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Wii Outsells 360, PS3 Worldwide
Wowzer writes "Despite confusing consoles produced, shipped or sold reports, the Nintendo Wii is now the best-selling system worldwide. Its sales exceed that of the Xbox 360 despite Microsoft's console having a year-long head start. And it's way ahead of the PS3. From the article: 'Sales figures from each console's launch date through the end of July (and the end of August in Japan) were added up, with the Wii just barely edging out the 360: 9 million for the Wii, 8.9 million for the 360, and 3.7 million for the PlayStation 3.'"
The game companies that thought it would fail and weren't prepared for its success.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
On the one hand, it's just a continuation of a year-long trend of Wii kicking the other consoles' butts hard. They're still hard to find because they disappear off the shelves as soon as they get put there. Anyway, this was all predicted a while ago and so isn't a surprise in that sense.
On the other hand, I find it QUITE surprising that the Wii can so handily outsell the 360 when its game library is, all things considered, horribly outmatched. This is a very strong example of the fact that games do NOT sell the system, as many gamers like to think. Advertisements and price tag do a LOT more than the shelves of dvd-size plastic boxes with the console's logo on them, it seems.
I like basketball!!1!
I got myself a Wii. Just need a proper LAN multiplayer FPS and a Summer Smash Brothers, and maybe even a hardcore Mario kart.
I've actually spent hours playing Super Mario Brothers on the Virtual Console
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
...I know this term is sloshed around alot around here, but I wonder if Nintendo has shills trolling the /. boards? It seems to me most of the ones around here take the form of either Microsoft or Sony...yet you never really see any that sound like they are coming from Nintendo...curious, that.
Living With a Nerd
....never! The fact is, I thought that the Wii was going to flop the moment it released. But because of its world wide spread of ease to pick up and go. It had succeeded to be one of the dominent systems.
actually wii advertisement spending was much lower compared to the other consoles from what i know.
and this IS a games sell a console situation.
for the first time in around, like, 8-10 years, a major brand (nintendo) came up with the now-forgotten idea of making FUN games instead of ones that has loaded sounds and graphics and repeats old concepts.
thats why wii is outselling all consoles.
Read radical news here
Specifically, the Xbox made its over all numbers largely without doing much in Japan. If you factored out Japan, I think that the Xbox still has a substantial lead.
In other words, I do not expect the Xbox 360 to become a non factor any time soon. It may be in a #2 position, but holding its current position without the benefit of Japan is a pretty strong feat. If they ever crack the Japanese market, they will likely give Nintendo some strong competition. Conversely, if the PS3 can build some decent momentum as its prices drop, it could overtake Microsoft overall with core gamers. If this does happen, it will happen very late in this console cycle (no earlier than say, 2010). And if it does do so, it will not overtake the 360 in the US.
I had been saying for some time, before the Wii's launch, that it probably had at worst, the #2 slot locked up in the console war, and a real threat to be #1.
I would say that right now, Nintendo is #1 over all, but only #2 with respect to hard core gamers. While a broad market strategy may be a good one, the core segment has proven consistently strong, and not one you want to cede to a rival.
If the Wii is ever going to get a grip on the core segment of the console market, they have to do it within the next year. Developers of titles that appeal to core gamers jumped on the Wii band wagon late, so the games that could push Wii into an untouchable #1 standing simply do not exist yet. On top of that, Nintendo did have a pretty bad game drought between February and July on the Wii. With the 3rd party developers coming on stream, that may change.
So to sum up:
- Right now, Wii has the #1 spot over all, but is only #2 with core gamers.
- I expect that the Xbox 360 will stay #1 with core gamers unless the Wii starts to get alot of games that will appeal to core gamers. Given the Wii's market positioning, I do not think this will happen.
- I expect the Xbox 360 to be guaranteed #2 unless Sony starts to build alot of momentum. I would be very surprised if this happens.
END COMMUNICATION
And based on Nintendo's difficulty in satisfying demand, it's not much of a stretch to include them among those companies. It's easy to say something is a sure bet in hindsight, but that's not how it looked back before anyone had gotten their hands on the Nintendo Revolution.
Different doesn't always mean better, and features on paper don't necessarily describe the experience. How well has motion control worked in the past? How precise will the controller be? Assuming everything else remained the same, but the wiimote was looser, that alone could sink the console. Game controls need to be consistent and precise because that control mechanism is their only connection to the game. Plus the hardware is specced lower than the other two consoles. And their previous console came in last of the three. The Wii was not the safe bet, thus developers went with the tried and true formula on the other platforms and are now scrambling to play catch-up.
Even Nintendo didn't bet on doing this well, the numbers of consoles sold were constrained by Nintendo's supply, not demand. You can find a Wii without camping out now, after all this time, but they still get cleared off the shelves before the next shipment. When the holiday season rolls in they may be a chore to find once again.
But the upshot through all this, is that it's indeed the most prolific console now, and though developers may be a little late to the party, there will probably be a nice big wave of games hitting all at once as they finish their late-starting Wii games.
I think the lesson of both the Wii and the DS is that for a lot of people, notably the non-gamers, FUN is what counts.
Technology, the PSP trashes the DS. The XBox360 makes the Wii look like a joke graphically and computationally.
But the new interfaces (touch screen, WiiMote) have lead to entirely new classes of games, and new ways of doing traditional games.
EG, after playing Metroid for a few hours, I can't see how anyone could go back to the classic FPS controls, especially on a console. On a DS, the touchscreen allows very rich UIs, which are not possible with just the D-pad and buttons.
That is the lesson from Nintendo: Fun Must Come First .
Test your net with Netalyzr
Your assumption that Nintendo only wins if everyone buys lots of games is based on the idea that the console is sold at a loss. Nintendo is likely making a hefty profit off each Wii they sale. Therefore to them, every Wii sold is a win, even if the user doesn't buy a single game. This is in contrast to Sony and Microsoft who LOSE money on every console, and are relying on the fact that every person who buys their console also buys at least 4 or 5 games. . . This is just to break even, to match the profit that nintendo is making off EVERY wii sale, they have to sell a couple more games.
Additionally, I do not think most wii owners only have one or two games. There are a lot of people who are "gamers", but aren't hard core enough to pay $600 for a system. There are lots of good games for the Wii, many of which aren't available on other consoles (just wait till smash brothers comes out).
Plus, when taking profits into account, you can't forget about the profit on accessories. How many Wii owners also have at least 2 or 3 wii motes. Those aren't cheap by any means, and likely lead to more profit for Nintendo. Particularly in the short term Nintendo is dominating the field when it comes to profit. I doubt the others have even recouped their development costs.
Phil
"The Wii controller was a good idea, not supporting HD-TV was a bad idea."
Not supporting HD meant the Wii (1) cost less for consumers to buy, and (2) cost less for developers to write titles for. Throw in the fact that HDTV is still a minority in all of the world's video-game markets, and there's no compelling reason for Nintendo to support it other than to satisfy the resolution-counting techno-geeks.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
All I can say is that I'm glad no one else thought the Wii was gonna be a hit. I've tripled my investment in Nintendo since I bought it. It's just a shame I didn't have more money available to invest in them.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Barely, eh? Well, how much of the 360's shipments are due to the oft-quoted 33% system failure rate? You know, that same one that essentially forced them to lengthen the warranty to save face? If they claim to have shipped 8.9M units, but 33% of those are defective, their actual sales could be as low as 5.9M, depending on how many have been traded for new units.
Either way, the Wii has sold more in 10 months than MS has in 2 years. That alone should say something about the target markets.
Oddly, I was actually considering buying a 360 due to some games that looked interesting. But that 33% chance of a red-ring-of-death definitely puts me off. Yeah, I know the warranty covers it, but if my machine is in the mail every few months, for several weeks at a time, that doesn't seem very useful for playing games.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
Honda outsells Ferrari worldwide!
Is it any wonder that a cheaper item with a wider target audience would outsell a more expensive item with features aimed towards more hardcore members?
Indeed, I don't think Nintendo expected cruise ships wanting Wii's or people purchasing multiple consoles for home and travel.
Out of curiosity, I talked to a GameStop employee and asked him how the Wii was doing? Long story short, he claims they get an average of 25 units a week and sell out within 48 hours. 25 units a week (for one store) and they're still selling out months later. It is pretty surprising.
Of course, the real under-rated news is not the Wii but the DS. For all the people I know who won a Wii, I know twice as many who also have a DS. People who wouldn't buy a Wii as even that is too much 'video game' for them. Those "brain" games (Brain Age, Big Brain Academy) is by far the sleeper "killer ap". Who would have thunk that someone would drop $120 just to do some math equations? =P
Though, the DS does have a lot of great (and cheap) games. The Wii? Zelda, Mario Party, Metroid, Raymon, Wii Sports/Play... I've not been impressed with a whole lot else. So, that does say something about the unique frenzy the Wii is causing. Or maybe it's because I'm spending more time playing the Virtual Console? =P (yes, I've been playing on emulators on my PC since 2000, I still prefer the VC)
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
They don't claim that. The NDP numbers are sales not shipments.
NPD (not NDP) numbers are indeed 'sales' not 'shipments'.
However, due to the way NPD tracks numbers, warranty exchanges/replacements handled and documented by retailers, those units frequently count as 'sales' as far as NPD counts are concerned.
To sum up, NPD numbers show units that have been delivered to end users. Which is more useful than Microsoft's number telling us how many they've shipped to retailers (and which may be sitting in warehouses for months to come)... but as to the question of how many of these are 'new sales' vs 'warranty replacements'; its anyones guess.
It will be quite a bit less than the actual failure rate, becauwse NPD doesn't count warranty units shipped direct from microsoft. But if you take your ringed unit into BestBuy and they send you home with a new one, it will likely count as a new sale by NPD's sales tracking. It all depends on how the retailers process warranty exchanges and doa replacements.
Normally, the likes of NPD don't care about warranty exchanges because the rates are low enough that its just noise in the data, and not worth the trouble to track, and all consoles are expected to have similiarly low failure rates, so even if they are over reporting a half percent or so; it doesn't really skew the data in anyones favor.
Finally, this is not a new problem. The PS2 worldwide sales is similarly badly distorted. The PS2 didn't have the level of problems the 360 has, but first generation PS2's had weak drives, that burned out (especially if used for watching movies). This led a LOT of them to die AFTER the 1 year warranty.
Of the 100 million+ PS2's sold. How many of them were just re-purchased to replace dead out of warranty PS2's? I've heard estimates as high as 20-35% there too.
Of course, in this case at least, Sony got paid twice, so in some sense its fair to call the 2nd sale "legitimate" and count it in 'total sales'. But from a developer's standpoint the size of the market is grossly inflated.
In the same way that 400 million downloads of firefox don't count as 400 million users.
Nintendo is doing a great job of proving that appealing to a broader audience is a good way to go. But the fact remains that many of the games that core gamers enjoy simply do not appeal to a broader audience. And the core audience is not insignificant.
Games like God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Assassins Creed, Zelda, Metroid Prime, Gears of War, Dead Rising, Battlefield 1942, Counterstrike, Grand Theft Auto, Fable, System Shock 2, Ninja Gaiden, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are all great games. I want to see more games of that sort continue to come out. And I would love to play them on my Wii. But I really do not think those types of games will come out on the Wii any time soon. At least, now with the Wii as the primary platform.
Manhunt 2, ratings controversy aside, apparantly makes use of the motion controls quite impressively. Swing the remote, and you get to smash someones head in. But outside of that game, I have not heard much coming out for the Wii that appeals to my particular tastes of a gamer.
At the moment, I do own a Wii. But I have not played very much on it lately. That will change when I get my hands on a copy of Metroid Prime. Being able to play Wii games with non gamer friends is nice. But quite frankly, I also want some good single player games with some real endurance to them. Most casual geared games do not do that.
The Core Audience sustained this industry for a long time. It may be niche, but it is a lucrative one, and one worth trying to hold on to.
END COMMUNICATION
Your analogy is apt, but your statement is false. A lot of people are shopping for a gaming system for themselves and their kids and they're picking between the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS 3. It is the same market and unlike cars, you can't look at the number of seats or mileage before buying. Teens and young adults are also mommies these days. We're talking overlapping market segments, not separate market segments or different markets altogether. People are buying Wii who would otherwise be buying one of the other consoles.
I don't own any of the next generation consoles and I doubt I will for a long time. I have no bias coming into this. I'm not invested in trying to justify my expensive purchase. I've played on other people's systems a few times. Right now, the Wii seems the most fun to me and that is what I care about, but who knows what the future will bring.
I think you're still missing the concept of selling at a loss. Lets take the PS3 as an example.
Sony has sold 3.7 million units (according to the main article). Sticking with the assumption that they were all $499 units, that would be a total of $1.85 billion in gross revenues. However, according to the article from the poster above, Sony sold the $499 console at a loss of $306.85. That means it cost Sony $805.85 to make the $499 PS3, and that they actually lose $306.85 on every sale. So while they brought in about $1.85 in gross revenues, they actually lost about $1.14 billion on the sales. Of course, some were actually $599 versions (with lower losses) and I'd bet Sony has reduced the manufacturing costs at least a little since launch, so the $1.14 billion loss a worst case scenerio. Microsoft is probably still in a hole as well, although they're supposedly making money on new consoles now. Nintendo has been making a profit on console sales since launch though.
Also, counting the full price of games as net revenue is similarly misleading. Sony, MS, and Nintendo don't see the full price as profit. Instead, they get a fee per game sold (I imagine it's a set ammount, but I don't know the exact numbers). The designers, publishers, distributors, retailers take the rest. Games aren't free to make, after all.
I don't remember playing Gears of War, Resistance Fall of Man, Motostorm, or many other 360/PS3 games on previous consoles.
You could have, though... those same games could have been released on the xbox or PS2, identical but for a cut in graphic quality. Different people may have a different opinion about how drastically that would affect the game. I wouldn't mind at all, but perhaps you might find it much less fun. I think, though, that console makers have been catering to you, not to me, until the release of the Wii (and arguably the DS).
That math makes no sense to me. If you assume that each 360 loses Microsoft something like $100 each, each PS3 loses Sony something like $150 each, and each Wii makes Nintendo something like $70 each, you get:
Microsoft: 890m loss
Sony: 550m loss
Nintendo: 630m profit
Factoring games, then, with a 60/60/50 price structure:
Microsoft: needs to sell 30.4m games to catch up to Nintendo at selling zero games
Sony: needs to sell 23.6m games to catch up to Nintendo at selling zero games
Nintendo: 3.6m copies of Zelda, alone, means they are $144m ahead; throw in Metroid, Super Paper Mario, WarioWare, Mario Party 8, etc, and Nintendo has something like 10m games sold, trivially.
Which means the numbers for each console are actually:
Microsoft: needs to sell 40m games to catch up to Nintendo
Sony: needs to sell 33m games to catch up to Nintendo
Nintendo: Clear winner and currently the only profitable game company
GPL Deconstructed
-- toolie
They're going based on prior experience where they offered a component out on the GameCube and only 1% of their customers ever used it. They ended up dropping it in a console rev. to save money. The vast vast majority of people do not have TVs capable of progressive scan and so packing in the cable would increase the cost unnecessarily for most buyers. If you want the cable, you will get it.
:P
And honestly the guy saying it looked like crap on his TV probably doesn't even have a 56-inch television, much less a Wii.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Yes, they make them on games. Developers pay a fee per disc to release on the system.
It's not a percentage. It's usually a flat, per-disc fee. That was why the original Playstation was so much more popular with developers than the N64 despite its hugely inferior hardware: the per disc fee was something like $5 compared to $10 or more for cart fees for the N64. That meant even bad games with low sales numbers could turn a profit.
I don't know it offhand, but I'd probably bet the per-disc fee is somewhere around the $6-$8 range right now for the Xbox 360/PS3, and probably a couple bucks cheaper for the Wii.
No one's implying anything: that's an absolute fact. Microsoft's games division and Sony's game division have been posting losses in the Billions for quite some time. Last year Sony Games racked up a loss of $1.969 Billion, Microsoft Games Division's fiscal year end was a loss of $1.892 Billion (though to be fair, the Zune and a couple other "devices" are in the same division) and Nintendo's end of year profits were $1.915 Billion (they don't have a seperate game division, games are all they do.
If you stood on a corner and offered to give everyone who paid you $50 a $100 bill, you'd have lots of consumers giving you money, but that wouldn't help you any financially. If someone else down the block was getting people to give them $100 bills in exchange for hundreds, even if they only got ONE PERSON to do this they'd be better off than you at the end of the day.
This is essentially how Sony/Microsoft's business model works. They let the consumers hurt them by buying the loss-leader (the console) and hope to make back the money over the life of the product with licensing fees for software. This is doubly true for Sony as they're using the PS3 to push their Blu-ray format.
Their shareholders were probably thinking the same thing a year or so ago.
Being the number one seller doesn't help you if you go bankrupt doing it.
That was the original XBox business model. They believed they could buy the market. The 360's business model is just a wee bit less suicidal, but pretty much still the same. Microsoft just wants to establish their brand in hopes of winning the market by their third generation system. I think they have a shot at it. I refused to buy an XBox but I recently dropped a good chunk on a brand new 360 Premium. It's a fine system and almost worth the money.
Sony however can kiss my ass if they think I'll pay over $300 for that glorified heat sink they're selling.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Agreed, most of the games available on virtual console were great games when they were first released and are still great games. My kids (younger teens), are somewhat surprised at the difficulty level, but enjoyability of these games.
VC games are basically the same cost as a rental game but the fun doesn't end (until you beat the game).
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some idea balls to remove from a manatee tank.
Besides, your view of the situation is very limited. The main concern of Nintendo was that their core market, the japanese market, was dangerously decreasing. Nintendo stated countless times that they had to revitalize it to survive.
The DS and the Wii were made for that specifically, and succeeded. Just look at the software sales since the DS was out. It's pretty obvious that the DS started monopolizing the charts, with a fraction of the PS2 marketshare. 1. Continue to focus on the younger market with a rehashed Gamecube. Nintendo never focused on the younger market, that's a NA originating stigma that stuck to the Gamecube.
Nintendo games are for everybody, not just for the younger market. That mantra comes from the "hardcore" that believe that a game rated E means younger, when it means everybody. 2. Broaden the horizons by looking to a target market which didn't actually happen to be that bothered about the latest FPS (exactly the same as the last one but with a slightly bigger gun) Very narrow view again. Must be why one of the launch game on Wii was a FPS, that happens to be one of the best 3rd party seller on this console
Anyway, you could apply what you said to nearly any game genre except sports.
If you have 1/4 the number of pixels in 480p, then you have 1/8 in 480i in the same time frame.
And going interlaced to progressive WILL IMPROVE the picture quality. There are countless artifacts caused by interlaced signal. The only thing changing to progressive scan will do is increase the rate of refresh and therefor reduce motion blur BS! It won't increase any rate of refresh, it will just improve the resolution, bypassing the image pairing, avoiding lots of artefacts in the process. At best this will make edges more crisp which will actually make the image look more grainy than it would interlaced as the oversized pixels will be more pronounced So progressive scan DVD players make the DVD image more grainy?
What you're saying is BS anyway. If you get oversized pixels that look more grainy, you have a HDTV with a very bad scaler, that's all. At 19 inches the difference between a 480 and 1080 image is very little, but at even 40 or more images the difference is staggering. Those of us that have viewed a 1080 image regularly have a hard time watching 480 images when we have the choice I have a 55" HDTV, have looked at 1080p movies on it, and can still watch 480i/p images without any problem. I can even look at lesser than that (240 pixels height games) through the Virtual Console games, without any problems. Guess what, I even enjoy the games! Imagine!
Hey, Brain Age isn't just math equations, it's got a kick-butt Sudoku implementation as well!
A bunch of us play Mario Kart DS in the office at lunch, using the ad-hoc wireless network; for a number of the players, this was the "killer app" that made them buy the system.
I'm pretty impressed with the DS overall, it's probably the best tech gadget I've ever bought. Still haven't had time to hack around with it (I bought a SuperCard DS a while back to run homebrew apps on the thing) though, unfortunately.
- chrish