Ahem... they are really sold out, I have yet to see a single wii again, here in central europe, the only ones I have seen so far was on launch day, a friend of mine was lucky to get one recently, he got it outside of the usual electronics stores, he found it in a general supermarket.
But as it seems, the Wiis are sold out, but funny thing is, we have enough Wii motes and Nunchucks here, you can see them everywhere, it is just the wiis and the cables which still are hard to come by.
The PS2 library is the largest, most diverse, and highest quality library of games ever assembled for a console. It puts the GameCube,Xbox,Xbox 360 combined libraries to shame.
Actually no, the biggest game lib still is the PC with over 20 years of gaming, and almost every console under the earth emulatable, but that is a different issue.
Besides that the pure console with the largest number of games currently in existence probably is the gba, but I do not want to see the shovelware/gem ratio on that one.
What I meant is, you maybe have 500-700 games on the PS2 and depending on your taste about 10-20 are worthwile playing while the rest is shovelware.
I looked into the PS2 backcatalog, and only 10 games really interested me, about 8 of them I also could get for the cube (mainly crossplatform stuff, like Tomb Raider Legend)
The only game currently which I would consider to be a PS2 system seller for me is Okami, the
Final Fantasies, definitely are none for me (Although I know that they are for many others)
So what I mean is, that most people in the end over the lifetime of a console end up with around 10-20 titles. And that is pretty much except for some hardcore people, what most people own with every console generation.
So it in the end really does not matter that much which console you own, except if you want to go towards rental or second hand, because depending on the console you will end up with the same amount of games anyway.
It depends more on the games you like to play.
The XBox had only one quality title before christmas, but the situation seems to be chaning currently a little bit with a bunch of combined PC XBOX titles hitting the scene.
The second and third year usually are the best years for a console.
So I expect a lot from end of 2007 and 2008, bear in mind that many publishers started to take the Wii seriously at the last E3 and some even started later when the PS3 fiasco happened. (Which means the last four weeks)
Actually I do not think the Wii needs another bunch of mini game titles, with Wii Sports, Rayman Raving Rabbits and Wario Ware are 4 excellent ones on the market, add to that the mediocre Wii games and you have five of them.
It needs adventure games, it needs more epic games along the lines of Zelda, and it needs
some RPGs besides Zelda.
How many Wii have been sold in the US? 50,000?
Well rough estimations (the 4 mio line of wiis was passed around beginning of the year)
in the US there is probably 1-1.5 Mio Wiis sold by now.
There are no exact numbers in the open for now, but I assume the number of Wiis worldwide sold must be around 5 mio or so.
Since the console is basically sold out on a worldwide scale, only Nintendo knows exactly. As for now, 1 Wii produced == 1 Wii sold.
Well the main difference is, with the other consoles, you get a bunch of first party crap and a bunch of third party crap;-)
No seriously I am currently playing the cube backcatalog, there are a lot of gems in there, even third party stuff.
But you have a high junk/gem ratio on every console, even on the ps2 you only have a handful of games which are worthwile playing.
But putting down the Wii lineup as Zelda only is a little bit far off.
Rayman Raving Rabbits, is an absolute must have gem, overlooked by many in the Zelda rush, it is definitely along the lines of Wario Ware quality wise and also has nice graphics.
The rest of the original Launch lineup is sort of hit and miss depending on the tastes.
But definitely way more and has a higher variety than the other consoles launch lineup.
I cannot comment to the other games released so far.
Dont worry too much, not too many people will buy it at that price anyway;-)
It does not matter when it will be released, because it is out of christmas and hollywood season, and it is too expensive.
Add to that the fact that hdtv has not such a big impact here than it has in the USA, so blue ray is a non argument for a lot of people.
Dont forget Europe, the console is basically launched into a totally dead month, february/march/april is pretty much the worst season you can launch a luxury item into,
people usually do not buy in those months unless in february when the sale is still going on.
Add to that the price and the reputation the PS3 has gathered, and you will see a desaster.
After initial strong sales the PS3 will rot in stores like a brick.
Problem is, at the current rate, Nintendo will have sold around 10 mio Wiis end of may.
The situation over here is insane, I have yet to spot a single Wii in one of the stores here in central europe since launch day. At launch day all wiis over here were sold out within minutes, and since then I have not spotted anything, but at least the situation has gone back to normal regarding the wiimotes and nunchucks, they can be obtained now almost everywhere (that has happend the last two weeks)
The situation is equally bad with the component or RGB cables over here, even the third party cables seem to be sold out instantly.
The boxes must ship to the stores, but seem to be snapped up as soon as they arrive.
Nintendo has won big so far over here, and given sonys pricetag of the PS3 of being roughly 620 euros which relates to 800USD I cannot see that changing, since many people over here do not earn that much compared to the USA (exceptions probably being some parts of England and some parts of Ireland)
So Microsoft might have a sweet first victory but by the mid of the year it might turn into a sour aftertaste.
Yes the Wii has a steady stream of games coming out, although I would prefer to see more epic games along the lines of Zelda, but it has its merits, regarding new games and especially wii only exclusives, or best played on a wii (rayman raving rabbits for instance probably works only on a wii really well), guess it pays off that Wii games are known territory, cheap to produce and leave interesting experimental fields to the devs.
While many of them currently try to figure out to get anything up and running on a ps3...
I think the biggest problem for pc gaming is, that pcs especially home pcs have moved into the realm of notebook computers, and face it, most notebooks currently have centrinos in there, and those intel chipsets suck at 3d graphics. The main problem is, most games are produced for high end hardware and nvidia only, while most pc users nowadays have an integrated graphics chip in the medium range speedwise, which not even is tested with many games. Speaking of producing outside of the market, the pc publishers currently do exactly that, by ignoring 80% of the pc market.
Gaming on the i955 which is in the mac mini is an entirely different issue.
The chipset is fast enough for many things, it is pretty much twice as fast as an old radeon 9200 with more accessible mem and has excellent video acceleration, but 3d gaming despite it is problematic. While some games work quite well, even new ones, using shaders etc...
Some games seriously choke (like Gothic 3) with a crash, some even plainly refuse to run, due to the fact that they find an intel graphics card, and some have garbled screens.
A compatibility list would be fine, if anyone knows it it would be highly interesting.
The main problem besides the usual issues is that some stuff is pushed into the CPU (like some shading stuff) unless games are seriously tested against the intel graphics cores, you scream for trouble, and face it many games are not tested, they are ati and/or nvidia only although the intel i6xx graphics line probably due to centrino is the most widely used one of all graphics chips (and the lousiest one currently in existence)
Nothing to flame here, except that I personally consider most console rpgs, badly designed
and highly boring in their linearity.
The sad thing is, that rpg gaming should have followed the ultima route to a bigger extent
by tring to bring things into the openness of table top rpgin, american and european rpgs have successed in various degrees and some of them currently suffer from the automated generated content syndrome, which is equally bad as lock in.
Japanese rpgs and final fantasy is the rule not the exception have followed the we do not change game mechanics route, and still keep the broken design which just was invented because machines 20 years ago simply had limitations.
Yes, castlevania started as a ghost and ghoblins rehash in my opinion, I think both titles were by Konami?
As for final fantasy, I do not get it until today why this series is so beloved by so many.
It follows very conservative design principles which were in the pc side been thrown overboard as bad limiting designs at the time of Ultima 4 nor started they off being innovative at all, well at least newer games have the merits of having some of the best graphics at all.
But the game design still sucks.
What I would love is something along the lines of Ultima 7 with modern graphics, but the only game so far, which has gotten this right is Gothic 2 (another game very beloved by europeans but funnily highly overlooked in the USA)
Actually the funny thing is, that those articles usually start with Nintendo, while Nintendos influence is not denyable, nor is the importance of Castlevania, there are predecessors.
In case of Castlevania, numerous sidescrolling games on the early homecomputers.
In case of Zelda for instance games, like Ataris Raiders of the Lost ark on the VCS2600 or even more Rogue, or Temple of Asphai by Epyx (1982)
The problem with most consolish articles is, that they have a narrow view of japanese consoles being the beginning, while compared to homecomputers and later pcs they were rather late and still are very limited in their game design.
While pcs for instance tried to get rid of classical rails like rpging in the mid eighties due to harddrives making int possible, console rpgs still follow the lock me into rails route until today (with the exception of console games wich have their roots in the pc gaming world)
The lock me in factor is a huge problem why I generally despise japanese rpgs to a big extent, even final fantasy and all its offspings.
While you cannot deny the influence of japanese game designers and their excellency in game design, you cannot oversee the fact that they are very conservative in their game designs and usually do not change it, until something has been proven to work for at least 10 years. Also speaking of sequel syndrome they are way worse than western designers (with nintendo being the exception of at least trying new concepts in their sequels)
Castlevania for instance, if you play castlevania on the DS you basically will get almost the same game as Castlevania on the SNES only graphics and minor gameplay styles have been upgraded. But in between are almost 15 years, and even the measly DS is 10 times as powerful as the original snes.
While this was a nice retro experience (I have not played castlevania earlier), it is definitely not a reason to get me into the series again for a second purchase. All of us despise EA for shelling out sequels every year with graphics upgrades, it is even worse with some console franchises being pushed out by japanese companies, unfortunately.
Sorry to say that but Sun not really has been in trouble, especially not nowadays, with a good product lineup, most of their losses basically were stock devaluations
which do not resembly anything regarding Suns profitability, from 2000 on if you count
out the stock devaluations Sun hat a rather solid earning with only a handful of quarters of losses (some of them caused by buying new companies), not a huge performer, but it is defintely not in trouble and its bank account has definitely more cash than in 2000 at the height of the dot bomb craze.
You should check the numbers, most of the losses stem from the fact, that their stocks have gone down from insance values into normal numbers,
especially the billions of losses in 2001 and 2002, if you count out the stock
devaluation, Sun has done very solidly, with many years of earnings and a few lof losses
(mainly caused due tu buying other companies)
The sun is dying rumor is caused mainly due to people seeing big reds but not knowing the exact numbers and those losses mainly are paper losses while suns bank account grows and grows.
Sun is a very solid company, not a big performer in the eyes of the robber barons (aka stock brokers), but definitely also definitely not a second SGI.
Actually the funny thing is, that many western european countries have a lots of debts out of various reasons so that most government taxed money currently goes to the bank. Without the debts many western european countries would make huge tax surpluses and probably could even lower the taxes significantly without sacrificing the social system.
Also a funny thing is that many eastern european countries do not have this tax/debt burden and now suck away lower income jobs due to less taxation.
Funny thing is I have the money, but no interest to blow it on an overprised DRMed computer, for that money you can get a decent pc already, but I know how much the average income is in Europe, and if you have gotten a clue, christmas is way past and in some countrie you get extra vacation money, but that one is in june.
So expect something like a lot of sales the first few days and then those machines will be in the stores like dead bricks in a computer store.
This has been already like that in countries with way higher average income, how do you thing should the situation be better in europe were the average income is lower and less people have enough income to blow it out of the christmas season on a ps3 than in japan or the united states.
Interesting logic I must say. Yes there are enough people who probably can afford a PS3 but they are not too different to the ones in the US or Japan and many of them simply wont buy it because it is way too expensive for a console, making the console significantly more expensive wont help the sales either! Especially not in a region with less income, sorry.
The basic rule of price/demand/and supply also is working in Europe like the rest of the world!
Watch a line of three people gathering in front of the stores the day before selling it.
Message to sony, people do not have money to spend on junk, it is neither close to the summer vacation nor close to christmas!
Btw. we also earn less than the average US or japanese household!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes it is, but for a console, which has been out roughly two months, a number which is quite good.
Ahem... they are really sold out, I have yet to see a single wii again, here in central europe, the only ones I have seen so far was on launch day, a friend of mine was lucky to get one recently, he got it outside of the usual electronics stores, he found it in a general supermarket. But as it seems, the Wiis are sold out, but funny thing is, we have enough Wii motes and Nunchucks here, you can see them everywhere, it is just the wiis and the cables which still are hard to come by.
The PS2 library is the largest, most diverse, and highest quality library of games ever assembled for a console. It puts the GameCube,Xbox,Xbox 360 combined libraries to shame. Actually no, the biggest game lib still is the PC with over 20 years of gaming, and almost every console under the earth emulatable, but that is a different issue. Besides that the pure console with the largest number of games currently in existence probably is the gba, but I do not want to see the shovelware/gem ratio on that one. What I meant is, you maybe have 500-700 games on the PS2 and depending on your taste about 10-20 are worthwile playing while the rest is shovelware. I looked into the PS2 backcatalog, and only 10 games really interested me, about 8 of them I also could get for the cube (mainly crossplatform stuff, like Tomb Raider Legend) The only game currently which I would consider to be a PS2 system seller for me is Okami, the Final Fantasies, definitely are none for me (Although I know that they are for many others) So what I mean is, that most people in the end over the lifetime of a console end up with around 10-20 titles. And that is pretty much except for some hardcore people, what most people own with every console generation. So it in the end really does not matter that much which console you own, except if you want to go towards rental or second hand, because depending on the console you will end up with the same amount of games anyway. It depends more on the games you like to play.
The XBox had only one quality title before christmas, but the situation seems to be chaning currently a little bit with a bunch of combined PC XBOX titles hitting the scene. The second and third year usually are the best years for a console. So I expect a lot from end of 2007 and 2008, bear in mind that many publishers started to take the Wii seriously at the last E3 and some even started later when the PS3 fiasco happened. (Which means the last four weeks)
Actually I do not think the Wii needs another bunch of mini game titles, with Wii Sports, Rayman Raving Rabbits and Wario Ware are 4 excellent ones on the market, add to that the mediocre Wii games and you have five of them. It needs adventure games, it needs more epic games along the lines of Zelda, and it needs some RPGs besides Zelda.
How many Wii have been sold in the US? 50,000? Well rough estimations (the 4 mio line of wiis was passed around beginning of the year) in the US there is probably 1-1.5 Mio Wiis sold by now. There are no exact numbers in the open for now, but I assume the number of Wiis worldwide sold must be around 5 mio or so. Since the console is basically sold out on a worldwide scale, only Nintendo knows exactly. As for now, 1 Wii produced == 1 Wii sold.
Well the main difference is, with the other consoles, you get a bunch of first party crap and a bunch of third party crap ;-)
No seriously I am currently playing the cube backcatalog, there are a lot of gems in there, even third party stuff.
But you have a high junk/gem ratio on every console, even on the ps2 you only have a handful of games which are worthwile playing.
But putting down the Wii lineup as Zelda only is a little bit far off. Rayman Raving Rabbits, is an absolute must have gem, overlooked by many in the Zelda rush, it is definitely along the lines of Wario Ware quality wise and also has nice graphics. The rest of the original Launch lineup is sort of hit and miss depending on the tastes. But definitely way more and has a higher variety than the other consoles launch lineup. I cannot comment to the other games released so far.
Dont worry too much, not too many people will buy it at that price anyway ;-)
It does not matter when it will be released, because it is out of christmas and hollywood season, and it is too expensive.
Add to that the fact that hdtv has not such a big impact here than it has in the USA, so blue ray is a non argument for a lot of people.
Dont forget Europe, the console is basically launched into a totally dead month, february/march/april is pretty much the worst season you can launch a luxury item into, people usually do not buy in those months unless in february when the sale is still going on. Add to that the price and the reputation the PS3 has gathered, and you will see a desaster. After initial strong sales the PS3 will rot in stores like a brick.
Yes but the prices you oil guys have and also the taxes make Britain look like a tax paradise, it all evens out at the end ;-)
Problem is, at the current rate, Nintendo will have sold around 10 mio Wiis end of may. The situation over here is insane, I have yet to spot a single Wii in one of the stores here in central europe since launch day. At launch day all wiis over here were sold out within minutes, and since then I have not spotted anything, but at least the situation has gone back to normal regarding the wiimotes and nunchucks, they can be obtained now almost everywhere (that has happend the last two weeks) The situation is equally bad with the component or RGB cables over here, even the third party cables seem to be sold out instantly.
The boxes must ship to the stores, but seem to be snapped up as soon as they arrive. Nintendo has won big so far over here, and given sonys pricetag of the PS3 of being roughly 620 euros which relates to 800USD I cannot see that changing, since many people over here do not earn that much compared to the USA (exceptions probably being some parts of England and some parts of Ireland)
So Microsoft might have a sweet first victory but by the mid of the year it might turn into a sour aftertaste.
Yes the Wii has a steady stream of games coming out, although I would prefer to see more epic games along the lines of Zelda, but it has its merits, regarding new games and especially wii only exclusives, or best played on a wii (rayman raving rabbits for instance probably works only on a wii really well), guess it pays off that Wii games are known territory, cheap to produce and leave interesting experimental fields to the devs. While many of them currently try to figure out to get anything up and running on a ps3...
I think the biggest problem for pc gaming is, that pcs especially home pcs have moved into the realm of notebook computers, and face it, most notebooks currently have centrinos in there, and those intel chipsets suck at 3d graphics. The main problem is, most games are produced for high end hardware and nvidia only, while most pc users nowadays have an integrated graphics chip in the medium range speedwise, which not even is tested with many games. Speaking of producing outside of the market, the pc publishers currently do exactly that, by ignoring 80% of the pc market.
Gaming on the i955 which is in the mac mini is an entirely different issue. The chipset is fast enough for many things, it is pretty much twice as fast as an old radeon 9200 with more accessible mem and has excellent video acceleration, but 3d gaming despite it is problematic. While some games work quite well, even new ones, using shaders etc... Some games seriously choke (like Gothic 3) with a crash, some even plainly refuse to run, due to the fact that they find an intel graphics card, and some have garbled screens. A compatibility list would be fine, if anyone knows it it would be highly interesting. The main problem besides the usual issues is that some stuff is pushed into the CPU (like some shading stuff) unless games are seriously tested against the intel graphics cores, you scream for trouble, and face it many games are not tested, they are ati and/or nvidia only although the intel i6xx graphics line probably due to centrino is the most widely used one of all graphics chips (and the lousiest one currently in existence)
Nothing to flame here, except that I personally consider most console rpgs, badly designed and highly boring in their linearity. The sad thing is, that rpg gaming should have followed the ultima route to a bigger extent by tring to bring things into the openness of table top rpgin, american and european rpgs have successed in various degrees and some of them currently suffer from the automated generated content syndrome, which is equally bad as lock in. Japanese rpgs and final fantasy is the rule not the exception have followed the we do not change game mechanics route, and still keep the broken design which just was invented because machines 20 years ago simply had limitations.
Yes, castlevania started as a ghost and ghoblins rehash in my opinion, I think both titles were by Konami? As for final fantasy, I do not get it until today why this series is so beloved by so many. It follows very conservative design principles which were in the pc side been thrown overboard as bad limiting designs at the time of Ultima 4 nor started they off being innovative at all, well at least newer games have the merits of having some of the best graphics at all. But the game design still sucks. What I would love is something along the lines of Ultima 7 with modern graphics, but the only game so far, which has gotten this right is Gothic 2 (another game very beloved by europeans but funnily highly overlooked in the USA)
Actually the funny thing is, that those articles usually start with Nintendo, while Nintendos influence is not denyable, nor is the importance of Castlevania, there are predecessors. In case of Castlevania, numerous sidescrolling games on the early homecomputers. In case of Zelda for instance games, like Ataris Raiders of the Lost ark on the VCS2600 or even more Rogue, or Temple of Asphai by Epyx (1982)
The problem with most consolish articles is, that they have a narrow view of japanese consoles being the beginning, while compared to homecomputers and later pcs they were rather late and still are very limited in their game design.
While pcs for instance tried to get rid of classical rails like rpging in the mid eighties due to harddrives making int possible, console rpgs still follow the lock me into rails route until today (with the exception of console games wich have their roots in the pc gaming world)
The lock me in factor is a huge problem why I generally despise japanese rpgs to a big extent, even final fantasy and all its offspings. While you cannot deny the influence of japanese game designers and their excellency in game design, you cannot oversee the fact that they are very conservative in their game designs and usually do not change it, until something has been proven to work for at least 10 years. Also speaking of sequel syndrome they are way worse than western designers (with nintendo being the exception of at least trying new concepts in their sequels) Castlevania for instance, if you play castlevania on the DS you basically will get almost the same game as Castlevania on the SNES only graphics and minor gameplay styles have been upgraded. But in between are almost 15 years, and even the measly DS is 10 times as powerful as the original snes. While this was a nice retro experience (I have not played castlevania earlier), it is definitely not a reason to get me into the series again for a second purchase. All of us despise EA for shelling out sequels every year with graphics upgrades, it is even worse with some console franchises being pushed out by japanese companies, unfortunately.
Sorry to say that but Sun not really has been in trouble, especially not nowadays, with a good product lineup, most of their losses basically were stock devaluations which do not resembly anything regarding Suns profitability, from 2000 on if you count out the stock devaluations Sun hat a rather solid earning with only a handful of quarters of losses (some of them caused by buying new companies), not a huge performer, but it is defintely not in trouble and its bank account has definitely more cash than in 2000 at the height of the dot bomb craze.
You should check the numbers, most of the losses stem from the fact, that their stocks have gone down from insance values into normal numbers, especially the billions of losses in 2001 and 2002, if you count out the stock devaluation, Sun has done very solidly, with many years of earnings and a few lof losses (mainly caused due tu buying other companies) The sun is dying rumor is caused mainly due to people seeing big reds but not knowing the exact numbers and those losses mainly are paper losses while suns bank account grows and grows. Sun is a very solid company, not a big performer in the eyes of the robber barons (aka stock brokers), but definitely also definitely not a second SGI.
Actually Sony has to cut the prise as soon as possible... Otherwise this thing is dead! The PS3 can and will sale, but it has to be lower than 400!
Almost no game suffers from a bad control scheme, most games suffer from the cheaply released shovelware syndrome on the DS platform.
Actually the funny thing is, that many western european countries have a lots of debts out of various reasons so that most government taxed money currently goes to the bank. Without the debts many western european countries would make huge tax surpluses and probably could even lower the taxes significantly without sacrificing the social system. Also a funny thing is that many eastern european countries do not have this tax/debt burden and now suck away lower income jobs due to less taxation.
Funny thing is I have the money, but no interest to blow it on an overprised DRMed computer, for that money you can get a decent pc already, but I know how much the average income is in Europe, and if you have gotten a clue, christmas is way past and in some countrie you get extra vacation money, but that one is in june. So expect something like a lot of sales the first few days and then those machines will be in the stores like dead bricks in a computer store. This has been already like that in countries with way higher average income, how do you thing should the situation be better in europe were the average income is lower and less people have enough income to blow it out of the christmas season on a ps3 than in japan or the united states. Interesting logic I must say. Yes there are enough people who probably can afford a PS3 but they are not too different to the ones in the US or Japan and many of them simply wont buy it because it is way too expensive for a console, making the console significantly more expensive wont help the sales either! Especially not in a region with less income, sorry. The basic rule of price/demand/and supply also is working in Europe like the rest of the world!
Watch a line of three people gathering in front of the stores the day before selling it. Message to sony, people do not have money to spend on junk, it is neither close to the summer vacation nor close to christmas! Btw. we also earn less than the average US or japanese household!