people who are going to buy a Wii that makes 240 million sales in the first week alone just for the UK via simple mathematical extrapolation. Can't argue with the numbers!
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Everything is going so well for Nintendo. I really hope for them that the launch dates go off without a hitch and the awesome reviews start pouring in a few days later. It would be a make a huge impact in the definition of what "next-gen" games are if this console is a massive success.
Hopefully nothing has gone wrong in the production process. I can't imagine the stress of being a designer or tester for the console hardware. What happens when your company is successfully rolling millions of new machines off the line and someone finds a showstopper hardware bug? We all rememeber the Intel division fiasco.
And when the dominant platform is the one at $200 developers will develop for it to sell more units.
Especially when the dev platform is only $1000 for the Wii, instead of ten times as much for the PS3 or 360 ones.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If 9 million people Wii, then most homes will be flooded by the 'yellow river'.
With that many units on the shelf they have more then cover the holiday buyig system, and enough left on the shelves for the post holiday market. Lines up very nicely with a price drop in the late spring summer time frame. Its almost creepy how everything Sony has gotten wrong (supply, timing, innovation, buzz) Nintendo has gotten dead on right this time around.
It seems they went in and produced HD capable consoles one generation too early, the increase in price seems to be giving Nintendo a big boost come launch time. I only hope the actual launch lives up to the speculation.
Nintendo won't have to live up to the graphic expectations of Sony, Xbox, but for that, the gameplay will have higher expectations.
This is of course good for the average consumer, because, by the merits of mass production, HD capable consoles will be the minimum/default the next generation, and it might even boost HD TV sales more than they are, and drive down the price in that area by the time the next console wars come.
Not to get prophetic on dat ass, but code name "revolution" is starting to make a little more sense, with the way wii may affect the industry.
Similes are like metaphors
Has Nintendo ever had these sorts of problems with their consoles or handhelds? I don't recall any. I think it's pretty safe to bet that there won't be any. Not to mention that they've said (too lazy to find a reference) that they've paid attention to these sorts of things.
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
Because this isn't brand new technology, just improved existing. Don't get me wrong, i'd follow Nintendo into hell. But if it is indeed just a suped up gamecube, how many problems could their be?
Is it just me, or do you hate it when people say "Is it just me..."?
I have no worries about this. I (or my brothers) have bought every nintendo system the day it came out since the SNES, and we've never had a problem, ever. I've had many, amany problems with my first of the run PS2, though.
Also, with the early production, maybe nintendo will test those first units to make sure the mass-manufacturing works well.
The worst I ever got from Nintendo was the need to constantly blow dust out my NES games.
I expect heat won't be an issue since they're specifically designing for low power consumption.
For the most part, I don't forsee too many issues. The chips are derivitives of a proven design manufactured using mature technology at a quality fab plant (IBM's fishkill facility). Most of the other components are off the shelf - Broadcom ethernet and bluetooth chips, MoSys SRAM, etc.
I don't know any people. Assuming everybody else doesn't know any people either, this implies no people eixst and Nintendo will not be able to sell ANY Wiis, due to a lack of potential customers.
first generation gameboys were nigh-unplayable due to shitty backlighting.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Wii will wiialize millions of wii! Wiially wii will!
Of course, that's the wrong preposition:
All our base are belong to Wii
With that many units on the shelf they have more then cover the holiday buyig system, and enough left on the shelves for the post holiday market.
Perfect for all those moms and dads returning their kids' overheating PS3's.
I didn't know they had backlighting until the GBA SP.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken
that's just how shitty it was.
[pause for laughter]
ok, I can't remember if they did or not. But I -do- remember not being able to see a damn thing on it unless I was in a brightly-lit room.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
That was a design flaw, not a technical bug. You couldn't return it for a new one because of it, and it wasn't covered under any sort of warranty. It was (believe it or not) supposed to be that way.
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
first generation gameboys were nigh-unplayable due to shitty backlighting.
Did you own a 1G GameBoy? There was no backlight at all! Even the first color GameBoys didn't have backlights. Backlights in GameBoys are a pretty recent development. But they were able to survive a long time without them, since all of the other portables with backlights and/or color were pretty much total flops (Sega GameGear, Atari Lynx, etc.).
7-9 million Wiis?
Thats just pissing in the ocean...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Yeah, that's another thing that many people haven't been thinking of. By not investing as much now in R&D to get the best graphics, Nintendo can afford to obtain the high def technology for a cheaper price, and will be able to affordably release another new system is less time.
The PS3 is going to have to be around forever, just to turn a profit and make an improved platform feasible.
...in 2027 we'll be able to get them for a quarter just like we can get super mario brothers for NES today.
My brother and I (and like 70 million other people) played ours until they practically died from materials fatigue. Actually, I think that mine still works, even after riding around in the pockets of preteens (good thing pockets started getting bigger in the mid '90s), being through airports, roadtrips, dropkicked, sat on, and having batteries explode in it. And on top of that, you could squeeze an outrageous amount of time out of the batteries... they'd go for days! The one time I played a GameGear you practically had to change the batteries just to get through a four hour flight.
:)
No backlight was no problem. The screen has enough contrast that it is readable (for young eyes) as long as there's any kind of ambient light. Graphing calculators don't have any backlights either, and none of my students complain that they are unplayable
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Nintendo's physcal Q4 ends June 30th, not Dec 31st...
I think you have jumped the gun too early by making conclusions about consoles that have yet to be released. Besides, by the end of their life cycles, HD will be more common. How common, who knows? But it will give the consoles more lasting power.
The funny thing is...the only thing the Wii has going for it is it's controller (and first party games, of course). If the other consoles make a similar controller that works well...the Wii advantage is gone (Wiirased?). I am sure they have some good patents on that thing though. But it isn't hard to add a new controller after the fact...it is impossible to scale a console's power upward after it is released (mainly due to compatability reasons for older games).
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Actually, it is hard. I know of only one case where it worked: The Dual Shock on the original PS. And that one only worked because the new controller was a superset of the old one (it added the analog sticks) and because it came very early in the PS's life.
You can't just go ahead and replace the pack-in controller with something totally different. How would people play the old games with the new controller? You'd essentially fragment your customers. It would be like having two entirely different consoles. The only alternative is selling the new controller as a standalone item. That doesn't work either, because you won't sell a ton until there are lots of good games for the controller, and there won't be lots of good games for the controller unless you sell a ton. Look at the Cube Bongos, at the PS2 camera... Hell, look at the Power Glove.
How do you propose Sony would go about introducing a Wiimote clone for the PS3?
By the end of the coming console cycle, the graphics will look dated, HD or not. I've experienced this many times with PC games: my setup isn't powerful enough to make it super pretty until the game is old enough to not look super pretty anyway. The people who will get the HD benefit this time around will be those who already have an HD set. So basically, not that many.
You forget about a few things: The price, and the target market.
The price matters... well, for obvious reasons -- especially for casual gamers.
The target market matters because it means that I, as a casual-/non-gamer, will probably be able to find plenty of software which provides fun diversions without eating up much time at a chunk or requiring any kind of dedication. (There are others in my household who spend more time gaming, and they may well buy more conventional games [as they do spend money on DVDs] after the hardware has become available -- but they don't make the kind of lump purchases involved in buying a new console, and so mostly are playing their games on decade-old console hardware or 5-year-old PC hardware).
(Also, as others have pointed out, changing out the controller after the fact isn't so easy. Everyone who develops for the Wii will support the Wiimote, and games will typically be initially designed with the Wiimote first in mind rather than as an afterthought; any fancier after-the-fact controller would be supported only by a subset of games, and even that not as well).
A realated point is that HD makes the 360 and PS3 effectively even more expensive. I wouldn't buy either of those without also getting a HD TV - who'd get a brand new console, spend that amount of money and then know that you're nto seeing the games at their best?
With Wii standard def is all it can do so it doesn't matter if I don't have a hi-def TV. So 360 costs me 360+HD and PS3 costs me PS3 + HD but Wii costs me only Wii.
Another way of putting that is I don't mind playing Wii in SD cos that's all it can do, but I won't play either of the others in SD cos I'd be 'missing out'.
Not entirel logical, but it's the way I feel.
They had no backlighting (and no colour!) because of the limitations of the technology at the time. Things got really blurry when they moved fast too.
It wasn't a QA problem or even really a design flaw, they were made that way deliberately as a best compromise between low price, battery life and visual apeal. It clearly worked as Nintendo still owns the mobile console gaming space with derived hardware.
does the hardware really matter very much if it's fun & fresh? also, you forgot about R&D costs
MS & Sony can't realistically add new controllers after the fact, but Nintendo can certainly release an HD-edition of the Wii down the road. The SD and HD edition can be 100% compatible (PC games support multiple resolutions and detail levels all the time). SD-era games won't look as good on an HD unit--but games always start to look dated after time.
As several people have pointed out, Nintendo has had several design problems in the past. The biggest examples are with the lack-of-backlight original GBA portables, and the bulky original DS unit (with a stupidly positioned power button). That said, they were all completely playable (I had both handhelds), but when the redesigned units came out, they were much superior to the original.
:)
A cynic could argue that even the design problems were "by design", as its a great way to get gamers to buy more hardware in the end.
I haven't had any quality issues with the hardware itself though. In fact, while many people were lamenting about dead pixel problems with first batch of PSPs, there wasn't a similar issue with the DS, AFAIK.
-- jchenx
While your post is reasonable in general, I feel the need to inform you that MoSys SRAM is neither a "component" nor "off the shelf." It's not a part in itself, it's an implementation technology -- really just intellectual property (IP). BTW It's usually called "1T-SRAM" because it has an SRAM-like interface and function and required one transistor to implement one bit of storage.
"1T-SRAM" is really DRAM and is implemented as a macro, or block, within larger integrated circuits (chips) using embedded DRAM (eDRAM) process. Many companies, including IBM, NEC, and others license MoSYS' IP to create high-density, extremely power efficient, low-latency, fast memory on custom and semi-custom (cell-based) semiconductor devices. In 90nm, eDRAM provides nearly 100x the bandwidth/area/watt (GB per sec / um^2 / W) of SRAM.
So, if you can imagine ASIC and custom IC macro blocks as components sitting on a shelf, then I guess you're right. But really they're just netlists, timing models, and GDS2 artwork files sitting on a hard drive until they're manufactured as part of a chip.
everything in moderation
"the wii is just a slightly higher clocked gamecube with a minimal ram and memory card upgrade"
That statement by itself has no value, as Wii processing power has already been officially released for some time, now.
However, if you are implying that to accurately assess the value of a gaming system is to base it purely on its technical specs or a "dollars/PPM (polygons pushed/minute)" comparison, go buy a PC and be done with it.
But you know and I know that processing speed alone does not a gaming console make. Please, do some reasearch. Check out http://wii.ign.com/articles/733/733464p1.html for a run down of the things that the Wii, by itself, will be able to do. Not your cup of tea? That's great--it's a free country--don't buy it.
"...plus new gimmick controller."
A "gimmick" has an understanding (at least in our culture) as being something that services only a small, shallow niche purpose, usually designed to be the "hook" used to draw people to use or purchase a product, but is largely irrelevant to the utilization of saids product. Or even perhaps something that just ends up having relatively limited application but was not designed with that in mind. Good Nintendo examples of this are the Power Glove (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove) and U-Force (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-Force). These devices were created in the traditional Nintendo spirit of radically changing the way people interface with video games. Unfortunately, technology was not up to the task of manifesting their visions in a way that captured public interest (or even in a way that worked). They both had one or two games that showcased its ability. The Power Glove had gloveball, the U-Force had Mike Tyson's Punch Out!. These accessories were developed with every intention of being a commercial success, but ultimately flopped.
However, the Wii remote (or wiimote, the de facto name) does not have such limited application. It was developed as the prime way for a user to interface with the Wii. Any number of articles written by people who have used the wiimote have greatly impressed with its application to not only games that would be logical for such an accessory (like the simple Wii Sports suite, or Monkeyball, or racing games), but also to games like Madden Football, Metroid Prime, even Twilight Princess. An unprecidently-large number of developers can't wait to make games that take advantage of the unique interaction that the Wii offers. Even Playstation caught on enough to add limited motion-sensing technology to their controller. And moreover, the Wii has been so wildly successful in foraging ahead in heretofor largely untapped game interface possibilities that both Sony and Microsoft have publically encouraged people who buy their new consoles to buy the Wii as well because it compliments their system so well. What better advertising do you need than that your former direct competitors are now saying that not only is your system pretty cool, but that you should buy it in addition to theirs.
"thats why they can churn them out at such high volume, its old and simple tech theyre already familiar with."
I am missing where that makes this a bad thing.
"theres no way im paying $250 for this thing, and the only thing revolutionary about the controller is the ridiculous $60 price tag it carries." Check your figures. The wiimote is $39 (wii.ign.com, www.wiiprice.com). Also coming in at $39 is the Xbox 360 controller.
Xbox 360: Force feedback, 12 buttons (X,A,B,Y, back, start, L trigger+bumper, R trigger+bumper), 2 analog sticks and a d-pad; wireless via Bluetooth.
Wiimote: 7 buttons (On/off power switch, D-Pad, A and B buttons, 1 and 2 buttons, home, plus and minus buttons), digital rumble (only 1 setting, on or off), speaker, 4k memory, built-in accelerometer and other motion detection hardware to judge motion, pitch, tilt and depth inside a 3D space. Wi