Third parties expected the PS3 to win before finding out it was $599. Post E3 2006 there was a bit of a shift and some companies scrambled to change direction (Ubisoft somehow pumped out eight titles for Wii launch, as an example).
Actualy the PS2 was panned as a failure due to low sales and few games and was predicted to be destroyed by the faster Xbox.
"Low sales": PS2 hit a million within three weeks in Japan, and PS3 has yet to do so in six months. PS2 in the post holiday season was selling 400k per month in North America, compared to Dreamcast's 100k. PS3 by comparison is selling 100k per month compared to the Wii's 300k.
"Few games": The documentation on this isn't very good, but I believe it had more games than any of PS3, Wii, or 360 had at launch this time (just based on searching gamerankings for PS2 games released in the year 2000--42 beats all three next gen systems for their respective launch windows).
This is the sorta thing people forget
I remember it quite well, actually. The problem was that the claims came from the Videogame Press, which at the time I assumed were brilliant specialists, but as it turns out are amateurs who would never get a job as a real Journalist. I mean, if you listened to the videogame Press, XBox was doomed to failure due to its controller, PS2 was doomed to failure as it was "hard to develop for" and broke "constantly", and Gamecube was doomed to failure because nobody over the age of five plays Nintendo. This left the Dreamcast as the clear undisputed winner. (I actually came to similar conclusions--I mean it had the head start, was easy to program for, the lowest price point, etc).
The problem with these armchair analysts was that they were focusing on the wrong things. For instance, they should have focused on perceived market direction from the third parties (EA made almost zero Dreamcast games). Nearly every third party when interviewed said they expected the PS2 to win.
My first instinct is that sure, the Wii would be more powerful as it has about 50% more RAM than the XBox 1. However, it doesn't have custom shader operations, so it's possible that to for it to perform the same effects the XBox1 pulls off it would be bottlenecked at the GPU. The reports I've read on Wii shader limitations have been inconclusive on that point. And other than RAM and Shaders, the Wii is mostly an overclocked Gamecube (so not very far from an XBox 1).
Though, honestly my expertise is much more software-oriented rather than hardware-oriented, so I was really hopeing some Slashdot post would provide a detailed breakdown.
What third parties care about is software sales rather than hardware, and right now 360 is doing that better than any other platform (since it seems that 360 owners buy two or three times as many games as anyone else in the same time period, and they have a larger install base to boot). It doesn't hurt that 360 dev kits are small enough (physically) to be placed at every developer's desk and have already been distributed to every studio on the planet. Don't expect third parties to shift heavily away from 360 anytime soon (and by the same token expect 90% of PS3 games to be effectively 360 ports for the next couple years).
On hardcore third party Wii games, there is Trauma Center. On simple fun group games there is Rayman Raving Rabids. It's not that there are zero third parties making the games you want, just not many (that'll probably change).
I really don't care how well the Wii is selling, that has no bearing whatsoever on the sales numbers for the PS3 itself.
True. For instance, PSP, while not reaching DS levels, is still ahead of the combined sales of Wii, PS3, and 360 right now.
The PS3 has sold well, not astoundingly, but well enough to have a large installed base.
False. During the holliday season it was hampered by supply; it didn't look that bad when compared to its competitiors because everyone had major supply issues at launch this generation, but weak launch supply does not make for a large installed base. Post-holiday numbers have been weak--in Japan consistently underperforming what the Gamecube did in Japan (Japan being the region where Gamecube performed worst). Getting outsold each month by the original obsolete GBA in North America. Nobody cares about Europe (and Sony only just launched there so we don't know what the monthly numbers will settle to; launch was good thanks to supply, though). This doesn't add up to a large installed base.
And just on a personal note, I know two people who got PS3s only as a Blu-Ray Player. One of them's a gamer and will buy PS3 games eventually, the other is not. Point is, the PS3 install base as a gaming device is likely actually lower than the sales would suggest.
Basically, demand for consoles (in the absence of the hit games) should be satisified before the game increases console demand. Anything else would be lost sales.
Not necessarily. I actually know someone who got bored of their Wii and sold it already. Shortages or not, it's better if current owners don't treat the Wii like Tickle-me-Elmo and throw the thing into a closet after a couple months. Or put another way: supposing the Wii remained sold out through 2007, I don't think it would be a good idea for Nintendo to respond to this by delaying Mario, Metroid, and Smash to 2008.
Games: cost $50 (or $60 for next gen)
Movies: cost $10
If 100% of the population goes to the theatres once a month, and 20% of the population buys a game once a month, the games will bring in more revenue...but won't be "mainstream".
From another angle, the last movie I watched I could tell my parents and siblings to watch, and they may or may not like my taste, but they'd probably watch it to see what the fuss is about. The last game I played I could tell my parents and siblings to play, and they wouldn't (unless I was there with them as an extra hand to lead them through the tutorial, and even after they learn the controls they would never pick up the game on their own).
Also 500k sold in a quarter, albeit a quiet quarter, is appalling at this stage in the game.
No, 500k shipped in a quarter. They sold more than that in the USA alone based on NPD numbers. Here's what happened: they overshipped during holiday 2006 just to say that "we hit our 10 million shipped target for 2006" (they actually reached 10.4 million) so lots of retailers had stockpiles of unsold 360s for this quarter.
No competition? Nah, if nothing else the Wii needs to compete with the DS and the PS2. The DS has continued to outsell the Wii by a dramatic margin, and the PS2 has fluctuated back and forth (driven by what's coming out for the system; Guitar Hero 2 and God of War 2 both caused sales spikes).
But I think there isn't a person who doubts that the Wii will catch Microsoft by year's end.
Worldwide? That'll probably happen, but I do have doubts (if 360 sold exactly like last year, which it has so far, it'll hit 17 million; the Wii's currently selling a million a month, which would only put them at 15 million). In North America? No chance in hell. (The Wii would need to outsell the 360 by an average of 400,000 units per month for the rest of the year, whereas it has yet to beat the 360 by more than 150,000 units. Oh, and the 360's got Halo 3, GTA4, and the possibility of a price drop on the way, so it's not likely to just roll over on the holidays). In Japan? It already happened the day the Wii launched. In Europe the Wii will probably pass the 360 this year, but as always European charts aren't tracked too meticulously so I can't really point to any trends, again leaving me with some uncertainty.
More people play WoW than people who have PS3s, XBox 360s and WIIs (according to the Times Online).
Last press release WoW had hit 8 million subscribers. There are about 19 million next-gen consoles in homes worldwide (9-10 million 360s, 6-7 million Wiis, 3 million PS3s). Now, obviously some people will own more than one next-gen console, but based on GameFAQs that's only about 30% of next-gen console owners (and GameFAQs users are more hardcore than the general public, hence more likely to own multiple systems) so...you're still left with a good 15 million next-gen console owners. (Roughly double that of WoW's subscrption rate).
And...even if home consoles are deemed a failure this time around, portables certainly are not (having roughly 60 million between the PSP and DS, roughly eight times the WoW subscription rate. Though naturally the new portables have been on the market for longer. Almost as long as WoW's been on the market, in fact...).
One thing I will note is that...about 15 years ago a friend of mine polled his classmates about "Super Mario Bros 2 or Super Mario Bros 3" and everyone, everyone in the class (male and female) had an oppinion.
Nowadays games have become very audience-specialized. For instance, the two top-selling franchises right now are Grand Theft Auto and Pokemon--how many people can you find that play and enjoy both? Off the top of my head I'm actually struggling to think of a single accquaintance who enjoys one and doesn't turn up their nose at the other.
Unless you've actually programmed for those systems
I have. I can tell you, for instance, that for Gamecube, Nintendo decided to define int as s64 (WHY NINTENDO? WHY?)
Mind you, I might not fit Slashdot's definition of "programmed" in that I spent my time looking at C++, not assembly, and didn't write the engine from the ground up myself, rather joined a programming team of 10+ mid-way through. (I am -now- doing engine work, but for a 360/PS3 title).
I'm not going to claim to be the world's expert on Gamecube, far from it, but my coworkers as well as some friends I have who work at EA all have relatively similar oppinions (roughly XBox > GC > PS2, with GC having some unique quirks that mean you can't just copy code from PS2 to GC, whereas you generally can just copy from PS2 to XBox).
You know, in my personal experience as a developer, for any reasonably modern system you can largely determine the power by looking at the RAM. The RAM determines how many polygons you can have, how detailed your textures can be, and if you run out of RAM, you crash. CPU/GPU etc mostly just determine framerate after you've squeezed all that content into the RAM. And at any rate, RAM is expensive so the console manufacturers never give us more than we can use.
*Gamecube has 24 MB of RAM, and 16 MB of nigh-unusuable crappy DRAM.
*PS2 I remember having effectively 28 MB of RAM (Wikipedia's claiming 32 MB, though, so it's possible I'm thinking PSP)
*XBox has 64 MB of RAM
This pretty much lines up with my experience. XBox is blatantly the strongest of the lot. Gamecube can theoretically beat the PS2 if you have a good plan for that sucktastic DRAM, it just requires specific optimizations. Most of the time multiplatform code will struggle on Gamecube, though.
As someone who's worked on a multiplatform Activision game, I can tell you that the size of the GameCube disk was never an issue for us. In fact, early in development we'd burn CDs for the PS2 version as they're cheaper to burn than DVDs (they just have longer load times), and CDs are dramatically smaller than Gamecube disks.
As a similar example, making PSP shovelware has never been a storage issue in the slightest for us, despite UMDs having less storage space than DVDs. Really, the only companies that fill up the storage space on any modern disc system tend to be those using FMVs.
On the controller...it's nearly identical to a PS2/XBox controller. The only major difference I've found is that in God-of-War style sequences, when it says "push the ___ button", on the Gamecube that was always easy because I could look at the shape. On the PS2/XBox I'd be looking up and down at the pad because each button has some idiotically abstract name.
No, longer games used to work better because there would be situations like "oh, it's raining outside, and this is the 70s so television sucks. I guess we have to play board games. Which one will last all night?"
and Mario 64 was a relatively simple game, control-wise.
I disagree--now, yes, Mario 64 is a relatively simple game, control-wise by today's standards, which is likely what you meant.
At the time, however, nobody was used to manipulating the camera, and needed to be taught that all through tutorials, making it a functionally 8-button game--more buttons than the vast majority of previous console games. It also had a much higher number of character-states than was normal at the time: "in-air" "on-ground" "sliding" "crouching" "direction-reversing" "hitting wall" "Flight mode" "swiming mode" "last command was double-jump". I can think of about 10 different results for the A-button depending on state, 8 different results for the B-button, and 4 different results for the Z-button. Again, not the most complicated game of all time, but certainly a step up in control complexity (particularly compared to previous Marios that were nearly one-button affairs).
I believe you're missing the point.
To the best of my knowledge, every system which became the market leader in a region was #1 for hardware within a year of its launch in said region. This includes the SNES, which surpassed the Genesis' total sales within a year, despite the Genesis' two year lead. This includes the PS2, which surpassed the Dreamcast. This includes the PS1, which was always in the lead, even though the N64 came reasonably close to passing it during the early days of N64 hype.
However, a year after launch, it seems likely that the PS3 will still be dead last in North America, an extremely distant second in Japan (second only because the 360 is just selling that poorly in Japan) and...hard to say in Europe due to lack of data, but probably also last as it has so far to catch up.
Slow down there a minute. The PS3 initally had some 30 games planned for European launch (compared to the 15 it managed in North America and the 5 it managed in Japan). I realize that a bunch of those got delayed, but even considering that, waiting four months still strengthened the launch lineup quite a lot.
Yes, the PS3 was not as supply-contstrained in December, the key selling month, and so it is slightly ahead overall for the first four months.
So what? The first four months of the 360 were disasterous due to supply. Microsoft haters delighted in pointing out that it was wayyy behind the first four Dreamcast months. As it happens, the PS3 is also wellbehind the first four months of the Dreamcast. (And it should be noted that it's behind in both hardware and software, whereas 360 was only behind on hardware).
"If"? This is Pokemon we're talking about. The only main Pokemon to be outsold by a non pack-in game was Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire (outsold by such lightweights as Super Mario Bros 3 and the Sims) and if Japan is any indication, Diamond/Pearl is set to do better than Ruby/Sapphire.
* no games. Can anyone who doesn't have a PS3 name two games currently available for it not available anywhere else?
VF5 (for now), Motorstorm, Resistance: Fall of Man, a pair of Gundam games only released in Japan which my Japanophile friends seem to care about, and the Giant Enemy Crab game (hey, if someone offered me a free PS3 and Genji, I'd play it for humor reasons). That's 6 I can think of, and no I don't own a PS3.
* halfhearted online/multiplayer. The 360, MS device or no, has set the bar, and whether or not you think it's high enough, the PS3 doesn't come close to it.
The XBox also had better online than the PS2 too. Really, what were you expecting? Online is the XBox specialty, and it's extremely unlikely that anyone will pass them anytime soon.
* bad word of mouth. Hardcore gamers are turned off due to the lack of games and crappy multiplayer.
* marketing. What the HELL is with the PS3 ads? Sony thinks no one will ever use the full power of the console? Even to non-gamers, they sound clueless.
The PS3 ads were actually good by Sony standards, I thought.
* nothing new. While the PS3 is technically the same generation as the 360 and Wii, what is it offering that they don't?
Blu-Ray. Both motion sensing and HD at the same time (at least one upcomming exclusive (Lair) has claimed that it couldn't be done on 360 or Wii). It also runs a lot quieter than the 360 from all I've heard (and is also less prone to overheating?)
Honestly, I think nearly all of the PS3 issues just come back to price. When the price was announced, I know a lot of people who just stopped following previews for PS3 games, making for a lot less word of mouth. Developers saw the price, and didn't think consumers would go for it and so started jumping ship. This made for more bad news which all the fanboys bitter about the price could shout about, and a less impressive lineup of games at retail. This combined with price made for lower sales, which made for more devleopers jumping ship, and so on in a vicious cycle. Yes, I know there are various other minor technical issues, but I'm also sure 99% of consumers don't know or care.
When they say "Dedicated gamers" they don't mean what you think of as dedicated gamers (just look at the lineups at E3--4 hour wait for the Wii, and barely any attention on PS3 or X360; you're not alone). What they mean is males age 12-24 who like Halo, GTA, and Madden, who care about graphics, and who can't understand why anyone would want a remote control instead of a real game controller--the more buttons the better, right? This is a much larger crowd than the E3-going, Penny Arcade-reading, Famitsu subscribers like you and me.
(Though, off-topic, I wouldn't mind a quick game of Tribes: Vengance... >_>).
The DS has been dominating in Japan, yes, but not so much in the rest of the world. Looking at the May 2006 NPD sales we see PSP > GBA > NDS. Looking at the April 2006 NPD sales we see GBA > PSP > NDS. Yes, the NDS has led the pack for the past two months (thanks to the DS Lite) it's still nowhere near the boost that Japan saw from the DS Lite.
Japan is simply a different market. The most extreme example would be the XBox 360 (which has performed weaker so far than the original XBox in Japan, yet has a rather intimidating market share in North America--enough that it will probably keep the lead through 2007 regardless of how strong the competition). Yes: I do expect the Wii to take Japan. In North America, however, I expect it to be initially third, with a chance (but no guarantee) of changing that depending on what kind of word of mouth it gets.
Slashdot Mirror
Third parties expected the PS3 to win before finding out it was $599. Post E3 2006 there was a bit of a shift and some companies scrambled to change direction (Ubisoft somehow pumped out eight titles for Wii launch, as an example).
"Few games": The documentation on this isn't very good, but I believe it had more games than any of PS3, Wii, or 360 had at launch this time (just based on searching gamerankings for PS2 games released in the year 2000--42 beats all three next gen systems for their respective launch windows).
I remember it quite well, actually. The problem was that the claims came from the Videogame Press, which at the time I assumed were brilliant specialists, but as it turns out are amateurs who would never get a job as a real Journalist. I mean, if you listened to the videogame Press, XBox was doomed to failure due to its controller, PS2 was doomed to failure as it was "hard to develop for" and broke "constantly", and Gamecube was doomed to failure because nobody over the age of five plays Nintendo. This left the Dreamcast as the clear undisputed winner. (I actually came to similar conclusions--I mean it had the head start, was easy to program for, the lowest price point, etc).
The problem with these armchair analysts was that they were focusing on the wrong things. For instance, they should have focused on perceived market direction from the third parties (EA made almost zero Dreamcast games). Nearly every third party when interviewed said they expected the PS2 to win.
My first instinct is that sure, the Wii would be more powerful as it has about 50% more RAM than the XBox 1. However, it doesn't have custom shader operations, so it's possible that to for it to perform the same effects the XBox1 pulls off it would be bottlenecked at the GPU. The reports I've read on Wii shader limitations have been inconclusive on that point. And other than RAM and Shaders, the Wii is mostly an overclocked Gamecube (so not very far from an XBox 1).
Though, honestly my expertise is much more software-oriented rather than hardware-oriented, so I was really hopeing some Slashdot post would provide a detailed breakdown.
What third parties care about is software sales rather than hardware, and right now 360 is doing that better than any other platform (since it seems that 360 owners buy two or three times as many games as anyone else in the same time period, and they have a larger install base to boot). It doesn't hurt that 360 dev kits are small enough (physically) to be placed at every developer's desk and have already been distributed to every studio on the planet. Don't expect third parties to shift heavily away from 360 anytime soon (and by the same token expect 90% of PS3 games to be effectively 360 ports for the next couple years).
On hardcore third party Wii games, there is Trauma Center. On simple fun group games there is Rayman Raving Rabids. It's not that there are zero third parties making the games you want, just not many (that'll probably change).
And just on a personal note, I know two people who got PS3s only as a Blu-Ray Player. One of them's a gamer and will buy PS3 games eventually, the other is not. Point is, the PS3 install base as a gaming device is likely actually lower than the sales would suggest.
Not to mention that last I checked the Guitar Hero games were incompatible with the PS3 as it has no slots to plug in PS2 controllers.
No, not really.
Games: cost $50 (or $60 for next gen) Movies: cost $10
If 100% of the population goes to the theatres once a month, and 20% of the population buys a game once a month, the games will bring in more revenue...but won't be "mainstream".
From another angle, the last movie I watched I could tell my parents and siblings to watch, and they may or may not like my taste, but they'd probably watch it to see what the fuss is about. The last game I played I could tell my parents and siblings to play, and they wouldn't (unless I was there with them as an extra hand to lead them through the tutorial, and even after they learn the controls they would never pick up the game on their own).
No competition? Nah, if nothing else the Wii needs to compete with the DS and the PS2. The DS has continued to outsell the Wii by a dramatic margin, and the PS2 has fluctuated back and forth (driven by what's coming out for the system; Guitar Hero 2 and God of War 2 both caused sales spikes).
But I think there isn't a person who doubts that the Wii will catch Microsoft by year's end. Worldwide? That'll probably happen, but I do have doubts (if 360 sold exactly like last year, which it has so far, it'll hit 17 million; the Wii's currently selling a million a month, which would only put them at 15 million). In North America? No chance in hell. (The Wii would need to outsell the 360 by an average of 400,000 units per month for the rest of the year, whereas it has yet to beat the 360 by more than 150,000 units. Oh, and the 360's got Halo 3, GTA4, and the possibility of a price drop on the way, so it's not likely to just roll over on the holidays). In Japan? It already happened the day the Wii launched. In Europe the Wii will probably pass the 360 this year, but as always European charts aren't tracked too meticulously so I can't really point to any trends, again leaving me with some uncertainty.
And...even if home consoles are deemed a failure this time around, portables certainly are not (having roughly 60 million between the PSP and DS, roughly eight times the WoW subscription rate. Though naturally the new portables have been on the market for longer. Almost as long as WoW's been on the market, in fact...).
One thing I will note is that...about 15 years ago a friend of mine polled his classmates about "Super Mario Bros 2 or Super Mario Bros 3" and everyone, everyone in the class (male and female) had an oppinion.
Nowadays games have become very audience-specialized. For instance, the two top-selling franchises right now are Grand Theft Auto and Pokemon--how many people can you find that play and enjoy both? Off the top of my head I'm actually struggling to think of a single accquaintance who enjoys one and doesn't turn up their nose at the other.
I have. I can tell you, for instance, that for Gamecube, Nintendo decided to define int as s64 (WHY NINTENDO? WHY?)
Mind you, I might not fit Slashdot's definition of "programmed" in that I spent my time looking at C++, not assembly, and didn't write the engine from the ground up myself, rather joined a programming team of 10+ mid-way through. (I am -now- doing engine work, but for a 360/PS3 title).
I'm not going to claim to be the world's expert on Gamecube, far from it, but my coworkers as well as some friends I have who work at EA all have relatively similar oppinions (roughly XBox > GC > PS2, with GC having some unique quirks that mean you can't just copy code from PS2 to GC, whereas you generally can just copy from PS2 to XBox).
You know, in my personal experience as a developer, for any reasonably modern system you can largely determine the power by looking at the RAM. The RAM determines how many polygons you can have, how detailed your textures can be, and if you run out of RAM, you crash. CPU/GPU etc mostly just determine framerate after you've squeezed all that content into the RAM. And at any rate, RAM is expensive so the console manufacturers never give us more than we can use.
*Gamecube has 24 MB of RAM, and 16 MB of nigh-unusuable crappy DRAM.
*PS2 I remember having effectively 28 MB of RAM (Wikipedia's claiming 32 MB, though, so it's possible I'm thinking PSP)
*XBox has 64 MB of RAM
This pretty much lines up with my experience. XBox is blatantly the strongest of the lot. Gamecube can theoretically beat the PS2 if you have a good plan for that sucktastic DRAM, it just requires specific optimizations. Most of the time multiplatform code will struggle on Gamecube, though.
As someone who's worked on a multiplatform Activision game, I can tell you that the size of the GameCube disk was never an issue for us. In fact, early in development we'd burn CDs for the PS2 version as they're cheaper to burn than DVDs (they just have longer load times), and CDs are dramatically smaller than Gamecube disks.
As a similar example, making PSP shovelware has never been a storage issue in the slightest for us, despite UMDs having less storage space than DVDs. Really, the only companies that fill up the storage space on any modern disc system tend to be those using FMVs.
On the controller...it's nearly identical to a PS2/XBox controller. The only major difference I've found is that in God-of-War style sequences, when it says "push the ___ button", on the Gamecube that was always easy because I could look at the shape. On the PS2/XBox I'd be looking up and down at the pad because each button has some idiotically abstract name.
No, longer games used to work better because there would be situations like "oh, it's raining outside, and this is the 70s so television sucks. I guess we have to play board games. Which one will last all night?"
At the time, however, nobody was used to manipulating the camera, and needed to be taught that all through tutorials, making it a functionally 8-button game--more buttons than the vast majority of previous console games. It also had a much higher number of character-states than was normal at the time: "in-air" "on-ground" "sliding" "crouching" "direction-reversing" "hitting wall" "Flight mode" "swiming mode" "last command was double-jump". I can think of about 10 different results for the A-button depending on state, 8 different results for the B-button, and 4 different results for the Z-button. Again, not the most complicated game of all time, but certainly a step up in control complexity (particularly compared to previous Marios that were nearly one-button affairs).
I believe you're missing the point. To the best of my knowledge, every system which became the market leader in a region was #1 for hardware within a year of its launch in said region. This includes the SNES, which surpassed the Genesis' total sales within a year, despite the Genesis' two year lead. This includes the PS2, which surpassed the Dreamcast. This includes the PS1, which was always in the lead, even though the N64 came reasonably close to passing it during the early days of N64 hype. However, a year after launch, it seems likely that the PS3 will still be dead last in North America, an extremely distant second in Japan (second only because the 360 is just selling that poorly in Japan) and...hard to say in Europe due to lack of data, but probably also last as it has so far to catch up.
Yes, the PS3 was not as supply-contstrained in December, the key selling month, and so it is slightly ahead overall for the first four months.
So what? The first four months of the 360 were disasterous due to supply. Microsoft haters delighted in pointing out that it was wayyy behind the first four Dreamcast months. As it happens, the PS3 is also well behind the first four months of the Dreamcast. (And it should be noted that it's behind in both hardware and software, whereas 360 was only behind on hardware).
Poll taken in April (before $599 announcement): http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2340
Poll taken in May (after $599 announcement): http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2375
The PS3 ads were actually good by Sony standards, I thought. Blu-Ray. Both motion sensing and HD at the same time (at least one upcomming exclusive (Lair) has claimed that it couldn't be done on 360 or Wii). It also runs a lot quieter than the 360 from all I've heard (and is also less prone to overheating?)Honestly, I think nearly all of the PS3 issues just come back to price. When the price was announced, I know a lot of people who just stopped following previews for PS3 games, making for a lot less word of mouth. Developers saw the price, and didn't think consumers would go for it and so started jumping ship. This made for more bad news which all the fanboys bitter about the price could shout about, and a less impressive lineup of games at retail. This combined with price made for lower sales, which made for more devleopers jumping ship, and so on in a vicious cycle. Yes, I know there are various other minor technical issues, but I'm also sure 99% of consumers don't know or care.
(Though, off-topic, I wouldn't mind a quick game of Tribes: Vengance... >_>).
The DS has been dominating in Japan, yes, but not so much in the rest of the world. Looking at the May 2006 NPD sales we see PSP > GBA > NDS. Looking at the April 2006 NPD sales we see GBA > PSP > NDS. Yes, the NDS has led the pack for the past two months (thanks to the DS Lite) it's still nowhere near the boost that Japan saw from the DS Lite.
Japan is simply a different market. The most extreme example would be the XBox 360 (which has performed weaker so far than the original XBox in Japan, yet has a rather intimidating market share in North America--enough that it will probably keep the lead through 2007 regardless of how strong the competition). Yes: I do expect the Wii to take Japan. In North America, however, I expect it to be initially third, with a chance (but no guarantee) of changing that depending on what kind of word of mouth it gets.