Slashdot Mirror
The Latest From the Front in the Console Wars
The October NPD numbers are out, and (now that we know we'll keep getting the information) it's time once again for analysis and reaction from media and businesses alike. GameDaily has a one year later look at the fight that began last holiday season. As for the numbers themselves, with Halo 3 now a known quantity in the market the 360 is down to 366,000 from 527,800 in September. Microsoft is still quite happy with software sales, though. The PS3 only saw 121,000 units sold last month, but early news from November has Sony very excited. And all the while, somehow, the Wii manages to sell even more units. The system is up to 519,000 from 501,000 in September, with the DS slight down to 458,000 from 495,800. As the GameDaily analysis article concludes: "the race for console dominance is still anyone's to win. The 2007 holiday buying season will be crucial to setting all three players' market positions going into next year. Which is all nice to know, of course, but not that important to actually enjoying your system of choice well into the future."
the race for console dominance is still anyone's to win
I disagree.
Yeah, I can imagine the multi player Wii experience is fun but what about single player? What about when you have had a hard day at work and just want to crash out and play something for a bit? I think I would feel a bit silly doing the whole Wii thing by myself and sometimes you just can't be arsed to jump around.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
I expect that the Wii will continue to win, it shows Nintendo's domination strategy. First there are exclusive games made my Nintendo that are very very popular such as Mario, Zelda, Fire Emblem and Star Fox that will only be available on the Wii or other Nintendo consoles. Sony has Square, however usually will port the games to Wii and 360 also later in the console's life. The 360 has Halo and.. not much else, most of the people that I have talked to bought a 360 for Halo and Halo only. The Wii manages to have some good games for it, Galaxy, Paper Mario and Zelda are all good and exclusive titles, but as with the DS, we only have to wait a few years and after all the "tech-demos" of new controls you get very solid games. Sure Nintendo's systems don't have an absolutely huge quantity of games for them, but those that are made for it have very high quality (sports games aside) and don't have the flaws that the other systems had. For example, Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube was much better then the Tales games on the PS1-2 because Nintendo desinged the hardware so you wouldn't get loading screen after loading screen like on the PS2. In the end, Nintendo is more popular, you only have to look at how almost every store has a PS3 and 360 but very few have the Wii in stock and sometimes even Wii point cards are sold out! The Wii will win the "console war" the way that Nintendo always has, good quality, exclusive games.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
The market is good so I just sold my Wii to fund a PC upgrade. Why? I'm afraid it's a boring reason - I'm just not a console player, when I want to game, I want to play on the PC. Just couldn't get comfortable gaming on the sofa on the TV.
I have to say the Wii is the most varied and interesting console playing experience I've come across. It has games that focus on the wiimote, some of them are good, a lot of them are gimmicky. People who only play those, are going to be disappointed eventually. But it also has good games that don't use it, like more regular console games. One that uses the wiimote just a little (but does it well) but is more like a conventional game, is Mario Strikers Charged. The Wiimote minigame was an improvement on the original, but otherwise, it was a straight console type game, and a good one at that.
Zelda wasn't so much of a killer app as a killer *launch* app, it's great, but people are talking more about Wii Sports now, it's had better longevity (in the public eye, if not with each player. Though I have to say it's the game I'll miss the most). Super Mario Galaxy looks like it will be an absolute must-have, everyone is raving about it already, and its unique presentation and (again) minimal-but-useful use of the Wiimote will attract people in droves. I think this will be bigger than Halo 3 was for the 360.
Sometimes I think Nintendo doesn't want to publish "Hardcore" games, because their presence might detract from the casual image of the Wii, but I imagine they will do more of those with time, once the concept of the Wiimote style control is more embedded in people's minds. Mario coming out a year after launch and Brawl soon are good examples of this.
Suffice to say, if I'm at someone else's place and a 360 is on, I'll watch and be amazed by the graphics, but if a Wii is on, I'll probably get up and have a go.
What I want to know is, when the hell is someone going to make the sword/lightsaber game for the Wii that we've all been waiting for. This comes up every now and then and the apologists all jump out and say "Errors in the motion sensors add up so you can't make perfect 1 to 1 movements, blah, blah, blah."
Which is all a bunch of BS. OK you can't make perfect 1 to 1 movement with perfectly free movement of the sword, but you don't need to! I've already seen "good enough" control to make the sword/lightsaber game possible!
Go load up Wii Sports. Choose Baseball for 2 players (so you can play around without a pitch coming). Grab the control for the batter and tip/twirl the Wiimote around over your shoulder. Notice how the Mii tips/twirls the bat just like you? Now, just change it from a bat to a sword, move it from over-the-shoulder to waist level in front of the player, and put the camera behind the Mii (KOTOR style). There, you just made the greatest sword game ever without even doing anything clever.
And of course there's bound to be lots of clever stuff you can figure out like motion capturing a bunch of kids playing with fake swords (with wiimotes embedded) so you can map the wiimote acceleration profiles to expected real life movements. Or correcting for the small integration errors whenever the wiimote happens to swing past the sensor bar. That's just icing on the cake that makes the control even closer to what's expected.
Yeah the control will never be exactly 1 to 1. Olympic fencers will be pissed off that they can't get the millimeter perfect movements they use. Everyone else will be wildly flailing their swords with big broad movements so as long a the sword goes left when they swing left it will be fine. The players' hand/eye coordination will adjust to what the game will actually do. Players already adjust to controls that are much less intuitive/realistic. Just throw in a few easy "whack the pinata" levels at the beginning and I bet people will subconsciously adjust themselves in no time.
How can you call Wii a passing fad when the PS3 and XBox 360 both are just rehashing genres and quickly porting games that were available or in development on PS2 and XBox? How can you call Wii a passing fad, when even on other consoles, a game that requires a gimmicky controller and that doesn't have the greatest graphics is catching on like wildfire (Guitar Hero III, soon Rock Band)?
:P) I realized it wasn't worth it just to be playing the same exact games with slightly better graphics. I wanted more than FPS, RTS, and MMORPG. At the time, consoles were providing much better games, and plus, the FPS/RTS/MMORPGs were starting to get good on consoles so if ever I got a craving, there were options.
I used to be the kind of person to upgrade my PC every other month just because I wanted the latest in graphics and processing, but after a while (it took me 2 or 3 years
Now it's kind of the same thing but with Wii vs other consoles... I could keep upgrading (and I did buy a PS3 and 360 as well, so I wouldn't miss out on anything) but I just have more fun playing different and more innovative games on the Wii.
I've got over 22 games on the Wii now and a scant 3 on PS3 (VF5, R&C:F, Darkness) and 3 on 360 (Katamari, Halo 3, Bioshock). On the Wii I still go back and play Excite Truck, Super Paper Mario, Trauma Center, Super Monkey Ball, I still even play SSB:M, and still play Wii Sports and of couse now am very into Mario Galaxy.
See, there ARE gamers that just want to play the same games over and over with slightly better graphics, but they're obsessed with a few genres that they simply want to play in a perfect form because that's what really appeals to them. However, most other gamers want a wide variety of experiences and don't really care to play the same couple of games re-made and perfected over time while paying a ton of cash for new console versions or new game versions.
This is in fact what would even draw your average person into games, a wide variety of easily accessible yet deep experiences. With games like Excite Truck or Mario Galaxy or Trauma Center, or Monkey Ball, gamers can have casual fun with it yet they can also choose to get as deep as they want into the game perfecting their ability to play it and discovering the nuances and strategies, but they don't have to, and they can just have casual fun with them as well.
I think that games that keep getting re-made and obsess on a few tiny details and aren't genre-bending or genre-evolving are the fads, and you can tell by the amount of clones that keep popping up to cash in until the genres ram into the ground.
Halo 3 is fun but Halo 2 was just as fun. R&C:F is fun, but so were the first 3 games. On the Wii I'm seeing a lot more new stuff that keeps me hooked. Other systems just don't hold my interest.
Twinstiq, game news
Im not really interested in the numbers of it, all i know is that for the first time in a long time im utterly spoiled for choice. im currently muddling through, the witcher (PC), gears of wars (pc), Assasins creed (360), Halo 3 (360), Metroid and Mario for the Wii to name a few. With Mass effect and unreal tournament 3 coming soon and a whole host of 2008 titles (such as GTA), i for one am an extremly happy camper.
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
It's Ironic that Nintendo captured the casual market and yet there are very few games for them, they either fall under the "core-gamer category" (RE4, Metroid3, etc...) or the "Shovelware" (Too many to mention actually) category. I own a Wii with something like 15 Wii games, and 2 dozen VC games. I love it, and play it often. My parents enjoyed WiiSports so much they wanted one of their own for when they have company over. They are as "non-gamer" as can be, but are not opposed to buying games anymore as long as they appeal to them. To date they only have 3 games (WiiSports, WiiPlay, and Tiger Woods 08) and 1 VC game (PacMan). Occasionally I bring over Rayman RR, or Excitetruck and we play them a little, but that's it. They are both retired, have time and money available to them, but there is simply not a selection of games they find appealing.
Nintendo is moving units to casual gamers, but they (and 3rd parties) need to recognize this largely untapped market and deliver some games they want to buy! Guitar Hero Helps, so does DDR, and Karaoke games, but what about SuDoKu, or NY Times Crossword puzzles...