Slashdot Mirror
Wii Is the New US Console Leader
stoolpigeon writes with this snippet from an AFP story carried by Google: "Nintendo said Thursday that its globally popular Wii has become the top-selling video game console in the United States, a crown coveted by rivals Microsoft and Sony. Market-tracking firm NPD Group reports that 666,000 Wii consoles were sold in the United States in June, raising the total sales count in the country to nearly 10.9 million units." I'd rather play board games than video games, but the Wii Fit makes one of these tempting anyhow.
Dam all you bastards buying them out every time I try to get one!
Wiis are for faggots and others with small penis.
This, combined with the popularity of the Nintendo DS, should be proof enough that normal people want to play games, not brag about their system's capabilities.
Its proven with 666,000 Wii's how much eviler could you get
I'm not trying to troll, not at all--I own a Wii and no other current-generation consoles.
But where's the games! The Wii has so much potential, with its unique controller, and yet, I find so few games interested in playing.
I don't care about top-notch graphics. If I want that, I'll play my PC. What I do want are actual quality games instead of more shovelware. Where are they?
I wonder how many of these sales are due to people playing Wii Sports alone? I'm rather underwhelmed at the Wii's selection...
Oh, andoOnline gaming especially is important to me, and they really dropped the ball on Super Smash Bros. Brawl--the online is terrible, something reminiscent of 56k gaming, almost, just with better graphics. I haven't played the Wii's iteration of Mario Kart, which I probably should rent, but I have a feeling it's not much better (although, feel free to enlighten me on this).
What I wonder is why the free market isn't able to meet Wii console demand.
Under the normal conditions the price would rise to reduce the demand until there are some units sitting on the shelves because they are too expensive, after which the manufacturer would increase the supply and lower the prices while still keeping supply-demand in equillibrium.
Since none of this is happening, I suspect the monopolist manufacturer manipulates the prices and supply such that there is an artificial shortage, either to 1) undercut the competitors by keeping the prices too low, or 2) to generate hype by the perceived scarcity of the resource: "hey, if these consoles are so popular I gotta get me some" (which counts as false advertizing)
Monopolists need to be fined or broken up!
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
This Bloomberg article also gives the numbers for PS3 and 360s in June. 405,500 and 219,800, respectively. Which is more interesting to me. The way people talk about the hard times the PS3 is having, I was surprised that it is outselling the Xbox.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
Nope. Real devil is XBOX 360 - they sold exact 666 units.
are willing to camp out overnight at Wal-Mart or BestBuy based on word that they *might* be getting some consoles in.
I can understand a shortage over the holiday season when the console was first introduced, but this is ridiculous. Doesn't Nintendo have people doing capacity planning and supply chain management and things like that?
Hi, Grandpa! What are you doing on Slashdot?
Fucking exclusively I might add.
Which is annoying because its (Fatal Frame) actually how I conned her into a PS3.... Damn you interwebs and your faulty informations!
Of course it's selling like hotcakes. It's the "hip" video games system to own for non-gamers. Which is cool. Nintendo is brilliant for turning their backs on the gamers that supported them for decades and designing games for grandma. They're also brilliant for releasing a "next gen" console with last gen hardware specs for 250. Means they make raw profit on every machine sold. And it works great because grandma and grandpa have no clue about how graphics or processing power can improve their gaming experience. Real question is, what's the software attachment rate amongst the consoles? Hint: the wii is last in that regard. The thing is casual gamers are....casual. They buy one maybe two games a year. Hell, even of the more regular gamers I know, they have wii's for two games only. Mario and Smash. After that, there's nothing of interest to them. Grandpa buys a wii, gets wiifit, plays for a month and the wii collects dust after that. So, for third party developers, it's still better to make titles for a PS3 or 360. Much more likely to sell there. But if that's what makes Nintendo profits, great for them! Bravo.
Those sales are impressive, but at the bottom of the page it points out that the Nintendo DS has has sold double that.
Regardless, the most interesting thing is that the Wii is doing so well despite Sony and MS also doing very well. Wii's share is probably, lets say, 90% new gaming market? Most of their guys weren't going to buy a PS3/360 anyway - certainly that tallys with my experience.
Early on, I was amused when Microsoft would tease the public about its next big thing. The company would describe the product as the coolest thing ever, and the public and the media would lap it up like kittens discovering cream. Microsoft was pretty good at controlling the media, controlling public relations--controlling the public itself. It was the company's heyday.
That game is over. Microsoft is no longer the cute high-school debutante adored by all the boys. Microsoft has turned middle-aged and can't face reality. It's in denial. And it's becoming obvious to everyone, considering the direction in which the company is headed, that the next step in its evolution will be the corporate equivalent of a Spandex granny. It won't be pretty.
Even Bill Gates's boyish charms have worn thin. He still has the well-timed, out-of-the-blue smile, often appearing for no apparent reason. He still has the brain power that we all must respect. And, of course, he has the money. But he is trending more toward John D. Rockefeller in his waning years. His nemesis, Steve Jobs, will supplant him as an icon if not as the rich kid. Jobs will fail, too, once Bill is out of the picture, as Steve will have nobody to chide and needle.
The public needs a leader for an industry now supporting billions of computers, but Microsoft is not that leader. It's a gigantic and often grotesque follower. This despite the fact that it has the most potential as a leader--if someone there can actually lead.
The downturn began when AOL made a fuss over Microsoft's attempt to put the MSN link on the start-up page of Windows and thus leave AOL in the lurch. AOL screamed bloody murder. Exactly what right did AOL have to assert itself like this on someone else's property? In the end, Microsoft relented and put an AOL link on the installation of Windows. Was Microsoft paid the kind of money Dell was paid to promote AOL ($40 per installation, I am told)? I doubt it. All I know is that Microsoft should have told AOL to shove off and do its own operating system.
Historically, Microsoft has acted tough, intimidated the weak, then knuckled under to anyone who would stand up to it. In the 1980s, the company was notorious for keeping Nixonian lists regarding journalists on a whiteboard showing which were "Okay," "Sketchy," or "Needs work." Some believed that those in the last category would be the target of the company in an effort to get them fired.
Nice try. I myself was on a Microsoft blacklist for some totally unknown reason and was not allowed any information about an early version of Windows, apparently because I was considered uncooperative. I only found out about this because of documents unearthed during the discovery process of the Comes v. Microsoft lawsuit in Iowa. Who knew? In fact, it made no difference in my approach. And I didn't get fired, in case you haven't noticed. I should note that threats from the company did manage to get me removed as a licensed columnist in PC Magazine Italy.
In short, Microsoft has been a dirty player over the years, and this reputation has finally caught up with it. Playing dirty isn't necessarily ineffective or a bad idea. The point is that the effort should have been spent on making a better product rather than discrediting critics.
This has been the problem ever since Windows 98, when Microsoft probably peaked as the company to be feared. After that it got arrogant and sloppy and dropped the ball. With Windows 98 and then the blockbuster follow-up Windows 2000, the company was on a roll with stunning advancements. XP is just a pretty Windows 2000. Vista is essentially the old hooker with a bad facelift and too much makeup. She also can't remember her customers.
Microsoft cannot seem to arrive at this self-realization, and, instead, hopes to be the debutante forever. The situation is beginning to take on the feeling of a Tales from the Crypt story--both sad and creepy. So along comes Windows 7 to save the day.
Let's hope the company doesn't actually call it Windows 7
Shouldn't the title be "Wii Are the New US Console Leaders"?
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
Personally I've always thought of the Wii as more of a gimmick and that this was all a fad, but after 10 million units sold it's still going strong. So that shows what I know.
Still, I wonder if the Wii's lifecycle will be as long as the N64 and SNES. My personal experience is that my family and I really enjoyed the wii for the first few months, but now we find that we rarely play it. I tend to prefer my 360, and my daughter has gravitated to PC-based games like Webkinz and Nick Arcade. Also, while I think that Nintendo's first party titles are always pretty good, the 3rd party signal-to-noise ratio is getting worse and worse. Nintendo's E3 performance was roundly considered to be the worst of the big three -- even if you come at it from a non-hardcore perspective, they didn't outline as many exciting titles as in previous years.
So what do you guys think? Is the Wii popularity going to stay strong over the next three years, or is there going to be a drop off?
I'd rather play board games than video games, but the Wii Fit makes one of these tempting anyhow.
Since when are these things mutually exclusive? You can have both, play both, and enjoy both. There are even video games based on board games and board games based on video games. Computer solitaire is popular because there are many options and rulesets that expand the games for veteran players; and for casual players, you don't have to find your deck of cards or shuffle them or pick them up, it's pretty much all automatic. You can even minimize the window and walk away a lot more easily and effectively than asking everyone to mind those cards on the table. Online board games let you find a partner right away, which allows you more opportunities to enjoy your favorite games. When board games start coming out on paper that uses electronic ink, the distinction between video games and board games will pretty much disappear.
Twinstiq, game news
It's affordable (only one car payment instead of two for the competition) and it's fun -- that is, the games are fun not just pretty.
I'm getting tired of pretty first person shooters that are all about the graphics where gameplay is clearly an afterthought.
After the poor show at E3, I'm starting to doubt whether Nintendo can hold on to its lead for much longer. They like to think that it's the casual games selling Wiis, but the AAA titles are what the hardcore gamers want - and it's the hardcore gamers who'll decide the outcome of the console wars. The initial batch of AAA titles was pretty strong (Zelda, Mario, and SSBB, for instance), but the thing is, it takes Nintendo quite some time to churn these out - usually a few years. There's always the chance that by then, they could simply have run out of steam. The novelty hasn't worn off yet, it appears, but the Wii isn't infallible, like Reggie seems to think - if Nintendo aren't careful, their beloved Wii may indeed turn out to be just another fad. I doubt many hardcore gamers would be satisfied with a Wii alone - for games with true substance as opposed to novelty, most will go for either the PS3 or 360 in addtion to a Wii.
666,000
omg Nintendo is teh beast!
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
(Emphasis Added)
This is solid proof that Nintendo are sponsored by the devil.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
what a free market is about.
Don't buy it if you don't want it. Simple as that. This is a "want," not a "need."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
the package itself is small and convenient, the controllers are easy as hell to figure out and the games are just fun to play. Spent yesterday night drinking with friends and turned on the Wii and everybody is jumping on the balance board skiing, having a hell of a time laughing it up.. I love the thing even if the there aren't all sorts of fancy FPS type games for it.
of coruse youd love a wii fit u r a fat slashdot fuck
Seriously, i don't understand why the wii is even considered current-gen. It's just a fucking gamecube with a fucking wiimote.
Well. It cant be hard for a computer to be better at it than Bush. And the Japanese practically run the place anyways. Good on you Wii!
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
...and yet, third party developers insist that all Wii owners are 4 year old girls, so they shove games like "Party Chef" down our throats and then complain when no one buys that garbage. Just look at what Electronic Arts has done with their "All Play" series. NCAA football 09 is an absolute abomination with no online play, phony stadiums, and graphics so bad, they make the PS2 version look like the 360! Tecmo Bowl has more advanced gameplay!
Software developers just don't get it... they don't get what casual gaming is about... it's not about kiddie games... it's about games that you don't need to spend weeks of your life playing to get anywhere... that doesn't mean that the games should be lame... quite the opposite, since we play less often, we want our games to be more meaningful and rewarding.
Nintendo gets it... that's why their games sell... everyone else? Not so much!
This time they did it with good product and beat out the competition, unlike the underhanded and illegal tricks they used to topple Atari back in the old days.
I still don't like them a bit due to the past however.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Does that mean the Wii is the Anti-Christ? I can't believe I thought of that... *hits himself*
Look at your /. ID, take the first number and subtract the second to obtain 6, add the third and forth to obtain 6, cross out the fifth to obtain another 6, go fuck yourself for being so incredibly stupid.
Why mod this guy down, so I have to click to see the post? It was at least a decent line of thought: if they can't get serious gamers, they may not survive the long haul (remember Nintendo has had it's struggles - it's the Mac of the gaming industry). Other have countered and been "Insightful", so why can't this guy at least be "interesting"? Remember, as a moderator you are to work to get the flow of the discussion going along nicely. Keep out the truely dumbass (be very careful with this), mod down a troll, and mod up insightful/funny/interesting, no matter what you think of the person (and maybe even if you don't agree). Posting AC, since the guy i am directly referencing probably still has mod points.
The Wii is the leader in sales only if you don't count the PS2, which is still selling well every month.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
There is a Wii emulator out already. I submitted a story last week, but as usual....
http://www.dolphin-emu.com/
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
After all the Nintendo Wii appeals to all ages. In fact last December I got my grandmother who is in her 70's to play Wii Sports against my 5 year old neiphew and she beat him badly in Wii Baseball. I hate to idmit it but she would have beat me badly it took me over 20 swings for me to hit the ball in that game when I first played, while she hit a homerun on the second swing. This makes me both happy and sad because my grandma can finally beat me and almost anyone I know at this game.
Lets just hope more and more software would start selling on the system so that third parties would make money out of it, and I just don't mean casual games but also core games.
I don't have the console as I haven't seen a single exclusive to bother. I'm saying actually that a lot of the new games I dislike on consoles, though I wouldn't mind them on a desktop.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Custom hacked firmware that allows backups and homebrew to boot now? No mod-chip required.
Sources: Engadget
DCEmu
So this here may have caused an influx of sales.
This states the # of Wii consoles bought. Not the amount that were returned or were played for a week and never touched again. I bought my Wii about 6 months ago and have only played it a few times. Its just a novelty where my 360 is a gaming machine. There are no games for it that are fun except sports IMHO. The sensor is not even good enough to give good enough game play for what you would think.. I'm talking speed detection: theres only Fast - Medium - Slow. Take Wii-Boxing for example - wouldn't you expect hitting harder (thus getting a better workout) would give you better chance at knocking him out? But it doesn't do anything different from just laying lazily on couch and barely moving. The one person I know who plays it more than once a month just uses a gamecube controller cause its no different. People buy the Wii for the cheap price and novelty. People buy 360 and PS3 for games.
I didn't know Down's Syndrome was so widespread in the USA. It's really a shame.
Just because someone sells a lot of something doesn't mean it's good. Look at most popular pop music today...or music in general. People just 'want' to buy 'something'. Congrats to Nintendo for selling a pretty shallow system. I own one. I like it, but its games and experience are inferior to the 360 IMO. In terms of quality, my 360 library is twice as large as my Wii's (yes, I do have duds for the 360 also...GoW one of them)
The Wii doing well reminds me of how the C64 came into the game with vastly inferior hardware that "anyone could use" at a lower price point. I believe they sold more than any other machine at that time (maybe even now).
Have a few fun games, make it easy enough to use, make it cheap enough and people will buy it. Those old school Tiger LED games like "soccer" and whatever else where you can't tell what's going on and random crap lights up would be a huge seller if any of the games were actually playable.
Customer walks into the store and see this: Wii: $250 Xbox360: $279 $349 and $449 PS3: $399 and up The Wii makes economic sense. A casual games who knows nothing about the hardware only see price. I purchased a Wii last year and sold it 3 months later. I am a hardcore gamer and I want graphics and certian titles that arent found on the Wii. So I bought the Xbox 360 elite go big holiday bundle with Fornza 2 and Marvel Alliance.
Games do that, *particularly* online ones, and suddenly you have rather drastic balance issues. A lot of FPS is dumbed pretty down (auto-aim like crazy) for the consoles, due to the inaccuracy of the control pads, and it would just be ludicrously easy if someone had a correctly behaved mouse doing the aiming. If they castrated the mouselook to be fair, it would be pointless too.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
nothing is stopping you from importing from EU.
Other than the fact that Wii (NTSC U/C) consoles aren't sold in EU? Unlike PLAYSTATION 3, Wii games are region locked.
While Nintendo has a "monopoly" on manufacturing wii's, its makes as much sense to call it a monopoly as it would to call Apple a monopoly for being the only one making Macs
Just about every commodity PC maker makes PCs that are source-compatible with Mac OS X applications through a toolkit called GNUstep, an LGPL reimplementation of the OpenStep API that Apple now calls Cocoa. On the other hand, I haven't read about any commodity set-top video game player that allows video game developers to just recompile their Wii titles and make some minor fixups.
All evidence is that Nintendo is the only game manufacturer unwilling to sell hardware at a loss.
Why are Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo the only game manufacturers? Why isn't there a "commodity console"?
They should seriously port Doom to the Wii.
I see two problems with putting Doom and Doom II in WiiWare:
First, there would be a file name extension conflict. Doom stores its data in archives called WAD, while Wii channels also store their data in archives called WAD, with a completely different format. That might be easily solved: rename the Doom archives to .iwad.
More importantly, Doom and Doom II are rated M. There aren't any M games in Virtual Console (NTSC U/C), and I don't think there are any in WiiWare either, but I could be mistaken.
From what I've read, the main differences between the Wii and PS3/Xbox360 versions are that there is no internect connectivity nor any downloadable songs that you can purchase.
The Wii has an 0.5 GB drive, of which half appears reserved for the system software. Even Wii-compatible memory cards can't be more than 2 GB because there's no evidence that SDHC (>= 4 GB) memory cards work in a Wii. Compare this to the 20 GB drive of the Xbox 360 and the 40 GB drive of the PLAYSTATION 3.
All of these consoles have USB ports, what's stopping them from implementing support for keyboard/mouse?
Because unlike PC games, console games tend to support four players on a sufficiently large monitor, either through split screen (Mario Kart, Goldeneye) or through a camera that shows all the players (Bomberman, Smash Bros.). You'd have to plug in a lot of USB hubs to fit four keyboards and four mice on one console.
If they made Starcraft II for consoles, I'd rather buy those versions than a PC/Mac version
Even if the versions for Windows and Mac OS X have more thorough support for user-created elements?
Look, everyone is complaining about Nintendo like they did Xbox during the last generation. I knew they would come out on top for two reasons, one the low price point, and two the appeal across generations. I work at Target and several old people - seniors - are buying Wiis. WiiFits, and other games like the Wii Play. They say their grandkids have them and they played with them enjoy it and want it for themselves and their families. Nintendo really did invent something amazing here, even if the shovelware is starting to pile up....
Super Smash Bros Brawl can save and read custom levels from the SD card, so I don't think that there is a technical reason why Rock Band couldn't do the same for downloaded songs.
You're supposed to share copies of custom Brawl stages on the Internet. You're not supposed to do the same for downloaded Rock Band songs. That's one of the reasons that you can't copy the save file of a WFC game to an SD card.
Dam all you bastards buying them out every time I try to get one!
I got mine on ebay..there's a lot left
And it's because of this that Capcom ported Dead Rising 1 to Wii instead of working on Dead Rising 2. Meaning we are being punished with a minimum of a 2 year delay cause of casual gamers. I can never forgive the Wii for this as Dead Rising is my favorite game of all time
Of the new Wii/Gamecube emulator are available here:
http://www.nyleveia.com/nevada/release/
If you are on Windows, and don't want to compile source code.....
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Well the alternative to the closed consoles is a PC running windows
The problem with PC gaming is cost: Not enough games designed for a PC running Windows will allow two to four players to connect controllers and play on a single PC + TV.
The thing is the closed nature of consoles actually works well for games.
Yeah, if you like to play all vanilla all the time. My cousin, on the other hand, prefers to experiment with modded games sometimes. The problem with console gaming is the overall lack of support for user-created elements. There are a few console games designed to be modded, such as RPG Maker 2, but not nearly to the extent as on Windows.
The Wii can be played and enjoyed by anyone. I took the console to my parents and had my 80-year-old dad enjoy bowling and golf, and even my technophobic husband enjoys some of the games and sports. Of course, the "hard core" gamers in our family still remind us of the power of their Xbox 360s, but they still seem to be enjoying Prince of Persia, Madden, and Zelda on the Wii. I don't have time to sit for hours trying to get those delicate thumb controls perfect. I have a life. With the Wii I can enjoy the strategy of the game more because the controller is less frustrating. It is selling because there is something anyone can play.
My wife played bowling at a party and had to have one. We finally found one on the shelf and bought it with an extra controller. That was about a year ago. Still have not found anything else worth buying on it and we rarely turn it on now.
This last dec I bought a gamecube (brand new at Target, which was the last one they had)! I'm always a few consoles behind. It saves me money that way. Also, by the time I do buy a console that's been around for several years, I have a huge selection of titles to buy at discount prices. I'm thinking I'll get my WII around 2011 or so. :) Next, I'm buying a PS2! Oh, and I finally got myself a gameboy advance about a month ago!
Kids these days. While your PC was definitely top of the line for 1991, the vast majority of PCs out there were still running MS-DOS on 286s and 386s. Your perception is therefore a bit skewed in saying that most PCs could display 1024*768 AND 256 colors at that time. I have an IBM PS/2 server from roughly the same era that could display one or the other on Windows and OS/2, but certainly not both! Only a top-of-the-line monitor and top-of-the-line video card would do that in Windows 3.0, which I presume you had.
You also are either a latecomer to video games or (more likely) too young to remember video games from the late 70s / early 80s. I'll illustrate:
The Atari 2600 came out in 1977. The original IBM PC came out in 1981. PCs were the absolute LAUGHING STOCK for video games at the time with their (at best) CGA graphics. The Atari 2600, even with its measly 128 bytes (yes bytes) of RAM, had no problems displaying far more colors than any PC until the mid- to late-1980s. By that point in time, the NES came out, and everyone was playing that. It made far more sense to spend $200 to $250 for an Atari 2600 or NES than it did to spend the (obviously) thousands that you had to spend on your PC at the time.
PC games did not really become mainstream until the late 80s at the earliest. Prior to that, nearly everyone was playing on their Atari, NES, Commodore 64, Colecovision, Apple ][, Intellivision, Pong, etc. Yes some of those are technically computers, but you (and others in this thread) seem more focused on PCs, as in x86s or IBM-compatibles.
Now if you (and others) had stated computers instead of PCs, then perhaps your points would have more merit.