Oh, I don't know. Maybe because they're competing in the same market space?
I wasn't aware that Snakes on a Plane was the sequel to a universally-panned movie. You know, because that's the only way your comparison could possibly make any sense.
For a sales comparison that's actually relevant, let's take a look at the opening weekend of the first Anaconda movie:
Opening Weekend $16,620,887 (USA) (13 April 1997) (2,456 Screens)
That would be in 1997 dollars, of course. And I'm not sure what could've happened in the past decade to drastically change people's opinions on snake movies, so I can only assume you went with the comparison with this movie's sequel so your argument would look like it had some legitimacy. Which it doesn't.
You really have no clue, do you? BTW, I like your attempts to compare Snakes on a Plane's returns (campy B-Movie on a relatively low budget) to Pirates of the Caribbean (a high budget flick). Never mind that Pirates had 6 times the budget as Snakes on a Plane, SoaP must be a failure because it doesn't do better in absolute numbers.
OK, so you've completely missed the point of the argument, which is that the PS3 is the "high-budget flick" while the Wii is the "campy B-movie" with the stupid name. Fine, then.
Considering that you have been setting up strawmen, aruging with non-points, and generally stiring up trouble in thread, I'd say this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
OK, now I know you're just trolling me. What could the sales figures of Anacondas, the sequel to a universally-panned movie, possibly have to do with the sales figures of Snakes on a Plane?
"Gameboy" and "Playstation" are generically bad, yes. But "Wii" is offensively bad. So bad that comic supervillains would thumb their noses at it. Moreover, it was a replacement for "Revolution," a better name on pretty much every level.
Whether it makes $15M on opening weekend or $5, either way it's a piece of crap. And also not a very impressive performance, especially since it was a weak weekend. Put Snakes on a Plane up against the opening weekend of Pirates of the Caribbean and you'd have a pretty good analogy (well, as far as an analogy like this goes, anyway) for the PS3/Wii launch period.
But I really don't think the wiimote, or Nintendo's 'non-gamer' strategy are reasons to be skeptical. It all comes down to one thing: the software.
Absolutely. And the Wiimote and Nintendo's non-gamer strategy are reasons to be skeptical about the software.
Otherwise, it's unclear to me what could happen to this next generation, as, even in the absence of a successful Nintendo, I think we'll see a decline in Sony's market share, while MS's 360 is languishing in mediocrity.
Unless you're point is that the PS3 will get it's ass severely kicked, i fear not.
Of course you don't. You're automatically assuming that Nintendo will win and Sony will lose simply because of how you feel about both companies. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm pretty strongly anti-post-16-bit-Nintendo, but I'm still trying to keep my bias apart from my reasoning.
Anyway, the point that you missed is that the PS3 is in the same position that the DS was, and that the Wii is in the same position that the PSP was. Both the PS3 and the DS are the big consoles while the Wii and the PSP are the interlopers, and both the PS3 and the DS were widely criticized before (and even during in the case of the DS) their launches while the Wii and the PSP were hyped up as giant-killers. But the DS still has a firm grasp on the portable market with the PSP grabbing what little it can from the few portable gamers who are outside of Nintendo's marketbase.
More like they opted out, they didn't consider it viable.
And they didn't consider it viable because they couldn't do it. They even proved that they couldn't do it with the Gamecube.
Are they? Dammit, I didn't realize that full GC compatibility
Why not just keep your Gamecube?
virtual console
Those are old games. What about the new games? Oh, BTW, that's meant to cater to the old Nintendo fanbase, the guys who haven't played games in years, not the current one.
GC pad slots
As above.
"classic" controller
Which Nintendo will certainly discourage the use of for new games, since the whole system is based around the Wiimote.
Good ol' mario and link
And what else? If all Nintendo can provide to the fanboys are a few first-party franchises, with the rest of the system being designed for non-gamers, how is that not dismissive of the fanboys? "They'll buy it anyway, who cares!"
meant that they were saying "screw you" to their current fanboy base.
No, I don't mean that at all, but that's a really nice straw man you set up, there!
Perhaps you can explain what you do mean by it, then.
Yes, you're right... only three of the *biggest companies in videogaming history*.
And I presume that companies with large amounts of marketshare are supposed to be small?
Other than coming out a nearly a year late with a product that's at least a hundred dollars more expensive than it's nearest competitor while tying it down to a media format that has the potential to completely flop in the marketplace while adding frankly unneeded expense. Did I mention that the product is also tied to hardware with very low yields, and exceedingly high development complexity? Heck, I haven't even touched on their apparent disdain for their customers (rootkit, anyone?)...
You mean like the PS2? The only thing that you said that doesn't also apply to that system is the media concern. And even that partially applies because a big part of the PS2's market value (and its price) at the time was its DVD capabilities. Since BluRay is supposed to be the next generation of optical disc (unlike the N64's cartridges and the Gamecube's mini-discs), the analogy is not far off. Sure it has competition with HD-DVD, but the fact that that can't be played on the XBox 360 without an addon and the fact that there will be no HD-DVD games make that competition look much weaker than it did a year back.
And shut up about the goddamn rootkit already. Like Nintendo wouldn't do something similar if it had any interests in the music industry.
But I really think Nintendo has a chance to significantly increase their market share this time around, both by cutting into the Sony/Microsoft customer base, *and* by expanding the market itself.
Well, you have a lot more faith in Nintendo than I do.
No, but apparently I'm the only one who remembers why they were so Draconian.
Hello? Video Game Crash of '83/'84 mean anything to anyone?
How about the word "overreaction"?
The crash had nothing to do with games being prurient; it had to do with them being bad. So the censorship policy was pointless (not to mention vague and haphazard). And quality control doesn't require higher licensing fees, just stricter licensing policies. And it was very easy to have stricter licensing policies than Atari did; just keep people from releasing games on your console with no oversight whatsoever. The publisher's limit wasn't necessary nor was it very effective; a number of companies created subsidiaries to publish games for them, such as Konami's Ultra and Acclaim's LJN.
So what? The DS' stylus was still called a useless gimmick, the PSP was coming with a better screen, a higher resolution and much better 3D processing (no batteries though).
Yes, sort of like how the PS3 is being called a giant waste of money while the Wii is coming out cheaper and with a unique controller.
Do you see my point now?
I [don't] think that they were somehow "forced" to do it
They definitely were. Perhaps they think that it's a good idea, but they were still taking market considerations into account when they came up with it. Nintendo simply can't compete directly with either Sony or Microsoft as is, so the only way out of the hole is to do something different to grab people who don't play consoles or games in general. If Nintendo thought that it would make them money, they wouldn't bother with radically changing the hardware and instead focus on making the creative games that they've always made. Better to be creative in that way than to take a big chance on a controller that makes porting to or from your system prohibitively hard and doesn't necessarily add much to your games. (Instead they would've released the Wiimote as an accessory with some game, say Twilight Princess.)
The funny thing about all of this is that Nintendo is basically saying "screw you" to its current fanboy base, and said base still doesn't realize it.
What do you mean by "interested"? Do you mean in the same way that Square was "interested" in the Gamecube, so they decided to release a throwaway game that most people didn't like for it, while continuing to release their major games only on the PS2?
The marketshare of the previous system has a massive impact on developers' perceptions of the new system. Only three companies have had huge losses of marketshare between generations:
1. Atari (Atari 2600->Atari 7800): The Video-Game Crash of 1984 happened, caused by some spectacular mistakes by Atari such as lack of control over third-parties, poor quality assurance, and spending tons of money on movie licenses.
2. Sega (Genesis->Saturn): A bunch of boneheaded decisions, such as developing overpriced and underpowered addons then cutting off their support early, and allowing the base that they'd built with the Genesis to slip away in the process.
3. Nintendo (Super Nintendo->Nintendo 64): Developers got fed up with Nintendo's hostile policies towards them. This coupled with Sony's new console, which was actually given to them by Nintendo, turned the company from 800-pound gorilla to has-been in just a few years.
There are no indications that Sony has yet made any mistakes regarding the PS3 that are quite of the magnitude of any of these. The worst thing anyone can say about it is the price, which is really not a huge deal considering what eBay looked like when the PS2 came out. And as someone said before, Salon made the same arguments against the PS2, and look how it turned out. Of course, it should also be noted that even if the PS3 were to fail, it's far more likely that most of its marketshare would go to the XBox 360.
As for Nintendo, certainly no one can say that the DS was hindered by mistakes. The dual-screen setup was questioned (and indeed has turned out to be mostly a non-factor) and the launch was shaky, but these are not problems that developers will be turned off by, especially when the only competition was the PSP, which was also beset by a number of problems.
But the Wii is different; it's in the opposite position of being third in the American marketplace. Just as a top company has to make horrific mistakes to fail in this market, so does an underdog have to win some stunning victories to make a giant leap to the top. Again, the best thing that people can say about the Wii for certain is that it has a low price, at least compared to the alternatives. The controller is all potential with very little substance as of yet. And getting ports from ubiquitous companies like EA is not exactly the same as stealing Square from Sony as they did to them ten years ago.
See, that's why I said "questionable" instead of "completely retarded." Unlike most of the fanboys around here, I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm not a psychic.
BTW, I should also note that the gimmick that the DS won on was the touchscreen, not the dual-screens that Nintendo was focusing on at first and that the system was named after. And it barely even counts as a gimmick; PDAs had had good touchscreens for many years before the DS, so it wasn't really a shocking idea to put one on a gaming device. The pedigree for the Wiimote consists of the Power Glove and the Philips CDi remote, neither of which were ever considered laudatory efforts.
There's one little difference between the DS and the Wii. Let's see if you can figure out what it is. I'll give you a hint: Before the DS was released, the GBA had a marketshare in the portable gaming market of close to 100%.
Yes, but that is true of any console and there are resons to believe that this won't happen with the Wii; the main reason to bet on the Wii is Nintendo.
That would also be the main reason to bet against the Wii. So you're back to Square One.
you can not judge an early build of a game on the polish of the control mechanism
You also can't judge the viability of a controller based on a fifteen-minute demo at E3, but that's what a lot of Nintendo fanboys are doing.
I've noticed that Iwata is not the senile old man that Yamauchi was, and that Nintendo has made as many good decisions in the past couple of years as they made in the whole decade before that. But they still make bad decisions, such as calling the console "Wii." And they've also been forced to do other questionable things simply because of the position they're in, such as making a gimmicky controller in an attempt to tap the non-gamer market. So pardon me for not being optimistic.
[Nintendo is] the only gaming company left that doesn't have some ulterior motive.
Are you kidding? The only reason Nintendo can't be said to have an ulterior motive is because they have no leverage with which to accomplish any ulterior goal. Am I the only one who remembers the draconian censorship policies and ludicrous licensing fees that existed back when Nintendo was the only store on the block?
Nintendo is a heartless corporation, same as the other two. You don't notice only because it has been mostly irrelevant for the past decade. I might not be rooting for Sony or Microsoft, but I'm sure as hell not rooting for Nintendo.
Blu-ray was the main reason gamers weren't able to get the new machine last spring: The launch had to be postponed because the new format's digital rights management system did not yet satisfy every Hollywood studio.
Wouldn't that mean that Hollywood is the main reason the PS3 isn't out now?
Starcraft is the only good game that Blizzard has made since they stopped developing for consoles, and it's well past time that a sequel was made for it. Of course, it will probably be an MMOG, which will likely cancel out the good parts of the franchise...
Zonk also posted the article about the marketing study saying "PS3 Predicted to Lead Market Through 2011." Note that no one congratulated Zonk for overcoming his anti-sony "bias," or argued how this study proved that all the other articles Zonk posted were wrong.
Yeah, why wouldn't we congratulate Zonk for posting a stupid, unrealistic, pro-Microsoft article just so he could say "see, I'm not always anti-Sony"? Duh.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I don't know. Maybe because they're competing in the same market space?
I wasn't aware that Snakes on a Plane was the sequel to a universally-panned movie. You know, because that's the only way your comparison could possibly make any sense.
For a sales comparison that's actually relevant, let's take a look at the opening weekend of the first Anaconda movie:
Opening Weekend
$16,620,887 (USA) (13 April 1997) (2,456 Screens)
That would be in 1997 dollars, of course. And I'm not sure what could've happened in the past decade to drastically change people's opinions on snake movies, so I can only assume you went with the comparison with this movie's sequel so your argument would look like it had some legitimacy. Which it doesn't.
You really have no clue, do you? BTW, I like your attempts to compare Snakes on a Plane's returns (campy B-Movie on a relatively low budget) to Pirates of the Caribbean (a high budget flick). Never mind that Pirates had 6 times the budget as Snakes on a Plane, SoaP must be a failure because it doesn't do better in absolute numbers.
OK, so you've completely missed the point of the argument, which is that the PS3 is the "high-budget flick" while the Wii is the "campy B-movie" with the stupid name. Fine, then.
Considering that you have been setting up strawmen, aruging with non-points, and generally stiring up trouble in thread, I'd say this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Go cry in your Princess Peach body pillow.
Rob
OK, now I know you're just trolling me. What could the sales figures of Anacondas, the sequel to a universally-panned movie, possibly have to do with the sales figures of Snakes on a Plane?
Rob
"Gameboy" and "Playstation" are generically bad, yes. But "Wii" is offensively bad. So bad that comic supervillains would thumb their noses at it. Moreover, it was a replacement for "Revolution," a better name on pretty much every level.
Rob
Whether it makes $15M on opening weekend or $5, either way it's a piece of crap. And also not a very impressive performance, especially since it was a weak weekend. Put Snakes on a Plane up against the opening weekend of Pirates of the Caribbean and you'd have a pretty good analogy (well, as far as an analogy like this goes, anyway) for the PS3/Wii launch period.
Rob
But I really don't think the wiimote, or Nintendo's 'non-gamer' strategy are reasons to be skeptical. It all comes down to one thing: the software.
Absolutely. And the Wiimote and Nintendo's non-gamer strategy are reasons to be skeptical about the software.
Otherwise, it's unclear to me what could happen to this next generation, as, even in the absence of a successful Nintendo, I think we'll see a decline in Sony's market share, while MS's 360 is languishing in mediocrity.
Indeed. This generation blows.
Rob
Unless you're point is that the PS3 will get it's ass severely kicked, i fear not.
Of course you don't. You're automatically assuming that Nintendo will win and Sony will lose simply because of how you feel about both companies. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm pretty strongly anti-post-16-bit-Nintendo, but I'm still trying to keep my bias apart from my reasoning.
Anyway, the point that you missed is that the PS3 is in the same position that the DS was, and that the Wii is in the same position that the PSP was. Both the PS3 and the DS are the big consoles while the Wii and the PSP are the interlopers, and both the PS3 and the DS were widely criticized before (and even during in the case of the DS) their launches while the Wii and the PSP were hyped up as giant-killers. But the DS still has a firm grasp on the portable market with the PSP grabbing what little it can from the few portable gamers who are outside of Nintendo's marketbase.
More like they opted out, they didn't consider it viable.
And they didn't consider it viable because they couldn't do it. They even proved that they couldn't do it with the Gamecube.
Are they? Dammit, I didn't realize that full GC compatibility
Why not just keep your Gamecube?
virtual console
Those are old games. What about the new games? Oh, BTW, that's meant to cater to the old Nintendo fanbase, the guys who haven't played games in years, not the current one.
GC pad slots
As above.
"classic" controller
Which Nintendo will certainly discourage the use of for new games, since the whole system is based around the Wiimote.
Good ol' mario and link
And what else? If all Nintendo can provide to the fanboys are a few first-party franchises, with the rest of the system being designed for non-gamers, how is that not dismissive of the fanboys? "They'll buy it anyway, who cares!"
meant that they were saying "screw you" to their current fanboy base.
Well, it does. Sorry to break it to you.
Rob
No, I don't mean that at all, but that's a really nice straw man you set up, there!
Perhaps you can explain what you do mean by it, then.
Yes, you're right... only three of the *biggest companies in videogaming history*.
And I presume that companies with large amounts of marketshare are supposed to be small?
Other than coming out a nearly a year late with a product that's at least a hundred dollars more expensive than it's nearest competitor while tying it down to a media format that has the potential to completely flop in the marketplace while adding frankly unneeded expense. Did I mention that the product is also tied to hardware with very low yields, and exceedingly high development complexity? Heck, I haven't even touched on their apparent disdain for their customers (rootkit, anyone?)...
You mean like the PS2? The only thing that you said that doesn't also apply to that system is the media concern. And even that partially applies because a big part of the PS2's market value (and its price) at the time was its DVD capabilities. Since BluRay is supposed to be the next generation of optical disc (unlike the N64's cartridges and the Gamecube's mini-discs), the analogy is not far off. Sure it has competition with HD-DVD, but the fact that that can't be played on the XBox 360 without an addon and the fact that there will be no HD-DVD games make that competition look much weaker than it did a year back.
And shut up about the goddamn rootkit already. Like Nintendo wouldn't do something similar if it had any interests in the music industry.
But I really think Nintendo has a chance to significantly increase their market share this time around, both by cutting into the Sony/Microsoft customer base, *and* by expanding the market itself.
Well, you have a lot more faith in Nintendo than I do.
Rob
No, but apparently I'm the only one who remembers why they were so Draconian.
Hello? Video Game Crash of '83/'84 mean anything to anyone?
How about the word "overreaction"?
The crash had nothing to do with games being prurient; it had to do with them being bad. So the censorship policy was pointless (not to mention vague and haphazard). And quality control doesn't require higher licensing fees, just stricter licensing policies. And it was very easy to have stricter licensing policies than Atari did; just keep people from releasing games on your console with no oversight whatsoever. The publisher's limit wasn't necessary nor was it very effective; a number of companies created subsidiaries to publish games for them, such as Konami's Ultra and Acclaim's LJN.
Rob
If Sony failed hard enough to be forced out of the console hardware market, it probably wouldn't survive.
So I guess the answer to your question is "It would be worse because it wouldn't exist."
Rob
Four words: Snakes on a Plane. And it's still a stupid, juvenile name, no matter what you may believe.
Rob
So what? The DS' stylus was still called a useless gimmick, the PSP was coming with a better screen, a higher resolution and much better 3D processing (no batteries though).
Yes, sort of like how the PS3 is being called a giant waste of money while the Wii is coming out cheaper and with a unique controller.
Do you see my point now?
I [don't] think that they were somehow "forced" to do it
They definitely were. Perhaps they think that it's a good idea, but they were still taking market considerations into account when they came up with it. Nintendo simply can't compete directly with either Sony or Microsoft as is, so the only way out of the hole is to do something different to grab people who don't play consoles or games in general. If Nintendo thought that it would make them money, they wouldn't bother with radically changing the hardware and instead focus on making the creative games that they've always made. Better to be creative in that way than to take a big chance on a controller that makes porting to or from your system prohibitively hard and doesn't necessarily add much to your games. (Instead they would've released the Wiimote as an accessory with some game, say Twilight Princess.)
The funny thing about all of this is that Nintendo is basically saying "screw you" to its current fanboy base, and said base still doesn't realize it.
Rob
What do you mean by "interested"? Do you mean in the same way that Square was "interested" in the Gamecube, so they decided to release a throwaway game that most people didn't like for it, while continuing to release their major games only on the PS2?
The marketshare of the previous system has a massive impact on developers' perceptions of the new system. Only three companies have had huge losses of marketshare between generations:
1. Atari (Atari 2600->Atari 7800): The Video-Game Crash of 1984 happened, caused by some spectacular mistakes by Atari such as lack of control over third-parties, poor quality assurance, and spending tons of money on movie licenses.
2. Sega (Genesis->Saturn): A bunch of boneheaded decisions, such as developing overpriced and underpowered addons then cutting off their support early, and allowing the base that they'd built with the Genesis to slip away in the process.
3. Nintendo (Super Nintendo->Nintendo 64): Developers got fed up with Nintendo's hostile policies towards them. This coupled with Sony's new console, which was actually given to them by Nintendo, turned the company from 800-pound gorilla to has-been in just a few years.
There are no indications that Sony has yet made any mistakes regarding the PS3 that are quite of the magnitude of any of these. The worst thing anyone can say about it is the price, which is really not a huge deal considering what eBay looked like when the PS2 came out. And as someone said before, Salon made the same arguments against the PS2, and look how it turned out. Of course, it should also be noted that even if the PS3 were to fail, it's far more likely that most of its marketshare would go to the XBox 360.
As for Nintendo, certainly no one can say that the DS was hindered by mistakes. The dual-screen setup was questioned (and indeed has turned out to be mostly a non-factor) and the launch was shaky, but these are not problems that developers will be turned off by, especially when the only competition was the PSP, which was also beset by a number of problems.
But the Wii is different; it's in the opposite position of being third in the American marketplace. Just as a top company has to make horrific mistakes to fail in this market, so does an underdog have to win some stunning victories to make a giant leap to the top. Again, the best thing that people can say about the Wii for certain is that it has a low price, at least compared to the alternatives. The controller is all potential with very little substance as of yet. And getting ports from ubiquitous companies like EA is not exactly the same as stealing Square from Sony as they did to them ten years ago.
Rob
See, that's why I said "questionable" instead of "completely retarded." Unlike most of the fanboys around here, I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm not a psychic.
Rob
It does explain why nearly every portable-games developer signed onto the DS even before it came out, though.
Rob
BTW, I should also note that the gimmick that the DS won on was the touchscreen, not the dual-screens that Nintendo was focusing on at first and that the system was named after. And it barely even counts as a gimmick; PDAs had had good touchscreens for many years before the DS, so it wasn't really a shocking idea to put one on a gaming device. The pedigree for the Wiimote consists of the Power Glove and the Philips CDi remote, neither of which were ever considered laudatory efforts.
Rob
There's one little difference between the DS and the Wii. Let's see if you can figure out what it is. I'll give you a hint: Before the DS was released, the GBA had a marketshare in the portable gaming market of close to 100%.
Rob
Yes, but that is true of any console and there are resons to believe that this won't happen with the Wii; the main reason to bet on the Wii is Nintendo.
That would also be the main reason to bet against the Wii. So you're back to Square One.
you can not judge an early build of a game on the polish of the control mechanism
You also can't judge the viability of a controller based on a fifteen-minute demo at E3, but that's what a lot of Nintendo fanboys are doing.
Rob
I've noticed that Iwata is not the senile old man that Yamauchi was, and that Nintendo has made as many good decisions in the past couple of years as they made in the whole decade before that. But they still make bad decisions, such as calling the console "Wii." And they've also been forced to do other questionable things simply because of the position they're in, such as making a gimmicky controller in an attempt to tap the non-gamer market. So pardon me for not being optimistic.
Rob
However, most folks don't have $1700+ bucks to spend on a console. (you have to figure a game and sales tax in that total).
Jesus, I knew California had a high sales tax, but that's ridiculous.
Rob
[Nintendo is] the only gaming company left that doesn't have some ulterior motive.
Are you kidding? The only reason Nintendo can't be said to have an ulterior motive is because they have no leverage with which to accomplish any ulterior goal. Am I the only one who remembers the draconian censorship policies and ludicrous licensing fees that existed back when Nintendo was the only store on the block?
Nintendo is a heartless corporation, same as the other two. You don't notice only because it has been mostly irrelevant for the past decade. I might not be rooting for Sony or Microsoft, but I'm sure as hell not rooting for Nintendo.
Rob
Blu-ray was the main reason gamers weren't able to get the new machine last spring: The launch had to be postponed because the new format's digital rights management system did not yet satisfy every Hollywood studio.
Wouldn't that mean that Hollywood is the main reason the PS3 isn't out now?
Rob
Are they trying to say anyone ever believed in these "myths"? I can't pick out anything that any normal person would actually believe.
Welcome to Slashdot!
Rob
Starcraft is the only good game that Blizzard has made since they stopped developing for consoles, and it's well past time that a sequel was made for it. Of course, it will probably be an MMOG, which will likely cancel out the good parts of the franchise...
Rob
Also comparing Sega to the Soviet Union, even though he was trying to make the point that the Dreamcast was a good console. Excellent article!
Rob
Zonk also posted the article about the marketing study saying "PS3 Predicted to Lead Market Through 2011." Note that no one congratulated Zonk for overcoming his anti-sony "bias," or argued how this study proved that all the other articles Zonk posted were wrong.
Yeah, why wouldn't we congratulate Zonk for posting a stupid, unrealistic, pro-Microsoft article just so he could say "see, I'm not always anti-Sony"? Duh.
Rob