Slashdot Mirror
Wii, DS Dominate February Hardware Sales
Gamasutra has the NPD numbers for last month, which shows a continuation of Nintendo's sales dominance. Overall the new consoles have again meant that industry sales were up, some 28% over last year's same-month figures. Hardware sales were up some 98%, with much of that performance attributable to the DS and Wii. Here's the breakdown: "Turning to hardware, the DS headed overall hardware sell-through with an impressive 485,000 units, followed by Nintendo's Wii, which sold 335,000 units despite continued issues with shortages. The Xbox 360 sold through a reasonable, if not spectacular 228,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units, despite no apparent shortages. Elsewhere, the PlayStation 2 moved a still impressive 295,000 at its relatively cheap current price, and the PlayStation Portable sold 176,000, markedly behind the DS. Finally, the various varieties of the Game Boy Advance sold a not unreasonable 136,000 units."
PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units
the various varieties of the Game Boy Advance sold a not unreasonable 136,000 units.
I've not seen such bravery.
It seems for the most part most retailers are dealing with demand by creating relatively over-priced "bundles", of the "$600 buys you a console and two games!" variety.
Perhaps it's Nintendo that should have charged $5-600 for their console, and Sony who should have tried to sell their's for $250...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I STILL cant buy a Wii!
Looks like nintendo is here to stay. The cheap console moved seemed like an act of desperation, but now it seems like sony and microsoft are the desperate ones. Nintendo may bury them yet.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
... although all i have is anecdotal evidence.
... <drumroll> ... the rest of the world loves it :) That's a big market. Much bigger than the old target market. When sales data like this comes out, it just reinforces the notion that Nintendo got something right this round.
Every time I take my Wii to a friend's house, not only do they love it, but their (female!) spouse love it! It goes beyond that too. Often times, the parents will join in, and they love it too!
The only people I know that don't really like it are the uber-hardcore gamers. I know plenty of "hardcore" gamers that love it fine, but complement it with a dose of the 360/PS3.
So let's think about their target market now. The uber-hardcore don't like it. Fine. But the hardcore like it and
Congrats Nintendo!
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
"The Xbox 360 sold through a reasonable, if not spectacular 228,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units, "
They're really not talking up this point. That's 360 outselling PS3 by almost 2:1. Even with it including a BluRay player and SIXAXIS. 228,000 isn't "spectacular", but considering Christmas was only two months earlier, I certainly agree it's reasonable.
Anyone still have the old Dreamcast sales figures? I'd like to see how current events mirror those.
More Twoson than Cupertino
I think you're confused. Touch ME was an Atari Game way back in the '70s. Touch Wii is the update for the Nintendo Wii. Though I could see how that could be confusing.
The price is right, the new screen is excellent, good selection of games, and the form factor is perfect.
I think it is incredible the PS2 is selling so well. I think this is due to the shortage of Wii, over price of PS3, and the 360 already being out a year and not considered 'new'. I love seeing the 360 still selling so well. I really do think the Wii and 360/Ps3 are for a different sets of people that can overlap, but do not contend. The 360 will also continue to outsell the Ps3 until it gets more unique titles that makes the price worthwhile. GTA4, Stranglehold, etc, are all coming out for the 360 also, not to mention other blockbusters like Halo3 and GoW. Until that changes, the Ps3 will never break through, price drop or not.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7480
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7499
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7518
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7553
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
If you think of Sony as just a console maker, then the PS3 isn't doing all that well, but if you think of it as a device to push Blu-Ray its doing great. I don't think Sony is as dumb as everyone else thinks they are. They just sold another 100k plus Blu-Ray players. In the end they will drop the PS3 price to something sort of reasonable and sell plenty of them. They can make it through the first year or so by reputation alone pushing game developers to create for the platform.
Of course if they do too poorly in sales then eventually the games will dry up and they will have won the next gen format war at the cost of their gaming platform. I wonder how much they care?
The Dreamcast's demise and sales figures can not be directly compared to the PS3 sales figures. The Dreamcast died because it was utterly and completely hacked. No mods needed. No opening up, no voiding warrenty, no soddering, nothing. Just simply copy the contents of the CD to a folder, and run a utility against it which created the ISO image. Burn the image, done. Perfect working pirated game. Due to this, game sales plummeted since people were simply renting the game and burning their own copy.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Even if they never get at much marketshare as Sony/Microsoft, they are certainly making the most profits. Who cares if your revenue is (relatively) low when your profits are so much higher?
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
So I was feeling really happy that Nintendo was doing well, given their maxim (all about gameplay and fun, not graphics). But has anyone else been a little disappointed with the lineup of games? I'm excluding a few Nintendo titles here, but it feels like the vast majority of the games have been less-than-stellar ports or mini-game compilations. While mini-games can be really fun, I also want a rich experience from more complex games.
In Perrin Kaplan's recent GameDaily interview, she was asked about Nintendo's anemic Q1 lineup, a question which she simply responded that the 27 products they have going from January to June are awesome. She insists that Nintendo is competing for a different market, and I'm starting to believe her.
Something else that bugs me... the Wiimote isn't quite what is was hyped up to be. There is a little lag (at least in Wii Sports and Wii Play) between my movements and the response on screen; it's very small, but it felt a little annoying when the tennis racket only began swinging a little after I began. Also, it would be nice if the Wiimote actually pointed on screen where you pointed -- this would require some level of calibration, I suppose, since television sizes vary. I imagine this is even more difficult to deal with since the Wiimote only has two reference points for its calculations -- not the three that are necessary to yield the three coordinates in space. But this is why they market they Wiimote as detecting motion in 3D space, rather than position. It then probably gets the relative position by integration. I wonder if the lag would be reduced further by having a third point and eliminating the integration calculation (though I guess games would still be interested in your projected position anyway, so perhaps it wouldn't actually eliminate it).
Anyway, kudos to Nintendo for the sales, but I hope there is more in store for the core gamer soon.
But Sony told me that being outsold at a ratio of 2:1 for a month meant the losing platform was dead and buried!
Or does that only apply to the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD fight?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I have seen the ads. I have looked at the games in the store. I just can't tell what the PS3 has over a PS2. I mean even the graphics look nearly identical. I know that's comparing modern PS2 games versus a brand new system but still... The PS3 just doesn't look impressive at all. It's like an extremely expensive PS2 with a new case... meh
The 360 has the hardcore/graphics crowd, the Wii has the casual crowd and the PS2 still makes for a fine system with lots of games.
week in, week out I still cant get a Wii on the high-street. I chose the following rule:
;-)
I must be able to just pop into the store to buy the console and the
games of my choice. ie
1) no pre-order nonsense
2) no mail-order
3) no pre-determined bundle deals
it is incredible that after all this time, the Wii still eludes me on this
rule. however, the money is earning interest and some of the bigger titles
are now coming through...which is all good.
If nintendo could only get 1m units into the retail channel they would
sell them all!!
I'm going to follow the same rule for the PS3 - I wonder how many months
I'll have to wait until I can 'just buy' it? I think that I may have a
PS3 before a Wii !
"I don't think Sony is as dumb as everyone else thinks they are. They just sold another 100k plus Blu-Ray players."
Really? Because most people don't have the high-def screens to take advantage of Blu-Ray anyways.
The adoption rate for higher def Blu-Ray & HD-DVD formats is going to be slower than it was for DVDs. Why? Consumers must invest in both a player and an upgraded tv.
Look at audio CDs. Why have the higher-def formats failed? There are a number of reasons, but one being that the quality of a CD is good enough for most people and they can't justify the price to upgrade their stereo equipment.
Look at how long it has taken to switch from all-digital over-the air tv broadcast signals, that's still in the future.
The whole slap against Sony is that they are pushing a high-def format years before it is realistic to do so. They are placing a big bet that by trying getting an installed base for Blu-Ray. But the simple fact is that some people think they are placing this bet way too early on and shooting themselves in the foot by doing so. Having a console collapse (or slip to 3rd place in the market) won't help Sony or Blu-Ray.
1. The last generation PS2 is still handily outselling two present generation efforts: 360 and PS3.
2. The Wii is not selling more than the #2 console, the PS2, but is also handily selling more units the total units of the 360 and PS3 combined.
It's not looking good for Sony; while the Wii is still sold out most highstreet shops are still advertising that if you pre-order you will get your PS3 on launch day.
Of course it could be there are millions of pre-orders and all that US/Japanese stock has been diverted over here.
Interestingly in terms of desireability amongst the class of 9 year olds I teach the PS3 outranks the Wii by about 2:1. If this is representative then if Sony could just get the price right they would probably catch up pretty fast.
Keep checking http://www.xpbargains.com/wii_locator.php
Eventually I managed to order one during a 6 minute period when it was in stock at Toys"R"Us. It was a bundle, but bundled with 2 games I was planning to get anyway.
Other than the console, Wii hardware seems to be available now. I picked up a spare remote and nunchuck at Target the other day.
Oh, and while you're waiting, skim Craiglist every day and flag the fucking scalpers.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
In other words, I suspect that the respective pricing accounts for most of the differences between console sales rates between the present generation consoles (Wii/360/PS3). This may not be the case, but I think that the fact that the sales of the three machines are almost directly proportional to their price would be a fairly remarkable coincidence. The only good argument that this is not the case is that the PS2 (which is half the price of the Wii) is selling far fewer units than the Wii. But the counterargument there is that the elasticity simply doesn't extend to last generation consoles.
An interesting consumer survey would be to ask what (if any) console a consumer is planning on buying and then asking that same consumer which console would be purchased if they were all priced at USD 250. I suspect that many consumers would in fact change their mind.
That said, the only console I own is a PS2 and the only console I would even think about buying is the Wii. The PS2 works fine for the games I like to play. (Or more accurately, the PS2 works just fine for the games that my daughters like to play -- Dance Dance Revolution and Taiko Drum Master.)
There does seem to be calibration, but it's strangely implemented by the game instead of a system-wide thing. In Twilight Princess, there's a series of calibration screens that involve adjusting the width of an on-screen bar to match the width of the infrared LED bar and some zooming in and out with circles to figure out how far your couch is from the screen. After going through that, the on-screen pointer appears pretty much precisely where my remote is pointing. Unfortunately, the calibration seems to only affect Twilight Princess itself, unless I'm missing something, though the pointing in Wii Play feels pretty good without being able to make any adjustments. (Perhaps it is a system-wide setting that's merely offered through the game itself; I guess I'll find out when I buy more games that need the pointer.)
I don't have any direct experience with implementing such a system, but I'd imagine that there are a lot of issues in terms of calibration that made Nintendo decide against implementing it system wide. The biggest one being that you'd likely have to recalibrate so often that it wouldn't really work anyways. If I'm playing Zelda while sitting on the couch one day, and then the next day play it sitting on the floor, closer to the TV, would I have to recalibrate? What if then I play a multiplayer game with a friend, so now there's two of us, neither of whom are centered on the TV. Do we need to recalibrate again? And then my turn ends, and I hand the remote off to a third friend, and he's a good foot taller than me, does he need to recalibrate? All that recalibrating sounds like a pain in the ass, and certainly goes against the "pick up and play" mentality that Nintendo is aiming for. And double all that complexity with games that also require you do significant moving around.
Maybe they could've used a more complicated system than the existing sensor bar. Perhaps a series of sensor bars that go on the corners of your screen. But all of a sudden you've got extra pieces, extra complexity, extra cost.
I think the Wiimote is a pretty good compromise.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
The PS3 launch more or less coincides with the annual Christmas bump.
My question is, in which markets were the DC and PS3 launched in the first 6 months?
I would _assume_ that both were launched in Japan first. Did the DC make it to NA in the first few months? How about Europe?
I will admit I'm not in the market per se, but I like to browse through the electronics section of stores Just In Case, and since the Wii's release, I've added checking to see if they have a Wii to the sweep for bargain games.
I have still never seen a Wii. From Best Buy to Wal-Mart, its local competition, K-Mart, and several other places I've been to in passing, I have never yet seen a Wii.
Everybody has PS3s now.
Anecdotal evidence? Sure, but wow, and this is across many stores in many samples.
I could probably get one if I were trying, but you still have to be trying.
Nexgenwars and VGCharts have the Wii's penetration at around 50% of the XBox 360's, in four months. At any time supply could finally catch up to demand, but until then, the limiting factor on the Wii's sales has been manufacturing rate for four months now.
IIRC, the gaming division at Sony is by FAR the most profitable part of Sony.
/ qfhh7c00000aksvu-att/qfhh7c00000aksx9.pdf
OK, I decided to check my facts, here is a summary that Sony put out for the year ending March 2006:
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/ar/2006
Glancing at the operating profits, the gaming division is far more profitable than any of the other divisions -- plus, I'm not entirely sure what the other high profit division, "financial", means in this context, I suspect that it's the equivalent of their investment account rather than a operating business.
If you were a Sony shareholder, you'd want them to drop Blu-Ray ASAP if it had any chance of damaging the PlayStation franchise. That didn't happen, obviously.
I realized I was looking at the 2004 values, just after posting. :(
(I'm not used to seeing year over year comparisons in an IR release in that order... probably different in Japan... but that's another matter)
2006 is a bit of an aberration for the gaming group. They're spending a LOT on PS3 development by that time. But in 2004 and 2005, PS profits are very large relative to movies and electronics.
When it finally looked like the Wii was going to smash through the video game market, developers were caught with their pants down being raped by PS3 development costs, blind-sided by Xbox Live Arcade's runaway success and the Wii's "we're Nintendo, we will ALWAYS have a profit" guarantee. What you see is simply the net result of such behavior.
That's why the 'ULTRA-Hard core' gamers, HATE, I repeat HATE The Wii. If the Wii continues to take off then the style of game play they have grown to love, and expect is threatened. The market will move in a different direction, and they don't want that.
Actually, recalibrating would only be necessary if the position of the sensor bar changed with respect to your TV (or if it were moved to a different TV). The point of the calibration is so that the Wii knows how the bar is positioned with regards to your TV, how wide it is compared to your TV, and how large your TV is compared to the size of the Wiimote's IR camera. With that information, it's possible for the Wiimote to precisely calculate its position and angle with regards to the screen from any position, as long as the camera can see the bar.
The issue that is really key here is that "sensor" bar is a misnomer. The bar is just a set of IR lights, and each Wiimote has an IR camera that takes pictures of these lights; the Wiimote has a chip on it that tracks the position and intensity of those lights and sends the data back to the Wii, and from that data it can tell the angle and distance of the Wiimote from your screen.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Wii is currently outselling the PS2 at a similiar time frame.
DS is selling near Japanese levels now. DS numbers can no longer be accounted for the uptick in re-design and Christmas; it has truly caught on (and this is before Pokemon).
Nintendogs has sold over four million in the US and keeps selling strongly each month.
Twilight Princess is getting closer to outselling Wind Waker in the US.
If you combine America + Canada + Japan PS3 sales for the month of February, you get a measely 213,133.
In summary:
DS- Japanese DS fever has finally arrived at America. The upcoming Pokemon will send sales skyrocketing even further.
Wii- Supply restrained yet it is selling better than the PS2. This thing is a monster.
PS2- Still cruising along. Its sales show how much disinterest there is in high definition games.
Xbox 360- Steady but weak sales. The Xbox 360, despite being on the market for well over a year, has not outsold the PS2 yet in America. People calling 360 sales 'good' are delusional.
PSP- Horrible sales. Unless Sony does something, retailers might start removing the system.
GBA- Pure profit for Nintendo.
PS3- Abysmal.
Console war is over. PS3 is beginning to get too far behind in Japan and America. Xbox 360 is no contest since their first year of sales were weak and Xbox 360 is not selling too strongly in worldwide. Wii and DS are selling very strongly WORLDWIDE.
I wonder if any analyst (like Pachter) will still say the PS3 will become 'leader' now.
Every story in the past few months has people saying "why is everyone claiming there are PS3s sitting around? I didn't see any at the one store I checked!".
I've posted this before, and I'll post it again.
Middle of the week, towards closing time. Busy local Costco. Those babies sat for weeks...
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Dude, that's exactly the opposite of what xtracto has been complaining about. He said that Nintendo's emulation was not accurate enough (and I'm guessing the problem he's seeing is only due to the different controller, not due to the game). You just complained that the emulation was too accurate (i.e. they did not fix the flickering, which was a result of the limiations of the NES hardware).
This is exactly what Nintendo has to deal with: Some people want old glitches fixed, others want perfect emulation. Nintendo seems to lean towards perfect emulation, but they did change some things, such as passwords, in certain NES games. Probably no intentional changes, though.
No, I am not contradicting. The games are buggy.
I suggest you try Super Mario Brothers and play it all the way through. I'd be surprised if you didn't notice at least a couple glitches. And these are not things that existed in the original NES version. I'll bring it up again, a hammer brother completely disappeared from the screen only to kill me when I ran into his invisible body.
FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
That's actually a common occurence on the NES which could only display a limited number of sprites next to each other horizontally.