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Wii Shortages Could Last For Months
Next Generation is reporting that, apparently, the Wii shortages could continue for some time yet. This is news from Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo's VP of marketing and corporate affairs, speaking to the Game Theory Podcast. Says Kaplan, "There is a lot going on behind the scenes in terms of working on what we are producing and the numbers continue to rise but the product is so very popular that we may see a supply / demand situation last for some time. We are at absolute maximum production and doing everything we can. The number of units that we have been able to produce has far exceeded our hardware production in the past and the production levels of a lot of our competitors but demand continues to be really high."
You seem to indicate that the PS3 isn't fun, somehow. I bought a PS3 to replace my dying PS2, and I've found it to be just fine on the "fun" factor. Is it too expensive? Yeah, it is. That doesn't stop it from being fun, though... if you call the PS3 not fun, you're basically calling the PS2, the Xbox, and the Xbox 360 "not fun", because they have roughly the same sorts of games available. What's dragging the PS3 down is not its lack of fun, but its price.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I bought a Wii, a half dozen games, a gamecube controller, gamecube memory card, another half dozen gamecube games, and an extra wii-mote, and only just barely hit the cost of a ps3. That was the biggest selling point to me.
If my PS2 were dying, I'd probably buy a new PS2 instead of a PS3.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
They can't "drop the ball on this" unless Microsoft or Sony creates their next-gen system right now with a motion-sensitive remote controller.
Nearly 90% of the "too old to play video games" age people I run into (mom, dad, uncles, etc.) say that they're interested in the Wii. My dad admitted that the reason he's interested in it is because the controller is a remote, and he knows how to use a remote. Or at least, he'd never admit that he didn't know how to use a remote.
But any other gaming platform? They wouldn't own up to the fact that they could figure out how to play games on them.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
why is the above comment marked as troll? I bought a Wii at launch also and virtual console is the only reason its not completely covered in dust right now. I am a fan of the wii and I'm excited about future games but as of right now even PS3(which I am having much more "fun" with than my wii) has a better game selection.
Say what?
Yeah, that sums it up.
Nintendo was committed to a CDRom attachment for the Super NES. The product (known as the "Play Station") almost made it to market. Right up until the CEO of Nintendo read the contract and realized that they had basically sold the farm to Sony. He nixed the deal at the 11th hour. Nintendo then started working with Phillips to create a joint CDRom design.
Nintendo eventually realized that Phillips didn't know their heads from their rears and pulled out. But not before Phillips decided that they had the best thing since sliced bread. Phillips managed to get a license to produce a few Mario and Zelda titles out of the deal, and thus the worst Mario and Zelda games ever imagined were made for the (you guessed it!) Phillips CD-i. Nintendo ended up skipping the CDRom format altogether, and stuck with cartridges until the DVD was available. (GameCube discs are Mini-DVDs recorded at Constant Angular Velocity.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
This day and age, you need marketing people in those areas. Consumers and users are demanding to know things these days that was generally unknown outside the company in the past. Demands are made to know development information on games, details as to algorithms used in MMORPGs. And something like hardware production, people demand to know why there are shortages, why can't I buy it. That's exactly what your marketing department is for.
So I don't find it odd that you have marketing directors for departments like Hardware production. Consumers have made it a requirement with demand and demand for information they probably don't necessarily HAVE to know.
One aspect of marketing is figuring out how many of your product to make. Production is a part of marketing, since it is the marketing department who basically determines how many units you need. I mean, you wouldn't let production make 100 million of an item if marketing only saw demand for 20 million, right? Companies shouldn't really have CEOs picking a number out of air about how many he'd like to sell and producing that amount, the marketing department is supposed to figure out what demand is so the company can make the right amount, and then try to generate new business when the company has excess capacity. Likewise, if marketing thinks their is demand for 20 million, but you can only produce 5 or 10 million, they kind of need to communicate that to the customer, or you'll have 10 million fans screaming, "OMG, what is wrong with Nintendo!?? When will I be able to buy a Wii!?" more than we currently do.
I don't think the thumbpad/button split was all that revolutionary. Arcade games and the like have had joysticks for one hand, and button clusters for the other hand. Putting it into a handheld form factor is not earth-shattering. The Wiimote, on the other hand, adds so many extra dimensions that it will take years for developers to refine their control schemes. People are not good at incorporating another dimension of movement or rotation into their thinking. We are jumping from a 2-stick, 2-throttle/trigger scheme to a 1 or two gyro scheme. Where the old controlers (Xbox, gamecube, etc.) had at most 6 analog degrees of freedom, the Wiimote alone has that many, and the nunchuk adds another 6 plus two in the analog stick. It will take a long time before games take full advantage of those gyros.
I think we will see quite a few FPS style games ported but with bad control schemes before developers get used to a different way of thinking. At the very least, the differences between the Wii and the 360/PS3 versions of games will keep getting larger, and fewer games will be ported across control schemes. The cross-platform franchises will probably split so that studios don't have to keep trying to make the Wii and 360/PS3 games comparable.
Godfather on the Wii is awesome. It's easily the most violent game I've ever played.
That may sound somewhat strange, but it's true. While the level of graphic violence can't approach games like Manhunt, the very fact that you're basically doing this with your own hands makes it so tactile and real that you can't help but feel the violence. Knocking somebody to his knees, then picking him up and throwing him through a window just feels so... right... It's scary.
Don't play that game. I think it's dangerous :-)
I don't know what it's like in the U.S., but prices have gone up here. it's only $10 but still, if this thing sells so well why do they need to jack up the price?