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Mixed News for Nintendo, Microsoft
If you were to just look at downloadable content this week, Wii and 360 owners would have a lot to cheer about. Virtual Console downloads include the (under-appreciated) Legend of the Mystical Ninja and the original Castlevania. Xbox 360 owners can finally sink their teeth into the board-game spectacular that is Settlers of Catan. Classic titles Millipede and Centipede will also be on offer via Xbox Live Arcade. Unfortunately, there are some less cheery things to discuss as well. Virtual Console sales are down, apparently, and some analysts are questioning whether Nintendo's success may be bad for the industry overall. As for the 360 ... the Elite may be bringing back some old problems. 'Red Rings of Death' have already been reported with the just-released consoles, and DRM issues with Live Arcade titles on the 'upgraded' system are making some new owners frustrated.
ugh, I get goatse flashbacks when I hear that phrase!
What? From TFA in question, ""Nintendo has not only increased the size of the market, but it has also re-segmented it in its own favor, in our view," Mitchell wrote. "Nintendo is dominating software sales on its popular hardware platforms, leaving the publishers with a smaller slice of an only somewhat incrementally larger pie."" What this sentence says to me is that the market grew, so it's good for the industry overall, but that the current players in the market are less innovative than Nintendo and so they have a smaller slice of this generation - which is good for the consumer.
"He continued, "Moreover, we feel that the likely shorter product cycles of Nintendo's platforms puts the publishers in a permanent catch-up mode. We think the upcoming releases of Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption will highlight this phenomena [sic] this holiday season."" Interestingly, Microsoft had the short generation this last time around. Not Nintendo.
"What Mitchell alludes to is the tendency for Nintendo-published titles to overrun the top end of sales charts on Nintendo platforms, leaving third party publishers out of luck sales-wise." Also known as the tendency for third-party developers to be worse at making fun games than Nintendo is.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The whole "It's hard to make money because people only buy 1st party Nintendo games" schtick is really, really obnoxious. People buy quality titles (for the most part). Nintendo makes quality titles. The few third parties that do make quality titles sell well. It's not like I picked up Zelda because it was made by Nintendo; I picked up Zelda because it has gameplay that I enjoy, great artistic direction (vs. throwing mounds of polygons at you), and has proven a dependably excellent quality series. I also picked up Rayman, despite the fact that it's a third party title, because it looked to have some excellent off-beat humor and gameplay, and it lived up to that expectation.
"Nintendo is dominating software sales on its popular hardware platforms, leaving the publishers with a smaller slice of an only somewhat incrementally larger pie."
How is this a new trend? Unless I'm mistaken, I believe Nintendo has always dominated the sales charts of their own platforms, and deservedly so - why buy a generic licensed platformer when you can get a Mario title that's been polished to near perfection?
He continued, "Moreover, we feel that the likely shorter product cycles of Nintendo's platforms puts the publishers in a permanent catch-up mode. We think the upcoming releases of Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption will highlight this phenomena [sic] this holiday season."
Shorter product cycles are a bad thing? Since the Wii is less powerful than the PS3 or the Xbox 360, I'd have to imagine that any experience the publishers get on those platforms would carry over nicely to the Wii's eventual successor. Besides, it looks like - for the time being, at least - Nintendo's "less powerful hardware for lower price" strategy is working far better than Sony's "buy it now for $600 and we'll support it in ten years, we promise" plan of action.
Moreover, Mr. Todd Mitchell seems to be missing something key here: while this may not be the most favorable trend for third party publishers, Nintendo is going to make buckets of money from all of this. Since he's an investment analyst, you think he'd want to point out the bright side there, that being that Nintendo is going to make you rich and that, perhaps more importantly, Nintendo succeeding in this generation - even if entirely due to their own titles - means there will still be some form of a gaming industry in five years instead of the supposed game industry crash that is supposed to happen in the near future.
Goo goo g'joob.
I think its somewhat one-sided to say Nintendo is bad for the industry. It's bad for today's publishers who continue to pump out the same crap year after year after year because most of the new people who are getting into games (older people, etc) won't enjoy that garbage. It's good for gaming, though, because those more creative video game publishers will be more successful...
I say let the big companies fail, I'm hope I don't have to see Madden 2015 advertised...
Um... Isn't that what virtually any business aims to do? You don't think Microsoft and Sony are trying to do the same?
Although I haven't been following video games nearly as actively as I used to (read: at all), I thought Nintendo was making great strides to bring third parties on this generation, or at least claiming to.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
So getting more women and older users buying their first personal consoles, expanding the market, lowering the entry point for new enthusiasts, and coming up with a series of great first-party titles to buoy these systems rather than depending on third-party support is a BAD thing?!
Okay, I may buy 'this is bad for all the people doing things the old way', but this is only because the Wii and DS are two radically different paradigms. Once these interfaces take off, we may see the WiiMote and Nunchuk turn into a smaller, sleeker 'WiiWand' with 'Wiiry Stone' attachment, or the DS Lite become the DS Nano (or maybe the DS Slim, or DS Micro, DSleek . . . you get the idea.)
Nintendo is unlikely to change the interfaces AGAIN so soon, simply because these were so dramatically different from the norm, and I estimate that even if they update the hardware within the next few years, what we'll be seeing are not new systems in the vein of the PS3 where the engine development is the radical difference, but rather changes in form factor.
Expect crazy leaps of intuition like a WiiDR pad or DS games that are both DS-playable but have DS++ elements for whatever the DS's successor is, by all means, but since the most drastic part of Nintendo's great leap forward has already been accomplished, we shouldn't see another new switch in the actual computational hardware anytime soon.
In other news, analysts made the shocking discovery that the Nintendo Gamecube had the least amount of support from third party publishers leaving Nintendo-published titles to overrun the top end of sales charts on the Gamecube.
I don't understand why there's this psuedo-FUD regarding the VC sales by everyone carrying this article. Sales are not down. What he's pointing out is that VC sales have not been growing proportional to the skyrocketing sales of the Wii console.
My guess is that the average user isn't going to care a whole ton about the VC. The hardcore gamer might because they are trying to play games they never got to play before or are trying to consolidate their retro catalog legally into one location. I would be willing to be that the initial buyers for the Wii were in-fact hardcore gamers or previous gamers, not necessarily the soccer moms and grandma's who are now starting to actively seek the system for themselves. These newcomers to the system probably have less interest in the VC than in buying the Wii mostly for Wii Sports and a couple other titles. Finally, anyone who's been following the VC lineup knows that signal to noise ratio hasn't been incredibly high. There's a handful of must-haves on that list, but there's a lot of games waiting in the wings for some reason or other (my theory is to help keep gamers going if there's a big drought of Wii games).
A better description of what's happening is that sales are slowing or plateauing, not "down". I don't think Nintendo and its partners really care anyways. 1.8 million units sold with price tags >= $5 and only bandwidth costs to consider is nothing to scoff at.
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And this is why we have the first gaming "drought" all the hardcore players are complaining about. No one expected the Wii to sell like it has, and instead focused on PS3 which was supposed to dominate from Day 1. Fast forward 6 months and we get a drought of Wii games and developers are jumping the PS3 ship. Go figure.
And how is this any different from Nintendo's business strategy from past generations?
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Someone should print off one of the /. threads that predicted the Wii vs. PS3 performance over a year ago, and send it to Sony. Possibly with a xerox of some buttocks attached as well.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
The Wii success article is 100% whining.
Translation: "The old third party "same port across the board" style of developing doesn't work in this generation, we'd have to change the way we do things, but we don't want to or want to know how, so we will just whine about it instead."
Games are supposed to be about fun, not profit. If the game is fun, it will sell. if the Wii's first party games hurt Third-party devs' profits, it's not the Wii's fault!
Could it be that third-party devs would have to... god forbid, work a little at making a game for the wii? This reminds me of the same Bullshit that went on with the N64: Lack of third-party support. But that was for a different reason.
There really IS no reason now.
This exposes something about a few third-party publishers, and it isn't pretty at all.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
I'd kill to get Carcassonne and Settlers on the Wii. Same with TMNT Arcade, SotN and Worms, among other games. Nintendo really should look into getting PopCap to hop on board as well. I'd be interested to see them pull of a 2-Player Bejeweled game a la 2-player Tetris.
One of the problems the Wii faces is that this is Nintendo's first major foray into areas that Microsoft came in, established, and is currently doing a "2.0" with. It seems to me that the VC is essentially Nintendo in the wading pool with online distribution, they're just trying it out for now. Same with online connectivity. Just be patient is what I keep telling people.
I still haven't explored purchasing anything through the VC yet. I have a sizable NES, SNES and N64 collection but they've got me very close. If the prices were like $1-2 less I would seriously drop the money no questions asked.
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I know two types of 360 owners: People who's consoles still work, and people who have been through multiple 360s.
Perhaps there is a flaw in the design that causes failure, but given the none/multi dichotomy of the situation (and I say this as somebody who is as anti-Xbox as you're likely to find without being a fanboy for another platform) the question I want to know the answer to is "What are these people doing differently to their system that is causing it to break?". Sure, maybe they're victim to a faulty device, but it's got to be something about the way they use the system that is triggering the failures.
The other question I want answered is that, given the mainstream media's willingness to report on every minor Xbox development from Microsoft, why aren't they reporting on this problem. It's clearly widespread, as it had notable impact on Microsoft's bottom line. Are CNN and the New York Times really in Microsoft PR's pocket? I mean, I know they spend a lot on advertising....
That's not true. It's also good if you like the way Nintendo does business, or if you like the way Nintendo makes controllers, or if you like the way Nintendo makes systems. Because if they are on top, everyone will want to emulate or out-do them.
When one player who has been on the bottom gets on top, it usually leads to change.
Some change, at this point, could only be positive. The games industry is in a serious state of stagnation.
HDTV acceptance doesn't affect the Wii significantly for a number of reasons. The first reason is that the Wii is not an HD player, while still being cheap enough to purchase alongside one. The second reason is that HD might go nowhere, as you say. The third reason is that game consoles typically make shitty video players with the included software; for example the PS2 was an amazingly horrible DVD player (slimline is better but still not very good.) And in the case of the Xbox it's an external peripheral. External peripherals for video game systems have never succeeded. Even if it sets new records in that regard it will be an extremely niche product.
I don't see the problem here. Third parties ARE making Wii games, and they are more interested in making games for Nintendo in this generation than they have been of late, largely because of the Wii's massive popularity. And they are less interested in developing for Sony than ever before, largely because of the way Sony has totally blown their attempt to capture this generation so far. Whereas Microsoft is still a hit-and-miss sale to developers. They like the tools, they fear doing business with Microsoft, both very logical stances.
It can only be seen as bad for the industry if you don't ask Blizzard.
If the market grows, it's good for the industry. "Good for the industry" doesn't require that it's good for all the players, you know. If it truly led to a monopoly that would be one thing, but we all know that's not happening here.
Also, no one with a fucking clue can seriously argue that Nintendo has only slightly increased the size of the gaming market. The GBA SP and later the Wii (and the DS lite of course) have done more to legitimize adult gaming than anything all the other console manufacturers put together have done since the dawn of time (as we measure it on game consoles anyway.)
This is a stupid argument and you are stupider for having suggested it, and I am stupider for having read it. Microsoft has a monopoly position, Nintendo does not, stop using this stupid argument, thank you.
There is too much money for anyone to give up and unless the other players deserve to die, they will figure out that some innovation is what is required in the market.
Microsoft will probably be there for at least one more generation. There is no reason for Sony to give up at this point. Nintendo will not have a monopoly by the end of this generation, or the next. I am not an atomic playboy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The prices are unjustified on the Virtual Console. NES games should be a dollar, if they were a dollar I wouldn't mind dropping 10$ easily in one sitting for ten games. But the current price tag of 5$ is just ridiculous, the game is already finished. Its either emulated or modified to run on the Wii, which more then likely takes little to no time to do. Yet I sit here looking at Super Mario Brothers for the price of 5$, and the majority of us already purchased the game in our life time (if not several times). I feel like I'm getting screwed by buying games on the Virtual Console.
So let me get this straight... Nintendo is dominating software sales on its platform because its fans aren't tolerating the relative crap put out by the third parties, and this is a bad thing?
Um, are you talking about the same GBA that still outsells the PS3?
I'm late to the party here and I'm terribly sorry if what I'm about to say has already been said... I just need to say this.
Goddamn, analysts are dumb!
"Nintendo has not only increased the size of the market, but it has also re-segmented it in its own favor, in our view," Mitchell wrote. "Nintendo is dominating software sales on its popular hardware platforms, leaving the publishers with a smaller slice of an only somewhat incrementally larger pie."So, apparently Nintendo is not only adding new people to the market, but they are killing all the old ones
Also, it is apparently Nintendo's fault that 3rd parties refuse to do something original, rather than slapping Wii controls onto a PS2 port and calling it good. Next I suppose it will be Nintendo's fault that publishers do heap piles and piles of shovelware onto the DS and Wii in the hopes of making a quick buck. Absolutely ridiculous.
Well, I respect Tycho from Penny Arcade, but he is referring to a launch day console that he purchased over a year ago; not one of the newly redesigned "elite" units being reported on in TFA.
I own a launch unit Xbox 360 as well, I've never had any problems, but I also maintain the largest (if not the only) FAQ on the subject of Red Rings of Death (at least it's the largest one I know of).
There is no denying that a large number of Xbox 360 consoles have gone belly up, I see that crap first hand on a daily basis. Even still MS claims the failure rate is between 3 and 5 percent. Considering they've shipped 10 million consoles... 3 to 5 percent is still 300,000 to half a million units. When you consider a chunk of consumers that size and the speed in which bad news travels over the tubes... whether it's FUD or not, you get a reputation for that sort of thing.
I have no doubt that some of the new elite units are throwing errors out of the box, despite the fact that it was "redesigned" the problematic components haven't been fixed or even addressed in the elite units and a potential fix wont go into production until sometime next month.
FWIW: If I had to make an educated guess I'd say 90% of the broken Xbox 360s can be traced back to a single design error and that is a GPU that runs too hot due to a shoddy cooling system resulting in either weak or bridged solder connections in it's Ball Grid Array. Neither the GPU, it's cooling system, or it's attachment to the motherboard have been modified since the console's launch, why would any new systems be any different from the older ones.
Collector's Edition
You also have to consider the "EA effect". If one company does dominate an industry, then you lose competition and innovation. Nintendo is very innovative right now because getting their butt kicked last generation forced them to be, but if they're all alone at the top then don't expect the innovation that you're seeing right now.
Jim,
Sorry if it came out that way, Yes - Nintendo provides them with the tools ahead of launch.
What I meant is that the fact that their current platforms are so 'unique' that it doesn't conform to their business model; they have to come and play against Nintendo, with their platform and with a design philosophy that is unorthodox. I don't think that for now we'll see very compelling games from 3rd parties unless they really commit to the platform.
Meanwhile Nintendo will cream the competition in their own platforms hence the assessment from the analyst.
R.P
Heres the problem. Nintendo does NOT compete with other developers. Hell they don't even compete with MS & Sony. To Nintendo, competition really doesn't exist. They aren't worried about beating out their competitor, but concerned with making money. If anyone else wants to make some money too they aren't going to complain. You'll find if you look at the problem with devs that don't do as well are relying on existing IP. It's not Nintendo's fault developers can't take a risk on something new (primarily Western developers are this problem). Hell, take a look at Elebits for a good example of a dev that did something unique. It's no Super Paper Mario by any means, but at least it shows us the people who brought us DDR can think outside of the box enough to make a good game.
Developers can piss themselves all day that they won't make as much as Nintendo, but it's kind of hard to have any sympathy for them when their mantra is to develop for one console, and port to the rest (and ones like EA weren't even on board till just recently!). Of course people aren't going to buy Prince of Persia in droves. It's been out for the previous generation of consoles for how many years? Developers need to just stop complaining, and stop giving excuses so they can get out from underneath Nintendo's shadow, and *gasp* do something new & interesting.
Which reminds me of the other problem I have with the whole 'Nintendo's success is bad for other developers' - EA totally has the resources to make excellent games. They don't because they can get away with it, but sometimes the developers get the resources that they need and put out something pretty good.
I can't help but think that if EA were required to step up, they would. (And they've said that they reckon they can become at least the #2 developer on Nintendo's platforms.)