Wii Box != Wii for Sale. I've seen shops with tons of Wii boxes that had "sold out" signs attached to them. Shops apparently get empty Wii boxes for their displays.
I bought my PS3 a week after launch in Switzerland. The first story I tried was sold out, but the second had them readily available. I think some stores sold out, but there was no point where PS3s were not available. Yesterday, I went to an electronics store to buy a disk, and they had tons of PS3 and 360 and PS2s, but still no Wii.
I think the best lossless can do is about - on average - halfing the size of a music file. It may be better for some types of music and worse for others, but it's nowhere near what lossy compression does.
If there's no audible difference between 256 kbps mp3 and CD, there's probably no audible difference between cd and better-than-cd either. At a certain point, it's all just "more than good enough."
Hopefully, having DRM-free songs in all stores will help get the prices down again, eventually. Now, iPod owners' only choice is the iTunes Store, but that will change.
It should be noted that Miyamoto also says that "a lot of the people who would want to play it [due to chronic shortages of the console] can't find a Wii."
Furthermore, Zelda isn't actually doing badly in Japan (or anywhere else, for that matter). Zelda sold more in Japan than any 360 or PS3 game. I think that as of now, it sold 500'000 copies in Japan - which is quite a lot, considering that there are (I think) less than 2 million Wiis sold in Japan (not entirely sure on those numbers, though).
In the US, Zelda sales were almost as high as Wii sales (at least in the first few weeks after the launch, don't know how it looks today), which contradicts your point that Wii owners don't want Zelda games.
The discussion is becoming somewhat repetitive. I think we both understand each other's arguments, and we both disagree with them.
My opinion: The Wii will be this generation's most successfull console, by far, selling at least as much as the other two consoles combined, and it will get all the good titles. Many A-List franchises will move to the Wii, just like Dragon Quest moved to the DS. The fact that, as of now, most big titles are scheduled to be on the 360 and the PS3 is an artefact of the last generation. Everyone thought the PS3 would repeat the PS2's success, and this is just not happening, which is why we are seeing the shift from the 360 and the PS3 to the Wii right now.
The whole point of Assassin's creed is that you have many intelligent NPCs. That game won't work on the Wii. As for GTA, MGS, RE-X and the Square franchises: Wait and see. These games take a long time to develop and can't move to a slower platform so far into development. But many of these games will eventually end up on the Wii, no question about it.
When the Nintendo Gamecube settled into third place during the previous console generation, many publishers shifted their efforts to the vastly more popular -- and profitable -- PlayStation 2 and Xbox. But the surprise success of the Wii, which just crossed the five million sales mark (faster than any other console in video game history), has publishers scrambling to get their games back on Nintendo's mass-market machine. (...) After Ubisoft, Electronic Arts is the next major third-party developer to redirect resources to the Wii. Not only has the gaming giant set up Wii-dedicated development teams, but within the last month, EA has released no fewer than three Wii titles
Bloomberg reports companies like Electronic Arts, who has been ironically praised as one of the foremost Wii innovators, and Take-Two Interactive have been playing catch-up since Nintendo's E3 showing. EA tells Bloomberg they will have a dozen games on Wii this year, whereas Take-Two has three in the pipeline (likely comprised of The Bigs, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Manhunt 2).
And why would you need position sensing? I guess you mean integrating acceleration twice to get position, which tends to become inexact, but what would you need that for?
Finally, I think you don't quite understand how friend codes work. Also, the first online title is only appearing now, and more will follow.
And really finally, the Wii dead by 2008? Hahaha. The Wii is the most successfull console this generation, and it will remain the most successfull console this generation. The 360 is a failure - both based on sales numbers and based on the games available - and the PS3 is going in the same direction.
I actually agree with your prediction with regards to the PS3 and the 360. I too think it will play out somewhere between 50-50 and 60-40 with the PS3 getting the upper hand in the end. However, I doubt the two consoles will - together - sell more than 60-80 millions during the next 6 years. I would bet on ~30 millions for the 360 and 40 millions for the PS3. Thus, I predict both consoles to be failures compared to what they set out to achieve.
I would also bet that the Wii will sell around 70-90 millions during the next 6 years.
As far as big non-gaiden third-party games are concerned, some are out (Red Steel, for example), and some announced (Alien Syndrome, No More Heroes). You should keep in mind that most large developers have only just started to move teams away from the PS3 to the Wii. More exclusive games will appear. And of course, all devs are using consoles for making money. Why else would they make games?
However, the thing I was actually taking exception with in your statement was that you claimed that "the titles aren't exclusive because the Wii is dominating, but simply because nobody would care for them on the other platforms." That is a really weird statement. It really makes no sense, because people are buying Wiis just to be able to play those games.
As for the issues you raise with the Wii: How good the Wiimote's accuracy really is remains to be seen. SOme games seem to make better use than others (check out the baseball bat in Wii Sports before the swing, it tracks the controller pretty accurately - good enough for a sword game). As for the Wii's graphic capabilities, again, the last word has not been spoken. Obviously, the PPC inside the Wii is no cell, and the graphics card lacks lots of modern features, but beautiful games are absolutely possible.
Obviously, Nintendo decided to go with the lower price instead of with faster hardware. You might disagree with this choice, but so far, it's playing out really well for them. People don't want to spend 600 bucks for a PS3 (I actually own a PS3, by the way - what can I say, I'm always rooting for the underdog:-). Sure, Nintendo could have released a PS3 with the Wii controller, but then, the thing would have cost more than a PS3, and it would have tanked. Frankly, I don't care. To me, Excite Truck is a lot more fun than Motorstorm. Yes, the graphics are pretty bad compared to Motorstorm, but I really don't care too much. It's much more frantic and exciting, and I like it better. As you say, games are the reason why we buy consoles, and right now, the Wii - for my taste - quite simply has the most interesting, most fun games.
Nintendo can't just attract third-parties. Third parties will go to the console that sells the most games. The way it looks now, that might very well turn out to be the Wii, so third-parties are moving to the Wii right now. Sure, games right now are lacking - online play is a big offender, as you say. That will improve dramatically within the next few months. Of course the classics on the Wii are improved, see Godfather. And of course the games on the Wii are interesting.
As for using the same discs for Wii and GC, you should remember that Wii games use full DVDs. Using GC discs for Wii games would mean that they'd have to use less space. Yes, Nintendo killed the GC pretty quickly, and as a Cube owner, I don't like it. As a business decision, and for the Wii's success, moving all resources from the dead console to the new console was probably the right thing to do.
Good points, but I think it's way simpler than that. Music is something you use again and again. Most people listen to the music they listened to when they were 20 for their whole life. You're going through a lot of different hardware during that time, and you want to take your music with you. In my case, I went from vinyl to cassettes to CD to MP3 to AAC. I re-bought some stuff, but generally, I would have preferred to just keep the music I already own, and move it to new formats.
Movies are different. You watch them once, then you don't watch them for 5 or 10 years. Or ever again. Hence, re-buying them isn't that much of an issue. Hence, DRM is somewhat acceptable.
My bet: Similar to the AppleTV, the iPhone will have most of Mac OS X. No Finder, of course, and possibly no Carbon, but most of the basic stuff that makes up OS X.
Multi-platform here means Xbox360, PS3 and sometimes PC, but not Wii.
I don't see how that relates to the point I was making, namely, that a console usually can't make a comeback after failing for a year.
What the Wii gets aren't the big titles, but the spin-offs and gaidens, the FF:Crystal Chronicals, the RE:UC rail shooter and stuff like that. Those titles aren't exclusive because the Wii is dominating, but simply because nobody would care for them on the other platforms
Wow, did your cat piss in your breakfast this morning or something? Not only is that claim utterly absurd, I also have no idea where it is coming from. What made you hate the Wii so much?
Yes, the PS3 does better than the 360 in Japan. Personally, I consider the 360 a failure as well, but that aside, while you can't win without Japan, Japan alone is not enough for you to win, either.
Finally, the fact that the PS2 is still selling pretty well is a bad sign for the PS3, not a good sign. It quite simply means that Sony customers aren't moving to Sony's latest console.
What if they conclude that gamers only want gimmicky games?
Even on the Wii, the gimmicky games won't be the big sellers. What are "gimmicky games," anyways? Games that only sell on novelty? Which Wii games would you qualify that way? Wii Sports? Sonic? Rayman? Zelda? Elebits? Godfather? These games are successfull because they are good, not because they sport some kind of gimmick.
If the Wii had a standard controller as an option
You mean like the classic controller? Or the Cube controllers?:-)
One of the problems may be that it's often a very specific element that makes a game inacceptable in a given culture. A Nazi sign for Germany, or a naked book for America... So you would have to see everything in order to evaluate whether that given thing occurs in the game.
The engineer determines how a piece of equipment will sound by looking at a schematic, an audiophile determines how a piece of equipment will sound by listening to it.
Which is why audiophiles will always deceive themselves by all kinds of subjective factors unrelated to audio quality (such as looks, price, current mood, and the color of the room's walls), while only engineers are capable of objectively judging audio quality; precisely because they don't involve their own opinions.
You mean the endless stream of Mini/Party games consisting of three games? There are more FPS games for the Wii than there are minigames compilations. Besides, I like minigames compilations. They are perfect for Wii parties, playing against people who don't usually play with consoles.
Working with both Macs and PCs, I would tend to say that the Mac has more and better software available than Windows PCs. Maybe because Apple releases Xcode for free? Or maybe Mac users are more likely to pay for good software, making the Mac a good target for high-quality software? Either way, I never got the complaint that there was no software for Macs. Especially during the last years, I think the Mac has surpassed Windows in everything but specialized, vertical market stuff.
I don't know why everyone thinks the PSP is so great for homebrew. In my opinion, it sucks. The other two consoles - both the DS and, obviously, the GP2X - are much better suited for it. The reason? You can do homebrew without having to constantly fight the maker of your console. I own all three consoles. I like my PSP, but I want to take advantage of the firmware updates Sony puts out. I want to play the latest PSP games on it (Pirates!), and I want to watch full-res movies, and I want to connect it to my PS3.
So I update the firmware. Which screws up my ability to do homebrew on it.
Contrast this to the DS, where all you need is something like the DS-X, and you can do all the normal stuff, while also doing homebrew. Or the GP2X, where homebrew is fully supported by the manufacturer.
If you are into homebrew, do yourself a favour and get the GP2X instead of getting a new PSP with a new firmware. If you want both commercial games and homebrew, get a DS.
I own an HD beamer, a PS3 and an upscaling DVD player with an HDMI output. Yes, Bluray movies look nice. You notice that during the first minute of watching a movie. Then, you forget all about it as you get into the movie.
DVDs look great on my setup, they cost half as much as Bluray movies, and I can rip them and play them on my PSP.
I own the Bluray movie I got for free with my PS3 (James Bond). I see no reason to buy another one.
Last time I checked (which was last week), Memory Sticks cost a little less than twice as much as SD cards for the same capacity. The comparison to CF is kind of pointless, as the CF cards are much bigger and used for different things than SD or MS cards, and the price difference isn't as big as with Sony's proprietary thingies (of which, by the way, there exist about five different, sometimes incompatible versions - yes, I own Memory Sticks of almost all versions, and I can't use the old ones with my new Sony stuff, while my old SD and CF cards work perfectly well with new gear).
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Wii Box != Wii for Sale. I've seen shops with tons of Wii boxes that had "sold out" signs attached to them. Shops apparently get empty Wii boxes for their displays.
I bought my PS3 a week after launch in Switzerland. The first story I tried was sold out, but the second had them readily available. I think some stores sold out, but there was no point where PS3s were not available. Yesterday, I went to an electronics store to buy a disk, and they had tons of PS3 and 360 and PS2s, but still no Wii.
I think the best lossless can do is about - on average - halfing the size of a music file. It may be better for some types of music and worse for others, but it's nowhere near what lossy compression does.
I don't let audiophiles tell me what bitrate of music is acceptable, just like I don't let Christians tell me who created the Universe.
You're not the Einsteins and Hawkings of music. You're the Televangelists of music.
If there's no audible difference between 256 kbps mp3 and CD, there's probably no audible difference between cd and better-than-cd either. At a certain point, it's all just "more than good enough."
You couldn't judge for yourself anyway. You'd ned at least another person to play the songs for you, and even then, it wouldn't be double-blind.
Hopefully, having DRM-free songs in all stores will help get the prices down again, eventually. Now, iPod owners' only choice is the iTunes Store, but that will change.
It should be noted that Miyamoto also says that "a lot of the people who would want to play it [due to chronic shortages of the console] can't find a Wii."
Furthermore, Zelda isn't actually doing badly in Japan (or anywhere else, for that matter). Zelda sold more in Japan than any 360 or PS3 game. I think that as of now, it sold 500'000 copies in Japan - which is quite a lot, considering that there are (I think) less than 2 million Wiis sold in Japan (not entirely sure on those numbers, though).
In the US, Zelda sales were almost as high as Wii sales (at least in the first few weeks after the launch, don't know how it looks today), which contradicts your point that Wii owners don't want Zelda games.
The discussion is becoming somewhat repetitive. I think we both understand each other's arguments, and we both disagree with them.
My opinion: The Wii will be this generation's most successfull console, by far, selling at least as much as the other two consoles combined, and it will get all the good titles. Many A-List franchises will move to the Wii, just like Dragon Quest moved to the DS. The fact that, as of now, most big titles are scheduled to be on the 360 and the PS3 is an artefact of the last generation. Everyone thought the PS3 would repeat the PS2's success, and this is just not happening, which is why we are seeing the shift from the 360 and the PS3 to the Wii right now.
Time will tell who turns out correct.
Uhm, yeah, so far very little third-party games have had large dev teams. That's because devs have only started to move teams to the Wii during the last month or two. Large games take years to develop. You asked for links, here are a few: Publishers Scrambling for Wii Titles, EA releases titles to capitalize on Wii success.
From the second link:
Here's another link:
Also, Nintendo is buying third-parties, and they are getting exclusives.
And why would you need position sensing? I guess you mean integrating acceleration twice to get position, which tends to become inexact, but what would you need that for?
Finally, I think you don't quite understand how friend codes work. Also, the first online title is only appearing now, and more will follow.
And really finally, the Wii dead by 2008? Hahaha. The Wii is the most successfull console this generation, and it will remain the most successfull console this generation. The 360 is a failure - both based on sales numbers and based on the games available - and the PS3 is going in the same direction.
I actually agree with your prediction with regards to the PS3 and the 360. I too think it will play out somewhere between 50-50 and 60-40 with the PS3 getting the upper hand in the end. However, I doubt the two consoles will - together - sell more than 60-80 millions during the next 6 years. I would bet on ~30 millions for the 360 and 40 millions for the PS3. Thus, I predict both consoles to be failures compared to what they set out to achieve.
:-). Sure, Nintendo could have released a PS3 with the Wii controller, but then, the thing would have cost more than a PS3, and it would have tanked. Frankly, I don't care. To me, Excite Truck is a lot more fun than Motorstorm. Yes, the graphics are pretty bad compared to Motorstorm, but I really don't care too much. It's much more frantic and exciting, and I like it better. As you say, games are the reason why we buy consoles, and right now, the Wii - for my taste - quite simply has the most interesting, most fun games.
I would also bet that the Wii will sell around 70-90 millions during the next 6 years.
As far as big non-gaiden third-party games are concerned, some are out (Red Steel, for example), and some announced (Alien Syndrome, No More Heroes). You should keep in mind that most large developers have only just started to move teams away from the PS3 to the Wii. More exclusive games will appear. And of course, all devs are using consoles for making money. Why else would they make games?
However, the thing I was actually taking exception with in your statement was that you claimed that "the titles aren't exclusive because the Wii is dominating, but simply because nobody would care for them on the other platforms." That is a really weird statement. It really makes no sense, because people are buying Wiis just to be able to play those games.
As for the issues you raise with the Wii: How good the Wiimote's accuracy really is remains to be seen. SOme games seem to make better use than others (check out the baseball bat in Wii Sports before the swing, it tracks the controller pretty accurately - good enough for a sword game). As for the Wii's graphic capabilities, again, the last word has not been spoken. Obviously, the PPC inside the Wii is no cell, and the graphics card lacks lots of modern features, but beautiful games are absolutely possible.
Obviously, Nintendo decided to go with the lower price instead of with faster hardware. You might disagree with this choice, but so far, it's playing out really well for them. People don't want to spend 600 bucks for a PS3 (I actually own a PS3, by the way - what can I say, I'm always rooting for the underdog
Nintendo can't just attract third-parties. Third parties will go to the console that sells the most games. The way it looks now, that might very well turn out to be the Wii, so third-parties are moving to the Wii right now. Sure, games right now are lacking - online play is a big offender, as you say. That will improve dramatically within the next few months. Of course the classics on the Wii are improved, see Godfather. And of course the games on the Wii are interesting.
As for using the same discs for Wii and GC, you should remember that Wii games use full DVDs. Using GC discs for Wii games would mean that they'd have to use less space. Yes, Nintendo killed the GC pretty quickly, and as a Cube owner, I don't like it. As a business decision, and for the Wii's success, moving all resources from the dead console to the new console was probably the right thing to do.
It only has more bugs because bugs can't be fixed and thus more testing is needed, which also costs more, but during another time in the lifecycle.
Good points, but I think it's way simpler than that. Music is something you use again and again. Most people listen to the music they listened to when they were 20 for their whole life. You're going through a lot of different hardware during that time, and you want to take your music with you. In my case, I went from vinyl to cassettes to CD to MP3 to AAC. I re-bought some stuff, but generally, I would have preferred to just keep the music I already own, and move it to new formats.
Movies are different. You watch them once, then you don't watch them for 5 or 10 years. Or ever again. Hence, re-buying them isn't that much of an issue. Hence, DRM is somewhat acceptable.
My bet: Similar to the AppleTV, the iPhone will have most of Mac OS X. No Finder, of course, and possibly no Carbon, but most of the basic stuff that makes up OS X.
Let me guess, you bought a PS3 thinking it would be a success, and now you're trying to cope with your cognitive dissonance.
I don't see how that relates to the point I was making, namely, that a console usually can't make a comeback after failing for a year.
Wow, did your cat piss in your breakfast this morning or something? Not only is that claim utterly absurd, I also have no idea where it is coming from. What made you hate the Wii so much?
Yes, the PS3 does better than the 360 in Japan. Personally, I consider the 360 a failure as well, but that aside, while you can't win without Japan, Japan alone is not enough for you to win, either.
Finally, the fact that the PS2 is still selling pretty well is a bad sign for the PS3, not a good sign. It quite simply means that Sony customers aren't moving to Sony's latest console.
Even on the Wii, the gimmicky games won't be the big sellers. What are "gimmicky games," anyways? Games that only sell on novelty? Which Wii games would you qualify that way? Wii Sports? Sonic? Rayman? Zelda? Elebits? Godfather? These games are successfull because they are good, not because they sport some kind of gimmick.
If the Wii had a standard controller as an optionYou mean like the classic controller? Or the Cube controllers? :-)
One of the problems may be that it's often a very specific element that makes a game inacceptable in a given culture. A Nazi sign for Germany, or a naked book for America... So you would have to see everything in order to evaluate whether that given thing occurs in the game.
Which is why audiophiles will always deceive themselves by all kinds of subjective factors unrelated to audio quality (such as looks, price, current mood, and the color of the room's walls), while only engineers are capable of objectively judging audio quality; precisely because they don't involve their own opinions.
You mean the endless stream of Mini/Party games consisting of three games? There are more FPS games for the Wii than there are minigames compilations. Besides, I like minigames compilations. They are perfect for Wii parties, playing against people who don't usually play with consoles.
Working with both Macs and PCs, I would tend to say that the Mac has more and better software available than Windows PCs. Maybe because Apple releases Xcode for free? Or maybe Mac users are more likely to pay for good software, making the Mac a good target for high-quality software? Either way, I never got the complaint that there was no software for Macs. Especially during the last years, I think the Mac has surpassed Windows in everything but specialized, vertical market stuff.
I don't know why everyone thinks the PSP is so great for homebrew. In my opinion, it sucks. The other two consoles - both the DS and, obviously, the GP2X - are much better suited for it. The reason? You can do homebrew without having to constantly fight the maker of your console. I own all three consoles. I like my PSP, but I want to take advantage of the firmware updates Sony puts out. I want to play the latest PSP games on it (Pirates!), and I want to watch full-res movies, and I want to connect it to my PS3.
So I update the firmware. Which screws up my ability to do homebrew on it.
Contrast this to the DS, where all you need is something like the DS-X, and you can do all the normal stuff, while also doing homebrew. Or the GP2X, where homebrew is fully supported by the manufacturer.
If you are into homebrew, do yourself a favour and get the GP2X instead of getting a new PSP with a new firmware. If you want both commercial games and homebrew, get a DS.
I own an HD beamer, a PS3 and an upscaling DVD player with an HDMI output. Yes, Bluray movies look nice. You notice that during the first minute of watching a movie. Then, you forget all about it as you get into the movie.
DVDs look great on my setup, they cost half as much as Bluray movies, and I can rip them and play them on my PSP.
I own the Bluray movie I got for free with my PS3 (James Bond). I see no reason to buy another one.
So all the work you have to do to get movies to run on the PSP helps you lose weight?
By the way, I use PSPWare, which costs something, but makes converting movies for the PSP and synchronizing them to it very straightforward.
Last time I checked (which was last week), Memory Sticks cost a little less than twice as much as SD cards for the same capacity. The comparison to CF is kind of pointless, as the CF cards are much bigger and used for different things than SD or MS cards, and the price difference isn't as big as with Sony's proprietary thingies (of which, by the way, there exist about five different, sometimes incompatible versions - yes, I own Memory Sticks of almost all versions, and I can't use the old ones with my new Sony stuff, while my old SD and CF cards work perfectly well with new gear).