Yeah but Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker didn't just came out - they came out several years ago, closer to the launch of the GameCube (2002, 2003?)... New games in both series are about to be released. If those are lackluster, then you mightbe fair saying that the franchise haven't been good in a long, long time... but 4 star games following 5 star games is not hard times.
"On the NES, SNES and N64 Mario and Zelda games where awesome, however that time is long long ago."
There has only been one Zelda game and one Mario game since then. One game is not "long long ago".
Windwaker was good, though not quite up to the standard of the N64 games. I never played Mario Sunshine, so I can't comment on it as a follow up to Mario World (or was it called Mario 64, I forget?).
New SMB, however, was great fun! It's a retro-esque game, though, deliberately designed to be a succesor to the NES/SNES games... you can't really expect it to be a worthy follow up to Mario World/Mario 64/whatever it was called.
You sure about this? I've never heard anyone else say this, nor have I experienced any difference myself. The only thing I notice is the Wavebird's lack of rumble.
Note that I didn't say common, or where you live. I said the majority, and that to be successful, a product like this needs to appeal to not just the affluent.
While I agree that price may be a factor, it's really all speculation until the PS3 is released. Sony has won this battle two gens in a row, a feat only matched by Nintendo. And when Nintendo did it, the game market was pretty small and focused. Now there are plenty of young adults with a more substantial income who may be willing to blindly shell out the money for a PS3,
Indeed, it is speculation. However, I think my comment that "The price WILL be a factor. How much of one remains to be seen." is quite a bit less speculatory than the above.
It's a simple matter of economics: "Demand is the quantity of a good that consumers are not only willing to purchase but also have the capacity to buy at the given price per unit of time." Capacity means the funds, and the units available.
As I said, price will be a factor. I think it's safe to say that the PS3 will move units more slowly (after the initial sell out) than the PS2 did at a 40% lower price point (comparing the PS2 to the Core PS3). How much slower they will move, remains to be seen. It could be a little, it could be a lot. We'll find out soon enough.
Look at how many 16yr olds get a brand spanking new car when they turn 16. Look how many of them get a Lexus or Acura.
This is not the majority though. 100+ million playstation 2s were sold. That level of sales means even people who take the bus to work have them, not just well-off people with nice cars.
The price WILL be a factor. How much of one remains to be seen.
Meaning - if you didn't already want a PS3, would you buy it for this? I doubt it.
It's a value-add, sure. But if you are buying a PS3 to play PS2 games (or a PS2 to play PS1 games), you are foolish with your money.
The primary reason to buy a PS3 is because you want to play PS3 games. And that's totally legitimate! It just irks me how people hold up the fact that it can play PS2 games as evidence to why it will sell. No. It will sell because of the PS3 games, and the Sony brand. The backwards compatibility will help push those who were going to buy it anyway to think they made a good choice, but it won't woo a statsitically signficant number of people that hadn't planned on getting it anyway.
My casual gamer friends are the kind of casual gamers that like party games and they tend to like games with non-standard controllers anyway, so they seem excited about the Wii. Several of them got DS Lites, which has probably helped prime them up a bit.
Sure, this is convienent, but is it a selling point? Meaning - if you didn't already want a PS3, would you buy it for this? I doubt it.
I just see people tout the ability to play PS2 games right up there with HD and better graphics, etc... I don't see it as anywhere near as big a selling point as those things.
True, but those are also the people who bought the 360 for ebay prices, pre-ordered, etc. Serious gamers. Assumming the 360 ever reaches PS2-like sales numbers, you will see the %age of people who have Live Gold fall quite a bit.
Nintendo still has the kiddy image. While that doesn't matter to a slashdotter, it matters to others. The PS3 will be seen as the more mature console and will thus appeal to the teen/early 20s crowd.
This is true. However, there are many people who buy games who are older than this. Joystiq recently ran a story that said that 84% of gamers are over 18, for example.
I know that most of my friends (late 20s to mid-30s) like Nintendo, and look forward to the Wii. A lot of them (including me) have DSes, and chose them because of more casual games like Animal Crossing, Nintendogs (though I am not a big fan), Brain Training, Tetris, etc. They feel like the Wii will basically give them a similar experience, but in the living room.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of people in my demographic play with their spouses and/or girlfriends... I got a DS for both me and my girlfriend so we could play together. She doesn't really like violent games like GTA or whatnot. So the fact that the PS3 or PSP has more of those kind of games is not a selling point. What game doe we play the most together? On PC, Civilization 4. On consoles (I have all consoles from the last gen), Mario Kart Double Dash. On DS, it's Mario Kart DS. I'm sure there are a lot of couples out there who mirror this.
Now, I don't think Nintendo is going to win this generation... or any again. But teh niche they have carved for themselves is bigger than just kids. It's kids/family, women gamers, couples, older gamers, etc.
That said, i am not buying a Wii until I get to play one. It seems like a really bad idea to play something wth a novel new control scheme until you have tried it out - it could suck! If it works well though, I will get one when it comes out.
I'm over ten and I don't want HD (well, I'd want it if it was free...). In fact, most people I know don't yet have HD. In 5 years, HD will probably be way more common but for now, it's fairly rare. I can't see replacing my TV for a few more years, it still works fine.
Also, I think that there is a range of people older than 20 who also enjoy Nintendo franchises, be it for casual gaming, nostalgic, or whatever reasons. I know many people in their late 20s who love Nintendo products. Far more of my peer group owns DSes than PSPs, for example.
It has one major hardware advanatge which is the Blu-Ray player.
This is only an advantage to people who have HDTVs and aren't going to also have a standalone movie player. Yes, it does mean you can have big games without changing discs, but I wouldn't call that a system-selling advantage.
As for price, it's only $100 more than the 360 yet when you factor in Live costs is actually only $50 more - the first year.
I doubt most people get Live Gold or whatever it's called. I never got Live for my Xbox 1. Not everyone has time to get good enough at Halo to even bother trying to compete online... in fact, I would say most people probably don't (though I have no stats to back that up). If I got a 360, I doubt I'd get Live Gold, so I would have no extra expense.
Plus is has a huge back catalog
I'll never understand this arguement... I already have a PS2, it plays my PS2 games fine. How is this a selling point for the PS3 except for to the 3 people who never bought a PS2?
As always, in the end the games for a system matter most. If the PS3 can deliver enough compelling games then people will buy the system despite the high price
Here I agree with you, completely. Games are #1. The PS3 line-up seems strong, I'm sure it will do well.
My experience is totally different. I don't know a single person who owns a Xbox 360. I've never seen one outside of a store. Most of my friends are excited about the Wii... even friends who don't generally even buy consoles are kind of interested in it.
However, most of my friends are more casual gamers or non-gamers. You may know more hardcore gamers. I only really have 1-2 friends who would qualify as hardcore... and one of those is a Nintendo FANATIC. Like, scarily so.
I hated how you could barely buy any city improvements till near last end of the game.
By City Rushing, I meant the tactic of quickly building 200 1-2 population cities. In previous Civ games, this was an almost unbeatable tactic (vs the AI, anyway). The city maintenance concept (as opposed to corruption), plus culture (which was in 3 but didnt work as well) makes this pretty much impossible in 4 - the emphasis is on a smaller number of awesome cities that you really develop, not a million small ones. This is more fun too, because you don't have to micromanage all those cities in the end game.
I hated how you could barely buy any city improvements till near last end of the game. You had to kill off population in almost every form of government except democracies with capitalism.
I think this is balanced by the fact that settlers and workers don't use up population when you build them (as in all the previous games)... also i think universal sufferage is the civic that allows using gold to finish production. This is emabled with democracy, which shouldn't be discovered anywhere near the end of the game. Also, if you focus on building the pyramids, you can have access to this very early in the game.
The civics are a big improvement on the older Civs - instead of being one specific government type, you get to choose between a combination of 5 different civics.
I guess my big dislike of Civ4 was that if you've played, Civ 1, Civ2, Civ3, Alpha Cent, SimCity 1,2,3&4, and MOO2&3. Well Civ4 seemed like it wasn't adding any thing new except refining things so people that haven't been Civ fans could play and "get into" the game.
Except for totally redone (and vastly improved) diplomacy, great people, religion (which has a huge effect on gameplay,
Civ IV is vastly different than the previous Civ games... religion, improved culture, great people, no corruption, vastly more flexible diplomacy, the city maintence which eliminates "city rushing"... lots more cultures and increased differences in the cultures' abilities and units... revised seige unit rules...
Try Civ IV, it's great. Warlords expansion makes it even better.
yeah, but only people that read gaming blogs will see it. i think the original poster was saying they need to step up their marketing to non-hardcore gamers
"Maybe, but I doubt it. Since 1986 I have accumulated a collection of nearly 1000 cd's. Many of them are out of print, and I don't forsee them becoming available on a new format. And even if everything I listen to is to be released on DVD, there is no way in HELL that I will buy them all over again. I'm probably not alone in feeling this way."
Why do you NEED to buy them again? Rip them to your media center/computer/etc.
I have way more than 1000 CDs, and I am slowly doing just that... and it's great, I am listening to stuff I haven't heard in 10 years, purely because it's buried in my stacks and stacks of CDs, or it's one good song on an album that I didn't feel like digging out in it's physical form...
That's what is replacing the CD, not some new DVD-Audio format.
While the DVD-Audio thing will not be a hit, I think what the poster was getting at is that people don't use CDs much anymore... Most people I know use an MP3 player. They use a CD just long enough to rip the songs...
Most of my friends use their ipod/iriver/whatever for in the car and at work, and their computer for music at home.
This probably isn't the norm yet, since my friends and i are likely early adopters... but it certainly seems like music files are what is going to replace CDs, not a new format.
While the Dreamcast was a GREAT console, with good titles... it was simply too little, too late. The failure of teh 32x, SegaCd and Saturn had reduced Sega's coffers to the point where nothing could really save them. Add to that the fact that the DC launch in Japan wasn't as big a success as the NAmerican one... well, it was curtains for Sega, unfortunately. I still have my DC and play it from time to time. Good system.
As Kesch points out, and has been pointed out every time this has come up, the game was a way for them to make money off developing and testing the new GTA engine, while also putting R* product on the shelves and generating publicity by doing something unexpected.
Slashdot Mirror
True, I'm just refering to the core franchises releases though. Otherwise there would be liek 30 mario games to discuss...
"Mario64 is ten years old, Zelda eight years."
Yeah but Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker didn't just came out - they came out several years ago, closer to the launch of the GameCube (2002, 2003?)... New games in both series are about to be released. If those are lackluster, then you mightbe fair saying that the franchise haven't been good in a long, long time... but 4 star games following 5 star games is not hard times.
"On the NES, SNES and N64 Mario and Zelda games where awesome, however that time is long long ago."
There has only been one Zelda game and one Mario game since then. One game is not "long long ago".
Windwaker was good, though not quite up to the standard of the N64 games. I never played Mario Sunshine, so I can't comment on it as a follow up to Mario World (or was it called Mario 64, I forget?).
New SMB, however, was great fun! It's a retro-esque game, though, deliberately designed to be a succesor to the NES/SNES games... you can't really expect it to be a worthy follow up to Mario World/Mario 64/whatever it was called.
You sure about this? I've never heard anyone else say this, nor have I experienced any difference myself. The only thing I notice is the Wavebird's lack of rumble.
Actually, where I live it is common.
Note that I didn't say common, or where you live. I said the majority, and that to be successful, a product like this needs to appeal to not just the affluent.
While I agree that price may be a factor, it's really all speculation until the PS3 is released. Sony has won this battle two gens in a row, a feat only matched by Nintendo. And when Nintendo did it, the game market was pretty small and focused. Now there are plenty of young adults with a more substantial income who may be willing to blindly shell out the money for a PS3,
Indeed, it is speculation. However, I think my comment that "The price WILL be a factor. How much of one remains to be seen." is quite a bit less speculatory than the above.
It's a simple matter of economics: "Demand is the quantity of a good that consumers are not only willing to purchase but also have the capacity to buy at the given price per unit of time." Capacity means the funds, and the units available.
As I said, price will be a factor. I think it's safe to say that the PS3 will move units more slowly (after the initial sell out) than the PS2 did at a 40% lower price point (comparing the PS2 to the Core PS3). How much slower they will move, remains to be seen. It could be a little, it could be a lot. We'll find out soon enough.
Look at how many 16yr olds get a brand spanking new car when they turn 16. Look how many of them get a Lexus or Acura.
This is not the majority though. 100+ million playstation 2s were sold. That level of sales means even people who take the bus to work have them, not just well-off people with nice cars.
The price WILL be a factor. How much of one remains to be seen.
As I said:
Meaning - if you didn't already want a PS3, would you buy it for this? I doubt it.
It's a value-add, sure. But if you are buying a PS3 to play PS2 games (or a PS2 to play PS1 games), you are foolish with your money.
The primary reason to buy a PS3 is because you want to play PS3 games. And that's totally legitimate! It just irks me how people hold up the fact that it can play PS2 games as evidence to why it will sell. No. It will sell because of the PS3 games, and the Sony brand. The backwards compatibility will help push those who were going to buy it anyway to think they made a good choice, but it won't woo a statsitically signficant number of people that hadn't planned on getting it anyway.
My casual gamer friends are the kind of casual gamers that like party games and they tend to like games with non-standard controllers anyway, so they seem excited about the Wii. Several of them got DS Lites, which has probably helped prime them up a bit.
Sure, this is convienent, but is it a selling point? Meaning - if you didn't already want a PS3, would you buy it for this? I doubt it.
I just see people tout the ability to play PS2 games right up there with HD and better graphics, etc... I don't see it as anywhere near as big a selling point as those things.
True, but those are also the people who bought the 360 for ebay prices, pre-ordered, etc. Serious gamers. Assumming the 360 ever reaches PS2-like sales numbers, you will see the %age of people who have Live Gold fall quite a bit.
Nintendo still has the kiddy image. While that doesn't matter to a slashdotter, it matters to others. The PS3 will be seen as the more mature console and will thus appeal to the teen/early 20s crowd.
This is true. However, there are many people who buy games who are older than this. Joystiq recently ran a story that said that 84% of gamers are over 18, for example.
I know that most of my friends (late 20s to mid-30s) like Nintendo, and look forward to the Wii. A lot of them (including me) have DSes, and chose them because of more casual games like Animal Crossing, Nintendogs (though I am not a big fan), Brain Training, Tetris, etc. They feel like the Wii will basically give them a similar experience, but in the living room.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of people in my demographic play with their spouses and/or girlfriends... I got a DS for both me and my girlfriend so we could play together. She doesn't really like violent games like GTA or whatnot. So the fact that the PS3 or PSP has more of those kind of games is not a selling point. What game doe we play the most together? On PC, Civilization 4. On consoles (I have all consoles from the last gen), Mario Kart Double Dash. On DS, it's Mario Kart DS. I'm sure there are a lot of couples out there who mirror this.
Now, I don't think Nintendo is going to win this generation... or any again. But teh niche they have carved for themselves is bigger than just kids. It's kids/family, women gamers, couples, older gamers, etc.
That said, i am not buying a Wii until I get to play one. It seems like a really bad idea to play something wth a novel new control scheme until you have tried it out - it could suck! If it works well though, I will get one when it comes out.
However those over 10 want HD and "cooler" games.
I'm over ten and I don't want HD (well, I'd want it if it was free...). In fact, most people I know don't yet have HD. In 5 years, HD will probably be way more common but for now, it's fairly rare. I can't see replacing my TV for a few more years, it still works fine.
Also, I think that there is a range of people older than 20 who also enjoy Nintendo franchises, be it for casual gaming, nostalgic, or whatever reasons. I know many people in their late 20s who love Nintendo products. Far more of my peer group owns DSes than PSPs, for example.
It has one major hardware advanatge which is the Blu-Ray player.
This is only an advantage to people who have HDTVs and aren't going to also have a standalone movie player. Yes, it does mean you can have big games without changing discs, but I wouldn't call that a system-selling advantage.
As for price, it's only $100 more than the 360 yet when you factor in Live costs is actually only $50 more - the first year.
I doubt most people get Live Gold or whatever it's called. I never got Live for my Xbox 1. Not everyone has time to get good enough at Halo to even bother trying to compete online... in fact, I would say most people probably don't (though I have no stats to back that up). If I got a 360, I doubt I'd get Live Gold, so I would have no extra expense.
Plus is has a huge back catalog
I'll never understand this arguement... I already have a PS2, it plays my PS2 games fine. How is this a selling point for the PS3 except for to the 3 people who never bought a PS2?
As always, in the end the games for a system matter most. If the PS3 can deliver enough compelling games then people will buy the system despite the high price
Here I agree with you, completely. Games are #1. The PS3 line-up seems strong, I'm sure it will do well.
My experience is totally different. I don't know a single person who owns a Xbox 360. I've never seen one outside of a store. Most of my friends are excited about the Wii... even friends who don't generally even buy consoles are kind of interested in it.
However, most of my friends are more casual gamers or non-gamers. You may know more hardcore gamers. I only really have 1-2 friends who would qualify as hardcore... and one of those is a Nintendo FANATIC. Like, scarily so.
What? The server market is very different than the desktop market. It's not a petty distinction at all.
I hated how you could barely buy any city improvements till near last end of the game.
By City Rushing, I meant the tactic of quickly building 200 1-2 population cities. In previous Civ games, this was an almost unbeatable tactic (vs the AI, anyway). The city maintenance concept (as opposed to corruption), plus culture (which was in 3 but didnt work as well) makes this pretty much impossible in 4 - the emphasis is on a smaller number of awesome cities that you really develop, not a million small ones. This is more fun too, because you don't have to micromanage all those cities in the end game.
I hated how you could barely buy any city improvements till near last end of the game. You had to kill off population in almost every form of government except democracies with capitalism.
I think this is balanced by the fact that settlers and workers don't use up population when you build them (as in all the previous games)... also i think universal sufferage is the civic that allows using gold to finish production. This is emabled with democracy, which shouldn't be discovered anywhere near the end of the game. Also, if you focus on building the pyramids, you can have access to this very early in the game.
The civics are a big improvement on the older Civs - instead of being one specific government type, you get to choose between a combination of 5 different civics.
I guess my big dislike of Civ4 was that if you've played, Civ 1, Civ2, Civ3, Alpha Cent, SimCity 1,2,3&4, and MOO2&3. Well Civ4 seemed like it wasn't adding any thing new except refining things so people that haven't been Civ fans could play and "get into" the game.
Except for totally redone (and vastly improved) diplomacy, great people, religion (which has a huge effect on gameplay,
Civ IV is vastly different than the previous Civ games... religion, improved culture, great people, no corruption, vastly more flexible diplomacy, the city maintence which eliminates "city rushing"... lots more cultures and increased differences in the cultures' abilities and units... revised seige unit rules...
Try Civ IV, it's great. Warlords expansion makes it even better.
yeah, but only people that read gaming blogs will see it. i think the original poster was saying they need to step up their marketing to non-hardcore gamers
those ads were european only though, correct? from the news coverage, i gathered they were only in certain european countries.
Agreed. I had to buy and install a $40 module for my car. A pain, but it works great now.
Everyone I know has an MP3 player, and no one I know has had one break in less than a year after purchase.
My iPod is about 10 months old now, going strong.
Especially if you are getting flash players, they are far more sturdy than they used to be, perhaps.
"Maybe, but I doubt it. Since 1986 I have accumulated a collection of nearly 1000 cd's. Many of them are out of print, and I don't forsee them becoming available on a new format. And even if everything I listen to is to be released on DVD, there is no way in HELL that I will buy them all over again. I'm probably not alone in feeling this way."
Why do you NEED to buy them again? Rip them to your media center/computer/etc.
I have way more than 1000 CDs, and I am slowly doing just that... and it's great, I am listening to stuff I haven't heard in 10 years, purely because it's buried in my stacks and stacks of CDs, or it's one good song on an album that I didn't feel like digging out in it's physical form...
That's what is replacing the CD, not some new DVD-Audio format.
While the DVD-Audio thing will not be a hit, I think what the poster was getting at is that people don't use CDs much anymore... Most people I know use an MP3 player. They use a CD just long enough to rip the songs...
Most of my friends use their ipod/iriver/whatever for in the car and at work, and their computer for music at home.
This probably isn't the norm yet, since my friends and i are likely early adopters... but it certainly seems like music files are what is going to replace CDs, not a new format.
While the Dreamcast was a GREAT console, with good titles... it was simply too little, too late. The failure of teh 32x, SegaCd and Saturn had reduced Sega's coffers to the point where nothing could really save them. Add to that the fact that the DC launch in Japan wasn't as big a success as the NAmerican one... well, it was curtains for Sega, unfortunately. I still have my DC and play it from time to time. Good system.
As Kesch points out, and has been pointed out every time this has come up, the game was a way for them to make money off developing and testing the new GTA engine, while also putting R* product on the shelves and generating publicity by doing something unexpected.