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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.
... 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
I can already envision Mario banging his shoe on the podium at the next E3.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
"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.
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?
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.
The control is a bit awkward and worst of all the 99 lives trick at world 3-1 can not be done (yeah I know how to do it, I do it every time I play SMB in the NES).
You don't know how to do it very well then. It works - I've done it.
I figured they'd have fixed the Minus World in the SMB download. Even *that* is still there. I couldn't do that myself, but I got a friend of mine to come over and he was there in five minutes.
Sorry that you suck.
You might want to re-check your facts, as the document you linked to shows the opposite of what you are claiming. Sony's gaming divisions were the least profitable (of the sectors where they were profitable). The general electronics divisions obviously took a huge hit, but even if you take their banking and insurance products out of the equation, Sony Pictures and Sony Music have a higher income and higher margin. The gaming divisions had higher sales, true, but revenue is not the same as profit.
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.