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Blue Dragon Outsells Zelda in Japan At Launch
Computer and Videogames is carrying the news that the 360's new JRPG Blue Dragon has outsold Zelda (and all other Wii software) since the game launched last month. This can mean only good things for Microsoft, as by all account the Wii's software lineup didn't do too shabby a job of selling either. From the article: "The latest Media Create Japanese chart puts the Mistwalker RPG at number four in the top selling titles in Japan for December 4 through 10, which has managed to shift a respectable 80,000 copies in the country giving it the number two all-time 360 sales record behind Dead or Alive 4. Blue Dragon has received a considerable level of hype in Japan, largely thanks to the fanbase surrounding Dragon Ball Z artist Akira Toriyama who designed the characters in the game, and a special edition Japanese Blue Dragon 360 bundle which some Japanese retailers reported to have sold out of within minutes of opening pre-order." Update: 12/15 01:10 GMT by Z : As Chris Kohler points out, the game outsold Zelda the week of its launch.
The XBox360's superiority in graphics and computing power has nothing to do with HD-TV, its far away from the Wii in SD-TV just as well. What is holding back the XBox360 so far is that a lot of games are still build for multiple platforms. If you see Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the XBox360 it won't look that much different then on a PS2 or Wii, the gameplay is all the same on every console and the much better bump mapping, resolution and light effects on the XBox360 won't change that.
...) I have some serious doubt. There are of course other issues such as the lack of a second analog stick for camera controls that might provide quite a few problems as well.
With the real NextGen titles like Assassins Creed, Deand Rising, BioShock and friends things are however changing, those games look much better then current gen and also feature gameplay elements that the current generation couldn't do, crowds, physics and stuff as seen in those games won't work unless you have some spare cycles left and on XBox360 you have plenty of those, while the Wii already seems to struggle, many reviews put its graphics between Gamecube and XBox1, no game so far features anti-aliasing and other issues.
Now the new controller on the Wii is nice, but so far it doesn't seem like a magic-item to solve anything, almost all multi-platform games (Madden 07 being the only exception so far) scored higher on the other consoles and the best game on the Wii so far is Zelda, which would have worked with a classic controller just fine. If the developers will find out how to put the controller to better use in the future we will have to wait and see, but given some of the rubbish third partys produce sometimes for the DS (TombRaider, NFS:MF, Burnout,
I have no doubt that the Wii will find its niche (party games) and will make Nintendo money, but will it hold up against XBox360 and PS3 for the next five or more years? I don't think so, the differences between Wii and the rest today are only the beginning, the gap will get larger and larger in the coming years.
Because the Wii is on its best way to turn into a third-party junkyard, just like the NintendoDS (look at TombRaider, Burnout, NfS:MW, etc. to see what I mean). RedSteel(6.5/10) and FarCry(4/10) on the Wii show pretty good how much faith the developers have into the Wii as a gamer-console: very little. Now one might argue that its just Ubisoft doing some quick cash on the launch and that might be even right, but other developers haven't even tried to get anything ready for the Wii and I haven't heard any interesting game announces from third parties for the future either.
Nintendo might of course still provide some deep and interesting games on the Wii and the new controller definitvly has a lot of potential, but to using that potential it takes third-parties, many of them, so far I however see none that are trying to push a big game onto the Wii, instead its all mini- and party-game kind of stuff, which is of course all good and fine, but not when you look for a deep, intensive gaming experience.