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Wii Outselling PS3 in Japan
saintory writes "Apparently the Japanese console consumers are sinking their teeth into the modest Wii and are not as interested in the power-packed PS3. In fact, the Wii is outselling Sony's new console by a factor of almost 2:1. The number of PS3s sold into the Japanese market (466,716) falls well short of the million Sony had planned for the end of 2006. 989,118 Wii consoles have been sold in Japan in the same time span. From the article: 'Both Sony and Nintendo are projecting selling 6 million consoles by the end of March. Sony expects to start shipping the PS3 to Europe sometime that month as well. Straggling far behind Sony and Nintendo in the Enterbrain survey was Microsoft's Xbox 360, which had sold 290,467 since its Japan debut in December 2005. Selling machines in large numbers is crucial in the gaming business because it encourages software companies to make more games to play on the machines, which in turn boosts console sales.'"
People are very quick to predict the doom and gloom of sony. What they all fail to recognize is that sony (and anybody else that had a clue on how the trends are moving) knew that this is going to happen. For months. The only thing they would not be able to anticipate is the negative public backlash from the hype machine that tried to imitate from the success of the 360 last year. This is a planned risk, as they are essentially taking on two fronts. One front is the video area, with Nintendo coming out guns blazing, and on top of that, the Microsoft juggernaut attempting to brute force their way through the market.
The bigger front that I see, is the movie industry. How long have DVDs been out? something like less than 10 years? How long did it take for them to make VHS obsolete? While it's completely understandable that Blu-ray Discs are probably not going to dominate DVDs at the rate that DVD did VHS, higher definition picture quality WILL win it over. The big question is: will Blu-ray Disc be the new DVDs of the future? Or will HDDVD? Or some other format?
This is the wild frontier that sony has been eyeing. They want their format to win, and is using the PS3 as their foothold. The PS3 is nothing more than collateral damage. Ever wonder why sony isn't making as big a push to produce games out for the ps3 as much as MS or NIN (aside from the fact that nobody really knows how to maximize the ps3 as of yet)? Their goal is to have as many bluray disk players in as many homes as possible(and for $599 for early adapters, that's pretty damn cheap). Once they get a decent foothold, and especially when prices begin to drop to decent levels, say $299? is when we're going to see frightningly high levels of market dominance by sony.
See this is where you are wrong. I'm living in Tokyo right now, and I go about every other day to Akihabara to try to get a Wii. For the last week the PS3's have been stacked up behind the counter, and when I say stacked I mean 4 wide square 10 high with at least 4 piles everyday. Looking at Yodobashi-Akiba (the largest electronics store in Japan) they have had the sign saying that PS3's are in stock for the last 1 and a half weeks as well as every other electronics store in Japan, but when you look above that sign it says the Wii is sold out. I have never seen that sign change. I wish it would because I want a Wii.
Good games are going to be expensive to make, no matter what. I'd be curious to know what Zelda cost to develop versus, say, Oblivion.
I would be interested in the Zelda vs Oblivion costs, but when THQ states "it was far less expensive making games for Nintendo's console." and that "they could be as little as a third of the high-end next-gen titles... Maybe the range is a quarter to a half." I believe them.