People Swapping PS3s for Wiis?

An anonymous reader writes "To add to Sony's problems with the PS3 launch, it now appears that some Playstation 3 owners are trying to trade their PS3s for Wiis. The author writes: 'There's also speculation that people want the Wii because the PS3s best game is Resistance: Fall of Man. This, of course, forget that there are plenty of cool PS3 games on the way, and the PS3 has its own motion sensing technology, which, while not as good as the Wii, is still pretty cool and opens up Sony to emulate some of the Wii's successes.'"

Comments

Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[MikeRT]

on video games. She and her family won't buy a new console for at least the first six months that it's out because they want to see what actually comes out for it, what others think, how many bugs it has, etc. I'm not surprised in the least now because the PS3 is very expensive, said to be rushed in a number of areas, and well, wasn't quite worth the hype.

As a former Dreamcast fan, I'm not surprised. Sony's hype engine is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it can really crush a poorly marketed, but good console. On the other, it set a bar that was ridiculous for their engineers to try to achieve.

People are starting to wise up to Sony and realize that they are great at hyping stuff that ends up being no better than their competition's products that happen to be significantly cheaper. They probably haven't even figured out why it is that Apple has kicked them squarely in the nuts in the digital music player market. I think their worst nightmare would be a dynamic duo of Apple and Nintendo building the One True Living Room Suite.

There are so many good games for XBox/XBox 360 and Playstation 2 that only hardcore gamers need to really go out and buy a PS3. I'm going back now and buying all of the games I missed when I was busy graduating from college last year and... there's no reason for a guy like me to buy a PS3 for at least a year and a half.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[HappySqurriel]

To be honest, the reason I believe that Nintendo has been so successful (so far) with the Wii is that they recognized a need in the market and they built a system to fill that need. Essentially, Nintendo thought that there was a need for an inexpensive, easy to develop for, arcade-like system that could provide a new game play experience; and that is what they delivered.

Not to be too negative about the PS3, but the PS3 is designed to be "Exactly like every other system in history ... only better" whereas the Wii is designed to be "Something different". In my opinion the Wii is successful because of how unique it is.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[2ms]

It was so funny I remember people talking about how the PS2 was going to be a supercomputer not allowed into certain countries because it was so powerful it could give them nukes and how its emotion engine was going to make gaming almost indistinguishable from the real world. It was the biggest sham in the world. There were several games that actually looked better on Dreamcast than they did on the PS2.

This is actually the strategy that MS has used whenever Macs start getting a lot of attention. MS always says they have an OS with everything that Mac has Plus a whole bunch of new things that are going to revolutionize everything. And then the OS comes out five years late with, not only nothing revolutionary, but not even having the things Mac had 5 years earlier (two most salient examples: Win95 was supposed to be all new OS but at last second was switched to DOS at heart, Vista was supposed to have all these new techs yet now, years late, it's just terribly resource intensive XP with copy of Mac Aqua GUI).

I think this is Sony's strategy. They come up with these catchy names to go along with console like Emotion Engine or Cell (which really just another IBM chip only with more spikes and valleys in its capabilities -- not net positive) and trumpet them like nothing has ever been trumpeted before in front of would-be other console buyers for two years ahead of actual release just so that people will figure they better wait until the PS comes out because it is going to be teh omg SO revolutionary. Which it never is. Rant over. It just funny. It's sort of a total business model.

Re:Why I've adopted my girlfriend's philosophy

[cgenman]

To expand on this, I've tried putting a PS2 dual-shock into the hands of new players, like my girlfriend and my mother. "What's this?" they inevitably ask. It's an intimidatingly big mass of buttons, switches, diodes, etc. Add a "Wii-like" tilt sensor, and you just make something even LESS accessible.

Compare that to the Wii. It's a remote control that points. Everyone can play wii bowling. Everyone can navigate the metagame without wondering if they should use the d-pad or the left or right analog sticks. It's intuitive. You don't have to think as much about it. You can just get on with the business of playing games.

In addition to inexpensive, easy to develop for, unique, and short-time period experiences, the Wii also provides the instant accessibility that is sorely lacking in today's systems. Learning to play Rockstar's Table Tennis on the 360 takes about 1/2 hour. Learning to play Tennis on the Wii takes about 10 seconds. That's a huge difference if you're just trying to relax for a moment between sending the kids off to school and leaving for work yourself.

Buyer's remorse

[jours]

I tell you what...for all the hype around these things just a few weeks ago, I've had three chances to buy one (a PS3) in the last few days. One was a friend who bought two of them for Ebay and couldn't sell them at all. The other two times were regular retail stores while I was Christmas shopping. I passed all three times. Not sure why but the price of those things sure made me think twice.

I can certainly see buyer's remorse sneaking in after people play it for a few days and realize that maybe it isn't $500 cooler than their old PS2.

Re:I wish I didn't, but I did...

[Raenex]

The 360 is nice except it's too damn noisy. That and all the games for it assume you have a 50" HDTV (text is always too hard to read).