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Wii's Longevity, Competition Questioned
Gamasutra reports that, despite the Wii's breakaway sales success, some analysts are skeptical of the Wii's staying power. Other analysts are, of course, pointing out that many of the 'hardcore' titles are expected later this year. "[They] not[ed] that 31% of Wii owners surveyed in March said they expected to play the Wii more often a year from now, compared to 21% of Xbox 360 owners." At the same time, Nintendo of America's George Harrison is questioning the staying power of Sony and Microsoft. According to Harrison, the two larger companies 'lack the DNA' to move with the industry, and keep with the the demand for casual, more family-friendly titles. "'They're really good at reaching a certain customer, and have a real difficulty understanding how we succeed with the customers that we have,' said the senior vice president of marketing and communications. With the sales of Wii and DS hardware crushing the competition in the US, Harrison is confident that Nintendo could take up to as much as 50 per cent of the market for this latest 'next-gen' cycle."
... its not like you always made mainstream appealing consoles that would entertain all family members up to granpa and granma ... anyone with a screen bigger than 40" loves his 360 or ps3 for its graphics and the fun games ... i like 3rd person action, i like 1st person action, i like sports games, i like rpgs ... hell and how i dislike minigames ... just because someone "reinvents" how controllers work in a fun way ... imho shotlived party-gimmick-kind-of-fun ... (yeah we had that virtual stuff already in the 90s with gloves you know) ... doesnt mean he will break how technological evolution works ... thats just not the way it works ... in fact ... maxing out capabilities in a few years on 360 and ps3 will produce photo realistic games ... and they might just add a controller that uses real 3d positioning and not just cheap accellerometers who knows ... and customers might just ask themselves ... hell i spent 250 bucks on that crap lastgen machine and have to spend another 250 for another crap machine when wii is released while current-next-gen would have been 400 (well probably forget about the crazy 600bucks sony thingie ;) ) and still competing or most probably beating wii (since nintendo does not loose money on hardware and sells cheap crap that cant even run a decent AI in shooters or strategy games because its lacking the processing power) ...... and for all you wii lovers out there ... i have a wii, 360, nes, snes, n64, xbox, ps2, ps1, dc, genesis etc etc etc ... by checking my consoles im a friggin nintendo fanboy
My 360 is the console I expect to be playing far into the future, while the Wii will be relegated to being the console that non-gamers have fun with at parties.
1) Until you get the ring of death.
2) You and many other geeks have a very elitist view of the word "gamer."
Yes, it is elitist. It is a bizzaro nerd kind of elitist that manifests itself around these parts. There are gamers that have little to no interest in the Halos, GTAs, Final Fantasies, and Maddens of the world. I am one of them. About the only thing I would find myself playing on a 360 is Catan and that is not worth spending $400 dollars on a console legendary for poor craftsmanship.
Now I follow video games, and I mean hardcore, so I may be an anomaly, but I submit to you that my mother is a hardcore Zuma player. She doesn't know a Kojima from a enemy crab or a frag from a frame rate, but she would pwn your n00b ass in Zuma. Whether you are shooting spheres or spartans, it's really the same shit in the end.
It is exactly this elitist attitude that is hurting Sony so badly. Gamers define themselves. They play games. They spend money on games. Those people weren't non-gamers. They were just the gamers other companies chose to ignore.