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Wii 2 Delay Is Hurting Nintendo
BanjoTed writes "Michael Pachter's ongoing spat with Nintendo regarding the Wii 2 is well documented. Pachter is sure it's coming, Nintendo says it's not. Now the analyst has gone one further by claiming that the declining sales of the Wii documented in the platform holder's recent financial statements will only get worse unless it speeds up attempts to get its successor to market. He said, 'The reason for this is clear: the software being created is just not interesting enough or compelling enough to drive Wii owners to buy more than two [games] per year, and most of those purchases are first party software. We can blame the third party publishers for making shovelware, or for misjudging the Wii market, but the simple fact is that the publishers have to develop completely separate games for the Wii because its CPU is not powerful.'"
Who is Michael Pachter and why is anyone supposed to care what he thinks?
Calling Michael Pachter an analyst is akin to calling your local butcher a surgeon. This so called analyst has a long history of ridiculous claims.
FYI, Current Weekly sales of the Wii are almost equal to the combined totals of the ps3 and xbox 360 and they still make money on the hardware. While sure their sales are declining somewhat it probably has more to do with market saturation than anything else. I am sure another version is coming some day but at this point I would think the still rather good sales would be seriously undermined if they released information on a replacement version.
So what if it sucks? it's cheap to produce and sells acceptably well. While Sony and Microsoft lost a fortune with their super-duper-powerful machines, Nintendo is profitable all the way. IT PRINTS MONEY!
Circumcision is child abuse.
And yet it's the best selling console of this generation. Fancy that...
The Wii is like that Monopoly or Life set everyone has that they pull out at family/friends get-togethers and holidays, but doesn't see much use otherwise.
At the moment Nintendo's problem is a mere reduction in profit.
Pachter's advice is to join the ranks of the PS3/Xbox360 but the makers of those consoles have struggled to turn any profit in the relevant sections of their company.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I mean his proposed strategy for Nintendo to leave their pretty much uncontested "niche" market to compete in a market that already has been split up between two heavy-weight contestants, who are willing to ultimately lose money just to increase their market share further, is pure genius.
[/sarcasm]
Sells acceptably well? Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if sales of the Wii are declining because everyone has one. I know I would have bought one ages ago if I could figure out how to make it work with one of my computers.
Look - almost one in ten people in Japan own a Wii. One in thirty people in the Americas own one, and this is including South American countries that don't have nearly as much wealth as the United States. I would argue that everyone who wants a Wii has one at this point, and that's why sales are dropping off - not due to lack of interest so much as a lack of people to sell to.
Now Nintendo has basically two options; either drop the price even further, which will probably not do all that much because $200 is an entirely reasonable price point, or ramp up their cloning efforts and create more people to buy Wiis.
I don't know if you've been paying attention for the past few years, but Nintendo has been making money hand over fist since the Wii was released. Unlike Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo doesn't use their console as a loss leader, they make a ton of cash with each sale, and make money on the games as well. This 'analyst' hasn't analyzed very well.
Qxe4
but the simple fact is that the publishers have to develop completely separate games for the Wii because its CPU is not powerful.
When I think of Nintendo, I think of their tier 1 titles. That's not to say there aren't any good 3rd party titles, but Zelda, Mario, Metriod... These games are a driving force which the big-N uses to drive sales. And the strategy has worked for them for the past 25 years. Now, who is Nintendo marketing for? The answer is simple:
Everyone. Let me do a little hypothetical for you:
Think of your favorite game on an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Got that game in your head? Now, imagine you were playing that game at Thanksgiving time in front of your whole family, including your Grandma. 9 games out of 10, I'm thinking that at best your grandma will simply not understand, or at worst be offended.
Now do the same thing with the Wii. 9 times out of 10, it's a game you and everybody you know can at least appreciate, if not be interested in.
That, and the revolutionary easy to use controls (which are now being emulated), make the Wii a killer social platform focused on games and having fun. That's why it's been a big success.
And the idea that "The CPU is too slow" is the reason for the Wii not making yet-another-year-of-record-sales... That doesn't make sense. As we all know, Super Mario Brothers (the original one for the NES) is fun despite having ugly graphics. It's not how the game looks, it's how the game _plays_.
--Pathway
The money in gaming consoles is typically in the licensing fees attached to each disc sold. The biggest problem that Nintendo faces is that there is now a great deal of either inexpensive, "oldies but goodies", or used games in the Wii market. Just look at it this way. People are still buying PS2 games like they're the hottest thing out there. Publishers are still producing PS2 games as well. The reason is, market saturation.
Head to your local GameStop, the used game section is incredibly active for PS2, yet the PS3 selection is piss poor in comparison.
Nintendo has managed to achieve tremendous market proliferation and has placed a Wii in more houses than anyone would have ever imagined. A new Wii, which costs a bunch more money may sell well to many people, but in reality, it won't achieve the same levels as Wii. Nintendo knows this. They need to focus on making the current console more attractive. A simple external storage device for downloadable games would be the next real logical step for them.
Downloadable games are really the way to go for them. They already do quite well selling old games (and a few new) through their online store, but there are no new and fancy games for the console out there. The console vendors are desperate for solutions through downloadable content since they can full control over how the game is resold after the fact. If they make the games less expensive by selling them online, they can close the "used game" hole which is hurting them.
With an external harddrive/network adapter combination device (wired network should have been standard to start), they could then run a HUGE marketing campaign to get people to start buying the games online instead of in the stores. It would increase margins across the board for everyone. Additionally, to get past the typical nervous online consumers issue (meaning people not liking using credit cards online), they could sell a package from a game at a store like GameStop with a serial number to allow them to download the game to their Wii.
The important thing they must do though is to lock the store to a user instead of a console. This way if a device breaks down, the consumer would be able to transfer their purchases to the new unit.
So, a Wii 2 would do nothing more than introduce new hardware which they would have to try and get into everyone's homes where there is still so much more to be done with the Wii before it's "old and crappy".
Sells acceptably well? Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if sales of the Wii are declining because everyone has one.
Interesting thought, just for comparison I did some research: it seems the PS2 has sold around twice as many as the Wii. I am not sure when the PS2 sales started slowing down, but there is definitely room for more Wii sales.
Qxe4
I know I would have bought one ages ago if I could figure out how to make it work with one of my computers.
Google "Wii vga adapter", there are several. You'll need to have a tv at your disposal somewhere though to be able to switch the Wii to use 480p output. As for otherwise interacting with your computers, I've had tons of fun with cwiid, I'm sure similiar programs exist for Windows as well if you are so inclined.
Nintendo doesn't have to pull anything out of their hat, they just have to keep the ball rolling. Rather than just vying for a share in the existing gamer market they expanded the market. The wii is very family friendly and many non gamers have bought the system (such as my mother in law). The other companies haven't even seriously entered the "alternative" or "light" gamer market. Yes they have caught up in the gimmicky controller department, and are ahead in graphics and have the developers behind them to create great games, but those games are primarily targeted at the classic gamer.
I think at this point Nintendo releasing a new system would be premature. Yes they have traditionally release a new system every 5 years (nes '86, snes '91, 64 '96, GC '01, Wii '06) so if they followed that trend a new system would be out for 2011, but this system has sold better than any previous system to date. Even if sales are waning it is still selling strong compared to historical sales of game systems.
If Nintendo releases something in the next year I predict it will only be an incremental step (HD output, maybe better media support for music and videos) quite similar to DSi or DSi XL. An entirely new console is still a ways off.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
Wii sports is sold separately from the console in Japan, which did not prevent it from selling 3.7 million copies. It makes this game the 22nd in the all-time best sales list, which is still a good result.
You could actually look it up, and you would see that the Wii is still doing better at this point then the PS2 was doing this many weeks after launch.
Spooooon!!!!!
Fanboys of $favorite_company have been predicting the demise of $rival_company for the last $num_years years and have new "theories" about how that downfall will come about, along with mountains of "evidence" and "careful thought" to back up their ideas. They also claim they're not wrong like they were last time.
Seriously, why is this news? A guy is wrong, so he makes more claims, and we're supposed to pay attention to these new claims why?
I don't know if you've thought about it (clearly you haven't) but Nintendo is screwed now. What trick will they pull out of their hat now? Sony and Microsoft have the (gimmicky, as it was in the Wii) motion control. They have the developers. They have the hardware. Where do you think that leaves Nintendo in 5 years?
But I'm sure you disagree, Nintendo has its fans apparently. I guess the only way we'll know is in 5 years time. I'll come back here to gloat when Nintendo is the Palm of 2015 looking for someone to buy them.
Every 5 or so years somebody predicts Nintendo's death in 5 or so years.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Even assuming he's right about the numbers - and that's a big ass-u-mtpion - his assertion that it's because new games aren't compelling is just that: an assertion.
He hasn't considered the alternative: that the Wii has so many good pick-up-and-play games with compelling gameplay that owners are actually happy re-playing what they already own, rather than feeling inadequate if they don't upgrade to MurderSportsStealthSim 14.
Since that's the entire raison d'être of the Wii, and the reason why it's destroying the 360 and PS3 in hardware sales, who am I going to believe? Nintendo from their platinum clad fortress inside a moat of liquid gold, or some pissant intertubes nobody who's been wrong about every other Goddamn thing he's ever said?
By the way, do you know what a rhetorical question is?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
And what percentage of owners were affected by these glitches?
MS told people to live with the RROD for months, Sony recently tried to take the "other OS" option away from 100% of users. As far as problems go, the Nintendo Wii has had the least of this generation.
If you bothered to read the bit of my post you quoted, I said the need was "minimal" which means it is uncommon, not non-existent.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Nintendo has Shigeru Miyamoto... Everything he touches is guaranteed money. I'm not a fanboy, I'm just stating the facts: The man is extremely competent and reliable at what he does. Sony and Microsoft, on the other hand, have huge losses and hardware defects - which, believe it or not, are much worse for your reputation than the lack of good graphics, as good graphics do not really make a good game, but you can't play if your GPU has melted your console - and the inability to innovate, having resorted to copying what Nintendo already had. Nintendo has the DS, a champion of sales. Nintendo DIDN'T have the third party developers to begin with (in this generation), and many of them regretted it when they saw which side the wind was blowing.
It seems to me that many who call themselves "gamers" overestimate their importance. It's people who matter, salary-earning individuals, and most people are "casual" gamers. Why should NIntendo care about you? They're making money. They're successful. They're happy. They're a business, not a charity for FPS and RPG lovers.
And the fact that most wii owners have very low attach rates for games also hurts the prospects for the wii2.
According to Nintendo's own numbers (released yesterday), this is simply not true. The worldwide software to hardware ratio is 7.68 to 1, in the US it's 8.9 to 1. Last I checked that was ahead of the PS3 and only a little bit behind the 360. One might could make an argument that a few of those are 3rd party titles, but as far as general software sales are concerned, Nintendo has no need for concern.