But Nintendo Europes internal launch seemed to be kind of chaotic (nothing more to expect from a company whose website only lists 7 european countries as countries where they accept registrations for for the consoles)
The funy thing is. I walked into the store at opening time, it was a rather huge electronics market, and they had about 20-30 consoles, 3 minutes after opening half of them have been gobbled up by students.
No significant waiting line upfront however.
Zelda instantly was sold out while most other third party titles were left alone (there was no rayman on the shelve and no trauma center to afair)
The funny thing is another store did not have any consoles in the open but had a bunch of Zeldas in one hidden corner.
Anyway, to the prices of the games. It is not too amusing that many vendors tried an upfront price hike of the games up to 60 euros, shortly before opening most of them dropped the prices of the games down to 55, but most of the games still are above the promised 50 euros, even nintendos own.
Some markets even tried that with the consoles, one having advertised the wii for 409 euros another one for 300.
Most of the markets however sold them for the standard 250.
Actually the first Quake like fps was Ultima underworld and that one already had full physics, multiple levels etc... bridges gaps etc... and full environmental interaction, and ghasp it came out months before castle wolfenstein 3d.
Just to show how advanced the Looking Glass games really were:-)
Actually given nintendos first party sales numbers, I think their biggest cash cow is the software, but they act more wisely that they want to earn on the hardware as well, they cannot run into financial problems that way.
This is one of the reasons why they usually are more on the conservative side regarding the hardware used.
They probably earned more on the cube and its games than Sony did on the PS2 regardless of being the last in the sheer numbers, but the cube situation wont repeat itself with the Wii as it seems, it is going strong in every region and Europe also will sell out.
Re:The rest of the launch lineup can go to hell...
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
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· Score: 1
Given that the gamecubes were rock solid machines and almost never failed while most sony first timers already are at their third consoles the numbers of owners are more relative.
It is more likeley 20 mio cubs compared to 40 mio ps2s by now.
Actually Rayman and Trauma Center can stand on its own, if you are into mini games and totally new concepts.
I have seen trauma center on the DS, it is not my cup of tea, but the game itself is excellent and you given the comments on the wii version, I assume it even would stand on its own with 500 shovelware titles like on any console being out for 3-4 years.
The DS version still is one of the best games on that console even with about 500 games already release for the ds and about 400 of them being shovelware.
Actually elebits is one of the games I expect from the wii, a small conceptual highly interesting game only doable with a mouse or the wiimote.
I expect way more interesting stuff for the Wii than ever has been for the cube. It is pretty much like the DS compared to the GBA. On the GBA, tons of shovelware almost no gems. The DS has this 1-2 really weird but interesting titles coming out every 1-2 months which are hidden under tons of shovelware, but make it.
Project rub for instance has been one, trauma center, then the first real point and click adventures on a console etc....
So far the lineup in the wii looks very interesting since many companies currently toy with the input system and seem to give the devs more freedom than on the other consoles, to make smaller but more interesting games.
Also in the long run I expect excellent perso 2 person sport games. Wii sports is an indicator that a very good tennis simulation might be possible or even something like decathlon on the c64 which in this concept has not been done with current gen tech for a long time.
EA in the early days did not develop themselves, they basically gave the implementors the full name rights, because their first approach was the popstar model. The game designer/implementor was supposed to become a popstar.
If they had the rooms and machines for development I did not know. But the boundary between publisher and development studio was not really there back then, it was fluid, because development studio used to be exactly one person in most cases so EA might also have had those people employed like a normal development house.
Anyway the examples of what you metioned was the early EA times, and yes back then EAs output was amazing you just could buy anything from EA and you could be sure it was something never done before. The publishing of names of the designers, was EAs business model. Get the best people and make them Rockstars of gaming.
Anyway the turning point happened sometime in the late eighties I guess, when they dropped the rockstar model (due to bigger getting teams) and finding out about annual sports sequals being cash cows with minimal effort.
Since then they rely on sequels or film licenses with already existing game mechanics and gobbeling up excellent development houses and running them into the ground while exploiting their franchises.
Actually Will Wright currently has sort of a special status by EA.
EA wanted to ax his development the Sims, because it neither fit into any genre nor was it a sequel to something existing. (About the genre, they probably did not know the people simulation games of the mid eighties like LCP)
Anyway Wright managed to have the game published despite the internal objections within the EA management and it developed into one of the biggest long running cash cows of EA ever.
After that Will Wrigt probably for now has the status to do everything what he wants to do without anyone within the EA management saying one word of critic.
That the article in its rant simply ommitted the excellent Sonic on the Nintendo Ds, this is probably the one all the Sonic fans have been waiting for.
Dawn of Sorrow on the DS does...
And yes I have this game and can see its merits, but I cannot see the high praise
of the series, after the 20th rehash of the sidescrolling beatemup concept it really is.
Actually you cannot judget Europe by Europe, where I live central europe, the day the ds lite was launched it was reported to be sold out all over europe, and yet I was walking in the afternoon three days later into the next electronics superstore and there it was sitting happily in one corner in about a dozend boxes waiting to be picked up next to a measly DS games shelve half filled with gba games, while the PSP had its own shelve five times as big...
Anyway I had no troubles to get the DS lite. And yes the DS is highly successful, but given this experience I highly doubt any crowds on the 8th at least in the area where I live. I will be there at 9 am when the store opens I will walk in pick a box, and go home happily.
Just because I was digging into the whole thing. On question arises, as it seems the whole radiation investigation seems to be centered around the planes and certain locations in england.
But not the airports. But the Polonium must have passed certain focal points in the airports
of moskwa and london as well (especially the normal luggage areas for the hand or the
normal luggage)
Just a minor question regarding this, how much possibility is there that some contamination in a long term bad dosage still can happen on russian or london airports through to luggage contamination or whatever.
I assume by now the chances are close to zero due to cleaning and natural influences, like wind etc...
But can anyone with a clue share more insight into this. It seems strange to me that only the planes were really
constantly in the news, while I heard nothing about having certain areas on the affected airports being deconaminated.
over 1 million units, they currently are at 1.1 mio units sold according to http://www.nexgenwars.com/
and by the end of next week they will hit the 2 mio marks, because the rollouts in europe and
Australia are still to be done.
And Europe alone will count for 600.000 while Europe is not that Nintendo crazy, I do not expect lines
as long as in Japan or the USA, it still will sellout within the first day, I assume.
The reason why Europe is not as Nintendo crazy as the rest is easily explained, they usually charge the highest prices while often if not always are the last to get the releases. Big vendors do not push Nintendo too much over here due to many reasons (the average ds corner in the big stores over here in central europe is more like ok we have it too, but we want to sell PSPs). Or to some it up in other words, Nintendo Europe is a bunch of morons who really should get their act together, the same goes for Apple Europe!
Speaking of finanical harm, web development usually is like that 50% of the time is spent to bring the application up to the requested specificatoon the rest of the 50% is spent on bending the html code to make it work on ie as well.
I am not talking about the harm done by the security leaks and that Microsoft simply stopped development for six years after gaining enough market share to have a monopoly, I am talking about the financial harm done to pretty much everyone paying for web development because IE has to be supported!
About 20-60.000 consoles went on bay many still are unsold in their second or third round.
Why prices are so high, easy explanation, people do not want to sell it at a loss after standing in the line for days, second explanation, already given by a lot of people who have friends who tried to dump it on bay, lots of joke bidders driving the prices high, but not buying the consoles.
The fact is that the prices of the consoles sold are almost if not at the same region as you can get the thing in the stores.
Dont worry fanboy, Sony will sell millions of these things, it is good hardware, but not at the current price, they have to get prices down!
So you trust a fishy site more, than a greek historian, who went to egypt 200 BC and asked the people themselves?
He was not talking about Atlantis, he was talking about soil ramps used to move the stones upward via workers.
Btw. the entire Atlantis thing is fishy, none of the historical sources talk about any advanced civilisation and the main source we have only uses atlantis as an example to push his matters of philosophy.
If atlantis ever existed, it probably was only at the height of the greek civilisation, if at all.
I think Herodot is the only reliable source we have in this matter, he basically could talk to the people who still had the knowlegde of how the pyriamids were built and he was talking about ramps made of soil which sounds very reasonable.
Not quite true, the roman empire basically started after the wars against Hannibal.
Rome has been an expanding dominating force way longer, romans roots basically go back into 500-700BC and some form or the other of rome is way older basically starting with the founding of a trade outpost in the tiber swamps by the latinians.
The ties to greece always have been strong due to greko outposts in the back then latinian areas, but the empire as idea itself started basically after the defeat of Hannibal.
Also the end of rome is not precise, we are dealing with two romes here, the western part which has a clear ending after the resignation of the last Emperor of Romulus Augustulus to Odoaker, and the eastern part with the defeat of the back then already Greek Eastern roman Empire to the Seljuk Turks in the 15h century.
But also the ending of the western part is not too precise legally, many people have worn the crown of the western roman emperors until 1918. After all the title western roman empire after the fall of rome was carried on first by Charlemangne and then later by the german emperors. (Hence the name, holy roman empire of german soil)
There is no reason why the title cannot be obtained again nowadays, after all you just need the pope.
Also the eastern roman Emperors title (Basileus at the time of the fall of Constantinople) has been legally carried on until 1918 by the russian Tzars, which have even a cleaner line into the roman empire than the western emperors.
The first tzar was married to a Byzantine princess and proclaimed himself Cesar (Tzar) after the fall of Constantinople.
So thins are quite fishy in the regards of the roman empire...
Hence you even could see the current EU as a logical inheritor to the western roman empire, and some people do.
EAs understanding is, that they cannot gain big market shares on a nintendo console. But face it they are wrong, there is only one reason why Nintendo has such a huge marketshare, they are gaming gods when it comes to their game quality, every game, although they constantly recycle franchises, has something to it, and very often innovative gameplay. There are other companies which are in the same league, Ubisoft to some degree lately, Bioware, Sega to some extent and Capcom also lately.
But EA is not one of them, there is a reason, why EA constantly only has mediocre success on Nintendo platforms, their games stick ultimately out as being half ass boring shovelware!
Sure Nintendo is a strong contender, but you can make a lot of money on Nintendo platforms, as Square lately which sold millons of final fantasies on the GBA and DS. The problem is, you have to keep up a very high quality to be in the same league as Nintendo, and one thing is for sure, whith their industrial shovelware approach EA definitely has lost this game at the start!
Actally more along the lines of 50 mio still a huge number, but the 110 mio ps2s are highly exaggerated given sonys track record of failing hardware, many users already are at their second or third console thanks to failing drives.
Slashdot Mirror
But Nintendo Europes internal launch seemed to be kind of chaotic (nothing more to expect from a company whose website only lists 7 european countries as countries where they accept registrations for for the consoles)
The funy thing is. I walked into the store at opening time, it was a rather huge electronics market, and they had about 20-30 consoles, 3 minutes after opening half of them have been gobbled up by students. No significant waiting line upfront however. Zelda instantly was sold out while most other third party titles were left alone (there was no rayman on the shelve and no trauma center to afair)
The funny thing is another store did not have any consoles in the open but had a bunch of Zeldas in one hidden corner.
Anyway, to the prices of the games. It is not too amusing that many vendors tried an upfront price hike of the games up to 60 euros, shortly before opening most of them dropped the prices of the games down to 55, but most of the games still are above the promised 50 euros, even nintendos own.
Some markets even tried that with the consoles, one having advertised the wii for 409 euros another one for 300.
Most of the markets however sold them for the standard 250.
I did not know that Zonk and Myiamoto were the same persons, thanks for enlighting me.
Actually the first Quake like fps was Ultima underworld and that one already had full physics, multiple levels etc... bridges gaps etc... and full environmental interaction, and ghasp it came out months before castle wolfenstein 3d. Just to show how advanced the Looking Glass games really were :-)
Nintendo has done online multiplayer before, Mario Kart 32 is one fine example of excellent online multiplayer capabilities.
Actually lately Nintendos sales are spectacular, look at the DS 20 mio consoles sold and no end, and the Wii seems to become a success as well.
Actually given nintendos first party sales numbers, I think their biggest cash cow is the software, but they act more wisely that they want to earn on the hardware as well, they cannot run into financial problems that way. This is one of the reasons why they usually are more on the conservative side regarding the hardware used. They probably earned more on the cube and its games than Sony did on the PS2 regardless of being the last in the sheer numbers, but the cube situation wont repeat itself with the Wii as it seems, it is going strong in every region and Europe also will sell out.
Given that the gamecubes were rock solid machines and almost never failed while most sony first timers already are at their third consoles the numbers of owners are more relative. It is more likeley 20 mio cubs compared to 40 mio ps2s by now.
Actually Rayman and Trauma Center can stand on its own, if you are into mini games and totally new concepts. I have seen trauma center on the DS, it is not my cup of tea, but the game itself is excellent and you given the comments on the wii version, I assume it even would stand on its own with 500 shovelware titles like on any console being out for 3-4 years. The DS version still is one of the best games on that console even with about 500 games already release for the ds and about 400 of them being shovelware.
Actually elebits is one of the games I expect from the wii, a small conceptual highly interesting game only doable with a mouse or the wiimote. I expect way more interesting stuff for the Wii than ever has been for the cube. It is pretty much like the DS compared to the GBA. On the GBA, tons of shovelware almost no gems. The DS has this 1-2 really weird but interesting titles coming out every 1-2 months which are hidden under tons of shovelware, but make it. Project rub for instance has been one, trauma center, then the first real point and click adventures on a console etc.... So far the lineup in the wii looks very interesting since many companies currently toy with the input system and seem to give the devs more freedom than on the other consoles, to make smaller but more interesting games. Also in the long run I expect excellent perso 2 person sport games. Wii sports is an indicator that a very good tennis simulation might be possible or even something like decathlon on the c64 which in this concept has not been done with current gen tech for a long time.
EA in the early days did not develop themselves, they basically gave the implementors the full name rights, because their first approach was the popstar model. The game designer/implementor was supposed to become a popstar. If they had the rooms and machines for development I did not know. But the boundary between publisher and development studio was not really there back then, it was fluid, because development studio used to be exactly one person in most cases so EA might also have had those people employed like a normal development house.
Anyway the examples of what you metioned was the early EA times, and yes back then EAs output was amazing you just could buy anything from EA and you could be sure it was something never done before. The publishing of names of the designers, was EAs business model. Get the best people and make them Rockstars of gaming.
Anyway the turning point happened sometime in the late eighties I guess, when they dropped the rockstar model (due to bigger getting teams) and finding out about annual sports sequals being cash cows with minimal effort.
Since then they rely on sequels or film licenses with already existing game mechanics and gobbeling up excellent development houses and running them into the ground while exploiting their franchises.
Actually Will Wright currently has sort of a special status by EA. EA wanted to ax his development the Sims, because it neither fit into any genre nor was it a sequel to something existing. (About the genre, they probably did not know the people simulation games of the mid eighties like LCP) Anyway Wright managed to have the game published despite the internal objections within the EA management and it developed into one of the biggest long running cash cows of EA ever. After that Will Wrigt probably for now has the status to do everything what he wants to do without anyone within the EA management saying one word of critic.
That the article in its rant simply ommitted the excellent Sonic on the Nintendo Ds, this is probably the one all the Sonic fans have been waiting for.
Dawn of Sorrow on the DS does... And yes I have this game and can see its merits, but I cannot see the high praise of the series, after the 20th rehash of the sidescrolling beatemup concept it really is.
In case of the wii the numbers are very clear... USA roughly 700.000, sold out. Japan 400.000 sold out.
Actually you cannot judget Europe by Europe, where I live central europe, the day the ds lite was launched it was reported to be sold out all over europe, and yet I was walking in the afternoon three days later into the next electronics superstore and there it was sitting happily in one corner in about a dozend boxes waiting to be picked up next to a measly DS games shelve half filled with gba games, while the PSP had its own shelve five times as big... Anyway I had no troubles to get the DS lite. And yes the DS is highly successful, but given this experience I highly doubt any crowds on the 8th at least in the area where I live. I will be there at 9 am when the store opens I will walk in pick a box, and go home happily.
Just because I was digging into the whole thing. On question arises, as it seems the whole radiation investigation seems to be centered around the planes and certain locations in england. But not the airports. But the Polonium must have passed certain focal points in the airports of moskwa and london as well (especially the normal luggage areas for the hand or the normal luggage) Just a minor question regarding this, how much possibility is there that some contamination in a long term bad dosage still can happen on russian or london airports through to luggage contamination or whatever. I assume by now the chances are close to zero due to cleaning and natural influences, like wind etc... But can anyone with a clue share more insight into this. It seems strange to me that only the planes were really constantly in the news, while I heard nothing about having certain areas on the affected airports being deconaminated.
In other words, if Microsoft had to pay for the harm done by their embrace and extend tactics, they probably would have gone bankrupt by now.
over 1 million units, they currently are at 1.1 mio units sold according to http://www.nexgenwars.com/ and by the end of next week they will hit the 2 mio marks, because the rollouts in europe and Australia are still to be done.
And Europe alone will count for 600.000 while Europe is not that Nintendo crazy, I do not expect lines as long as in Japan or the USA, it still will sellout within the first day, I assume.
The reason why Europe is not as Nintendo crazy as the rest is easily explained, they usually charge the highest prices while often if not always are the last to get the releases. Big vendors do not push Nintendo too much over here due to many reasons (the average ds corner in the big stores over here in central europe is more like ok we have it too, but we want to sell PSPs). Or to some it up in other words, Nintendo Europe is a bunch of morons who really should get their act together, the same goes for Apple Europe!
Speaking of finanical harm, web development usually is like that 50% of the time is spent to bring the application up to the requested specificatoon the rest of the 50% is spent on bending the html code to make it work on ie as well. I am not talking about the harm done by the security leaks and that Microsoft simply stopped development for six years after gaining enough market share to have a monopoly, I am talking about the financial harm done to pretty much everyone paying for web development because IE has to be supported!
About 20-60.000 consoles went on bay many still are unsold in their second or third round. Why prices are so high, easy explanation, people do not want to sell it at a loss after standing in the line for days, second explanation, already given by a lot of people who have friends who tried to dump it on bay, lots of joke bidders driving the prices high, but not buying the consoles. The fact is that the prices of the consoles sold are almost if not at the same region as you can get the thing in the stores. Dont worry fanboy, Sony will sell millions of these things, it is good hardware, but not at the current price, they have to get prices down!
So you trust a fishy site more, than a greek historian, who went to egypt 200 BC and asked the people themselves? He was not talking about Atlantis, he was talking about soil ramps used to move the stones upward via workers. Btw. the entire Atlantis thing is fishy, none of the historical sources talk about any advanced civilisation and the main source we have only uses atlantis as an example to push his matters of philosophy. If atlantis ever existed, it probably was only at the height of the greek civilisation, if at all.
I think Herodot is the only reliable source we have in this matter, he basically could talk to the people who still had the knowlegde of how the pyriamids were built and he was talking about ramps made of soil which sounds very reasonable.
Not quite true, the roman empire basically started after the wars against Hannibal. Rome has been an expanding dominating force way longer, romans roots basically go back into 500-700BC and some form or the other of rome is way older basically starting with the founding of a trade outpost in the tiber swamps by the latinians. The ties to greece always have been strong due to greko outposts in the back then latinian areas, but the empire as idea itself started basically after the defeat of Hannibal. Also the end of rome is not precise, we are dealing with two romes here, the western part which has a clear ending after the resignation of the last Emperor of Romulus Augustulus to Odoaker, and the eastern part with the defeat of the back then already Greek Eastern roman Empire to the Seljuk Turks in the 15h century. But also the ending of the western part is not too precise legally, many people have worn the crown of the western roman emperors until 1918. After all the title western roman empire after the fall of rome was carried on first by Charlemangne and then later by the german emperors. (Hence the name, holy roman empire of german soil) There is no reason why the title cannot be obtained again nowadays, after all you just need the pope. Also the eastern roman Emperors title (Basileus at the time of the fall of Constantinople) has been legally carried on until 1918 by the russian Tzars, which have even a cleaner line into the roman empire than the western emperors. The first tzar was married to a Byzantine princess and proclaimed himself Cesar (Tzar) after the fall of Constantinople. So thins are quite fishy in the regards of the roman empire... Hence you even could see the current EU as a logical inheritor to the western roman empire, and some people do.
EAs understanding is, that they cannot gain big market shares on a nintendo console. But face it they are wrong, there is only one reason why Nintendo has such a huge marketshare, they are gaming gods when it comes to their game quality, every game, although they constantly recycle franchises, has something to it, and very often innovative gameplay. There are other companies which are in the same league, Ubisoft to some degree lately, Bioware, Sega to some extent and Capcom also lately. But EA is not one of them, there is a reason, why EA constantly only has mediocre success on Nintendo platforms, their games stick ultimately out as being half ass boring shovelware! Sure Nintendo is a strong contender, but you can make a lot of money on Nintendo platforms, as Square lately which sold millons of final fantasies on the GBA and DS. The problem is, you have to keep up a very high quality to be in the same league as Nintendo, and one thing is for sure, whith their industrial shovelware approach EA definitely has lost this game at the start!
Actally more along the lines of 50 mio still a huge number, but the 110 mio ps2s are highly exaggerated given sonys track record of failing hardware, many users already are at their second or third console thanks to failing drives.