That's not the problem. The problem is UE3 is designed to work with DirectX style hardware. The Wii GPU is very different from the GPUs in the 360/PS3, which are more like current PC GPUs. Epic would have to recode some of the low level parts of the engine to properly take advantage of the Wii GPU to get the same kind of effects they can get on the other systems. It's not just poly count and texture depth. It would be a lot of work, and not necessarily for any gain, since UE2.5 already works on the Wii.
I never said working conditions improved, I said wages improved, which they did. And I'm not entirely certain what the conversion to democracy has to do with this conversation. Capitilism does not require democracy, despite what the American Government would have you believe.
And the solution for Korea is exactly what it has always been. Now that they're too expensive to manufacture our equipment, they start manufacturing their own. That was part of what I said before. Samsung is a Korean electronics brand, and they have been edging out Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic) in some of their largest markets.
And no, neither Korea nor Pakistan has a roaring economy, but then, they never did. But Korea's economy, at least, has been on an upward slope for several years now. It's slow, but there are limits, since they still face competition with other markets internationally, who are far ahead of them. Believe me, if their economy was getting worse, they'd be more than willing to undercut China to bring more money in. Which just proves that they've picked up on the capitalism thing, despite their particular style of government.
Ummm, the article pretty much answered your question. You don't see these kinds of deals on software because retailers can't afford to make those kinds of deals. Margins on software, any software , be it games or otherwise, are very small. A $10 drop in the game price, without a similar drop in the cost to the retailer to purchase the game from the publisher, pretty much eats any profit you might get from that game.
On the other hand, let's say one store decided to increase the price of all their games by $5. They would very quickly get a reputation for being more expensive than every other game retailer, and no one would shop there. So they'd not only lose money on their games, but they'd lose other business as well. So unless other stores begin raising their prices, they have no choice but to stick to MSRP if they want to make any sales at all.
It's not price fixing, it's simple market forces. (YMMV with the word 'simple'.)
This is very informative, and insightful. All people have essentially the same worries. I wouldn't call the law useless, as it may put pressure on the government, and speed the process along, but change will happen regardless of what we do.
If we keep silent on the rights of the Chinese, that is precedent to take more rights away from the Americans. After all, the Chinese government gets to censor their citizens, why can't the American government do something similar.
After all, the basis of all American law is precedent. The only way to overturn a precedent is to set a new one that contradicts the original. Fighting for the freedoms of citizens of other countries does not automatically end the fight in this county, in fact, it can only help it, by raising the general consciousness to these issues.
Nope, there is no logical dissonance here. In this case, their actions are entirely consistent.
In both cases, the US government is acting to protect people who cannot protect themselves.
In the case of child pornography, they are acting to proctect children who may be too young to even know something is wrong, and are generally too weak to stop it even if they do.
In the case of GOFA, they are acting to protect the rights of people who have proven to be unable to alter the policies of their oppressive government.
So you see, it's all a matter of perspective. Anything can seem inconsistent if you look at it the right way.
Also, a sidenote, the law has not yet passed. It is still being discussed, I believe.
just don't buy the whole "dump buckets of money on them and suddenly they'll convert to capitalism" theory. I'm more of a realist that thinks the moment that labor/manufacturing costs increase in China, the corps will simply switch to the next super-cheap manufacturing workforce (which is pretty much how it ended up in China - Korea and Pakistan were costing more).
Ummm, doesn't that prove the point. We go to the cheapest country to do industry, and eventually the industry in that country changes to the point where workers are receiving higher wages, equipment costs more, and they become more technically accomplished in their own right.
At that point, they're too expensive for us to keep doing business there, but they're already far enough along that they're starting their own industries that compete with ours (see Korea and India) and we move on to a cheaper country.
At some point we'll run out of really cheap countries, and have to move on to sorta cheap countries, and eventually, it'll be cheaper to manufacture in the US, so we'll have to bring the industry back here, until it becomes too expensive here again. It's an endless, but somewhat beneficial, cycle.
Yes, technically China has the capacity to do this.
Financially, losing the American companies that provide these services already would be disastrous for China. They would either have to simply lose the services entirely, thus crippling their own economy, until eventually an alternative develops. Or they'd have to immediately start developing alternative technology, spending millions of dollars (not Yuan, or whatever it is they use in China, I forget, but actual US Dollars...at least in value) to get them going before their economy suffers for it. And they wouldn't have many of the richest countries in the world to prop them up when they fall, because we'd already have a law in place preventing such a thing from happening.
That's a very naive way of looking at it. Not everything is motivated by money. These companies actions probably are, but more in a more indirect way.
The capitalist structure is the closest thing we have to what everyone simplifies Darwinism down to, Survival of the Fittest. In this case, the fittest company is the company that continues to make more than it spends. If it doesn't, it dies. Every good thing and bad thing they do is, therefore, motivated by money. Because without money, they cease to exist.
However, there are 2 other things to take into consideration. First, why do these companies exist. Some company philosophies are actually beneficial. Take Google, as a for instance, their entire purpose in existence is to expand the possibilities of the internet, what it is capable of. This is (in my opinion, at least) a good thing for all of humanity. However, if they don't make money, they don't survive, and it doesn't matter how high the ideals that are the basis of the company are. I wouldn't be surprised if Yahoo was created with similar ideals in mind. (I won't vouch for Microsoft of Cisco, but I wouldn't doubt they have a purpose other than just making money.)
Second, companies are made up of people. Sometimes tens of thousands of people. Even at the head of these large corporations, are people with their own sets of values, morals and beliefs. Money does not automatically obviate these values, but does a fairly good job of mitigating them. In order to keep doing business, sometimes you have to compromise your values, sometimes your values change with a new worldview. Whatever the case, the people at the head of these companies may have compromised their values to stay in business, so that they can continue whatever it is that they believe they're doing (I want to stress believe, what they're actually doing and what they believe they're doing need bear no resemblance to each other).
There's also the possibility that, in this particular situation, they had no values to compromise. They went into the market innocently, and then found themselves doing things they were later uncomfortable with. Unfortunately, being limited to a single culture has a tendency to make one myopic. Values are not established until a situation presents itself in which you need to make a decision, and most of the time, you have to make an 'incorrect' decision, before you realize there's anything wrong with it. Values are established, and you do your best not to do that 'wrong' thing again. This is probably unlikely with a multi-national corporation, but we rarely no what our limits are until we step beyond them.
All I'm saying is, they're not necessarily hypocrites. Actually, they're not hypocrites at all. They're not saying one thing and doing another. They're not saying anything. And it's not as if they're trying to hold someone else up to standards they don't follow themselves. They're in the midst of trying to create a standard to follow. And simply backing out may not be the best option, financially or morally.
I suspect they modded you troll because slasdot doesn't have a 'Wrong' modifier. Nintendo designed the DS with plenty of vision, but they focused on games primarily, with everything else secondary. For the PSP, gaming, music and movies were all of equal importance, and therefore they were all done equally badly. The DS only does one thing, but it does that one thing better than the competition.
You know, I have to wonder. People keep saying R:FoM is the best game on the PS3, and that if you want it, you have to buy a PS3. Maybe the reason the PS3 isn't selling is because there are a large number of people (including myself) who don't really like FPS games? I can appreciate them, and don't mind playing them with friends here and there, but other than Half-Life I wouldn't actually spend money on them.
Well, to be fair, the Playstation brand has never had a lot of really good games at launch. Because Sony depends so heavily on 3rd parties, they're at the mercy of 3rd party dev schedules.
Microsoft handled this problem by buying some developers and pushing stuff out the door early on.
Nintendo is one of the most prolific game development firms in the world, and they had a lot of content prepared for launch, so they're always going to look better out of the gate than the competition.
This bad press is a blow for Sony, but it's not a blow they can't recover from. Unfortunately, they're almost entirely dependent on 3rd parties for that recovery...unless they can somehow manage to push GT5 out before 2009.
It's currently not possible to play Guitar Hero on the PS3. Hopefully they will make a Guitar that uses Bluetooth so that you can do so, but until then, well, you could play it, but you'd have to use a Sixaxis, and that control scheme throws me all off.
The thing is, it only takes one breakout game to push a system past it's competitors. For the SNES, it was Street Fighter, for the PS1 it was FFVII, for the PS2 it was GTA3, and right now, for the Wii, it's Wii Sports in Japan (and Zelda in the US). However anemic you may think the launch of the Wii is, in NA Zelda has sold to over 80% of all Wii owners, which is a massive, massive attach rate for a game, even at launch. In Japan, Wii Sports (which doesn't come packaged in like it does in NA & EU) has sold to over 75% of Wii owners. How can you figure it's not a system seller with an attach rate like that?
In comparison, the highest selling PS3 game (the one Gundam game, I forget the exact name) has sold to just over 20% of all PS3 owners.
I don't recall the 360 launch numbers just off the top of my head, so I can't really compare them, but I know for certain the DS didn't have a single game at launch with an attach rate greater than 45% in Japan.
Right now, the Wii has won the first battle of the 'console war'. There's still a war to be fought, and between the recently released Wario Ware, coming Sonic, Mario Party & SSX, Nintendo seems to be brining the big guns. Sony only has VF5 and Gundam Musou going for it (which, admittedly, Gundam Musou is going to go over like Gangbusters in Japan, that will probably be the consoles first major system seller there).
Your argument has some small merit to it, but it ignores one fact. The 60GB PS3 has no MSRP in Japan, it sells for whatever a retailer thinks they can get away with. Therefore, there is no report of them lowering prices on 60GB PS3s, because there has been no consistent pricing on them to begin with. All retailers in Japan could have lowered the 60GB price by 25000 Yen, and no one would be able to say that for certain, without doing a full historical study on the pricing since launch.
Actually, no, that tells us nothing. Sony never reports sold figures. Never. They only report the number shipped. While Enterbrain and Media Create numbers differ slightly, they're both fairly close, and are far more accurate than NPD has ever been. Any discrepancy (over standard error) between the numbers Sony reports, and the numbers Enterbrain/MC report are units that are sitting on shelves unsold.
The answer is, a significant number. This December has been the 360's biggest selling period in Japan, and that includes when it launched. It has consistently sold over 15k since Blue Dragon launched. Whether it will remain that high once the New Year Holiday money is spent is what everyone is waiting for. It'll be another week before we know the answer to that question.
Still, all in all, this is the first month that the 360 has been tracking higher than the Xbox, despite the releases of the PS3 and Wii, so even though they're getting their asses handed to them, Microsoft has got to be pleased.
The NPD does not get online retailer numbers, no. They only get brick and mortar numbers, then use statistical sampling to predict what sales should have been for online retailers. Statistical sampling is very accurate when you're using a high enough percentage of the total, and NPD gets reports from about 70% of all retailers, so their numbers are about as close to exact as we will ever likely get.
That's not really true. If the PS2 did make a loss initially, it was very small, and was only for the first couple of months.
Contrary to popular belief, what Microsoft did, and what Sony is doing now is not standard in the industry. Especially in the case of the original Xbox, which was never profitable on the hardware, which is why Microsoft killed it so quickly and thoroughly. The reason is, unlike every other company, Microsoft purchased the parts wholesale and put them together into the Xbox case. All other consoles (including the 360), the company contracted to fabricate the parts themselves, so basically they pay a license fee to the original developer of the hardware, but they build and combine the hardware in their own fabrication plants. That's why there are usually hardware shortages when a system initially launches, because the company has to either open up, or convert, fabrication plants, and get them up to speed.
Because they're actually building the hardware themselves, instead of just buying it prebuilt, when the cost to build the hardware is reduced, the company saves money. In the case of the original Xbox, when the cost to produce the hardware was reduced, it wasn't Microsoft who was making more money. They were still paying the same amount per chip to Intel & Nvidia, even though the chips became cheaper to make.
Microsoft learned their lesson, and the 360 is both designed and constructed much more like a home console gaming machine than the original Xbox, which was basically a miniature pc sold for about half the price an equivalent pc would cost.
Also, while hardware does produce more revenue than software, software produces more profit. There is a reason that Nintendo is the most profitable of the console makers, and always has been. They concentrate on software, so have the smallest revenue of all, but still end up with the greatest profit.
In that case, get a DS. It gives you access not only to the DS RPGs out now and in the future, but also to all the GBA RPGs, which there are quite a few of, going all the way back to Golden Sun & Golden Sun 2 (which are great). Since all handhelds are region free, you can also import GBA & DS games that were never released in your region and play them easily.
The reason the PS2 took so long to drop in price was because Sony could sell it for $300 for a long time. Now that the launch rush and Holiday are over, it remains to be seen whether the general public will actually pay $600 for a gaming machine.
Although admittedly, it's been over a year for the 360 and it hasn't seen a manufacturer price drop, and it hasn't been tracking much better than the original Xbox, so maybe we'll still have to wait a year.
Also, most of the buttons on the Wiimote stick are not as a accessible as those on a gamepad. It's not even in the same ballpark. It may be a lot of good things, but since the gamepad is superior for many things, that means the Wiimote is not superior over all. Just different.
That one is wrong. The positioning of the buttons you actually use on the Wiimote & nunchuk is actually better than on a standard pad. The A, B, C, Z and d-pad are all in extremely convenient locations, and for a game requiring quick reflexes, you end up having just as many buttons readily available on a Wii as you do on a PS3. The +, -, 1 & 2 buttons are a bit out of the way, but they are not usually primary action buttons.
As for waving around the controller for everything, that is highly dependent on the game. In a game like Zelda, you have to wave the controller to move the sword, but this is not especially onerous as it is gesture based, not direct movement so a simple flick is as good as waving the controller. About half the games require no more movement than what you'd probably do unintentionally with any other controller. If all you feel like doing is sitting with your hands on your knees, the Wii works fine with that for about half the games. Those are also the games you'd have found on the PS2, GC or Xbox. The Wii just also happens to include an entire group of other games that wouldn't have been possible on the other systems at all, which don't really require a great deal of movement, but they work better without it. I mean, if you really wanted to, you could play Wii Sports leaning back on the couch and flicking the controller with altogther less movement than it would take to control an analog stick. But no one does that, because it's not any fun.
The advantage of the Wii is that it still has buttons, still has a d-pad, still has an analog stick, it just adds motion sensing and direct pointing to the existing input options. It also separates the controller, and provides an overall better design. If you just want to sit there (and believe me, I guarantee you there is no way you could ever possibly be lazier than me, my primary interest in the Wii is that it will finally generate a consistent group of RPGs that only require one hand to play, and can be played lying on my side in bed, sitting up requires too much effort) and barely move, the Wii supports that. And if you want to get up and act wild and crazy, the Wii supports that, too. It's like the difference between rocking out in Guitar Hero and tearing through a crowd of enemies in Dynasty Warriors. Two entirely different styles of play, and you go with the one that you prefer. The advantage is the Wiimote supports both styles of play automtically out of the box.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not the problem. The problem is UE3 is designed to work with DirectX style hardware. The Wii GPU is very different from the GPUs in the 360/PS3, which are more like current PC GPUs. Epic would have to recode some of the low level parts of the engine to properly take advantage of the Wii GPU to get the same kind of effects they can get on the other systems. It's not just poly count and texture depth. It would be a lot of work, and not necessarily for any gain, since UE2.5 already works on the Wii.
I never said working conditions improved, I said wages improved, which they did. And I'm not entirely certain what the conversion to democracy has to do with this conversation. Capitilism does not require democracy, despite what the American Government would have you believe.
And the solution for Korea is exactly what it has always been. Now that they're too expensive to manufacture our equipment, they start manufacturing their own. That was part of what I said before. Samsung is a Korean electronics brand, and they have been edging out Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic) in some of their largest markets.
And no, neither Korea nor Pakistan has a roaring economy, but then, they never did. But Korea's economy, at least, has been on an upward slope for several years now. It's slow, but there are limits, since they still face competition with other markets internationally, who are far ahead of them. Believe me, if their economy was getting worse, they'd be more than willing to undercut China to bring more money in. Which just proves that they've picked up on the capitalism thing, despite their particular style of government.
Ummm, the article pretty much answered your question. You don't see these kinds of deals on software because retailers can't afford to make those kinds of deals. Margins on software, any software , be it games or otherwise, are very small. A $10 drop in the game price, without a similar drop in the cost to the retailer to purchase the game from the publisher, pretty much eats any profit you might get from that game.
On the other hand, let's say one store decided to increase the price of all their games by $5. They would very quickly get a reputation for being more expensive than every other game retailer, and no one would shop there. So they'd not only lose money on their games, but they'd lose other business as well. So unless other stores begin raising their prices, they have no choice but to stick to MSRP if they want to make any sales at all.
It's not price fixing, it's simple market forces. (YMMV with the word 'simple'.)
This is very informative, and insightful. All people have essentially the same worries. I wouldn't call the law useless, as it may put pressure on the government, and speed the process along, but change will happen regardless of what we do.
Perhaps you should look at it this way.
If we keep silent on the rights of the Chinese, that is precedent to take more rights away from the Americans. After all, the Chinese government gets to censor their citizens, why can't the American government do something similar.
After all, the basis of all American law is precedent. The only way to overturn a precedent is to set a new one that contradicts the original. Fighting for the freedoms of citizens of other countries does not automatically end the fight in this county, in fact, it can only help it, by raising the general consciousness to these issues.
Nope, there is no logical dissonance here. In this case, their actions are entirely consistent.
In both cases, the US government is acting to protect people who cannot protect themselves.
In the case of child pornography, they are acting to proctect children who may be too young to even know something is wrong, and are generally too weak to stop it even if they do.
In the case of GOFA, they are acting to protect the rights of people who have proven to be unable to alter the policies of their oppressive government.
So you see, it's all a matter of perspective. Anything can seem inconsistent if you look at it the right way.
Also, a sidenote, the law has not yet passed. It is still being discussed, I believe.
Wait, what? You want a fair and transparent government? When did they start making those?
Ummm, doesn't that prove the point. We go to the cheapest country to do industry, and eventually the industry in that country changes to the point where workers are receiving higher wages, equipment costs more, and they become more technically accomplished in their own right.
At that point, they're too expensive for us to keep doing business there, but they're already far enough along that they're starting their own industries that compete with ours (see Korea and India) and we move on to a cheaper country.
At some point we'll run out of really cheap countries, and have to move on to sorta cheap countries, and eventually, it'll be cheaper to manufacture in the US, so we'll have to bring the industry back here, until it becomes too expensive here again. It's an endless, but somewhat beneficial, cycle.
The best part about this, is that it is political speech, and is therefore probably censored in China. Meaning they won't even see it coming.
You're looking at this all wrong.
Yes, technically China has the capacity to do this.
Financially, losing the American companies that provide these services already would be disastrous for China. They would either have to simply lose the services entirely, thus crippling their own economy, until eventually an alternative develops. Or they'd have to immediately start developing alternative technology, spending millions of dollars (not Yuan, or whatever it is they use in China, I forget, but actual US Dollars...at least in value) to get them going before their economy suffers for it. And they wouldn't have many of the richest countries in the world to prop them up when they fall, because we'd already have a law in place preventing such a thing from happening.
That's a very naive way of looking at it. Not everything is motivated by money. These companies actions probably are, but more in a more indirect way.
The capitalist structure is the closest thing we have to what everyone simplifies Darwinism down to, Survival of the Fittest. In this case, the fittest company is the company that continues to make more than it spends. If it doesn't, it dies. Every good thing and bad thing they do is, therefore, motivated by money. Because without money, they cease to exist.
However, there are 2 other things to take into consideration. First, why do these companies exist. Some company philosophies are actually beneficial. Take Google, as a for instance, their entire purpose in existence is to expand the possibilities of the internet, what it is capable of. This is (in my opinion, at least) a good thing for all of humanity. However, if they don't make money, they don't survive, and it doesn't matter how high the ideals that are the basis of the company are. I wouldn't be surprised if Yahoo was created with similar ideals in mind. (I won't vouch for Microsoft of Cisco, but I wouldn't doubt they have a purpose other than just making money.)
Second, companies are made up of people. Sometimes tens of thousands of people. Even at the head of these large corporations, are people with their own sets of values, morals and beliefs. Money does not automatically obviate these values, but does a fairly good job of mitigating them. In order to keep doing business, sometimes you have to compromise your values, sometimes your values change with a new worldview. Whatever the case, the people at the head of these companies may have compromised their values to stay in business, so that they can continue whatever it is that they believe they're doing (I want to stress believe, what they're actually doing and what they believe they're doing need bear no resemblance to each other).
There's also the possibility that, in this particular situation, they had no values to compromise. They went into the market innocently, and then found themselves doing things they were later uncomfortable with. Unfortunately, being limited to a single culture has a tendency to make one myopic. Values are not established until a situation presents itself in which you need to make a decision, and most of the time, you have to make an 'incorrect' decision, before you realize there's anything wrong with it. Values are established, and you do your best not to do that 'wrong' thing again. This is probably unlikely with a multi-national corporation, but we rarely no what our limits are until we step beyond them.
All I'm saying is, they're not necessarily hypocrites. Actually, they're not hypocrites at all. They're not saying one thing and doing another. They're not saying anything. And it's not as if they're trying to hold someone else up to standards they don't follow themselves. They're in the midst of trying to create a standard to follow. And simply backing out may not be the best option, financially or morally.
I suspect they modded you troll because slasdot doesn't have a 'Wrong' modifier. Nintendo designed the DS with plenty of vision, but they focused on games primarily, with everything else secondary. For the PSP, gaming, music and movies were all of equal importance, and therefore they were all done equally badly. The DS only does one thing, but it does that one thing better than the competition.
You know, I have to wonder. People keep saying R:FoM is the best game on the PS3, and that if you want it, you have to buy a PS3. Maybe the reason the PS3 isn't selling is because there are a large number of people (including myself) who don't really like FPS games? I can appreciate them, and don't mind playing them with friends here and there, but other than Half-Life I wouldn't actually spend money on them.
Well, to be fair, the Playstation brand has never had a lot of really good games at launch. Because Sony depends so heavily on 3rd parties, they're at the mercy of 3rd party dev schedules.
Microsoft handled this problem by buying some developers and pushing stuff out the door early on.
Nintendo is one of the most prolific game development firms in the world, and they had a lot of content prepared for launch, so they're always going to look better out of the gate than the competition.
This bad press is a blow for Sony, but it's not a blow they can't recover from. Unfortunately, they're almost entirely dependent on 3rd parties for that recovery...unless they can somehow manage to push GT5 out before 2009.
It's currently not possible to play Guitar Hero on the PS3. Hopefully they will make a Guitar that uses Bluetooth so that you can do so, but until then, well, you could play it, but you'd have to use a Sixaxis, and that control scheme throws me all off.
The thing is, it only takes one breakout game to push a system past it's competitors. For the SNES, it was Street Fighter, for the PS1 it was FFVII, for the PS2 it was GTA3, and right now, for the Wii, it's Wii Sports in Japan (and Zelda in the US). However anemic you may think the launch of the Wii is, in NA Zelda has sold to over 80% of all Wii owners, which is a massive, massive attach rate for a game, even at launch. In Japan, Wii Sports (which doesn't come packaged in like it does in NA & EU) has sold to over 75% of Wii owners. How can you figure it's not a system seller with an attach rate like that?
In comparison, the highest selling PS3 game (the one Gundam game, I forget the exact name) has sold to just over 20% of all PS3 owners.
I don't recall the 360 launch numbers just off the top of my head, so I can't really compare them, but I know for certain the DS didn't have a single game at launch with an attach rate greater than 45% in Japan.
Right now, the Wii has won the first battle of the 'console war'. There's still a war to be fought, and between the recently released Wario Ware, coming Sonic, Mario Party & SSX, Nintendo seems to be brining the big guns. Sony only has VF5 and Gundam Musou going for it (which, admittedly, Gundam Musou is going to go over like Gangbusters in Japan, that will probably be the consoles first major system seller there).
Your argument has some small merit to it, but it ignores one fact. The 60GB PS3 has no MSRP in Japan, it sells for whatever a retailer thinks they can get away with. Therefore, there is no report of them lowering prices on 60GB PS3s, because there has been no consistent pricing on them to begin with. All retailers in Japan could have lowered the 60GB price by 25000 Yen, and no one would be able to say that for certain, without doing a full historical study on the pricing since launch.
Actually, no, that tells us nothing. Sony never reports sold figures. Never. They only report the number shipped. While Enterbrain and Media Create numbers differ slightly, they're both fairly close, and are far more accurate than NPD has ever been. Any discrepancy (over standard error) between the numbers Sony reports, and the numbers Enterbrain/MC report are units that are sitting on shelves unsold.
The answer is, a significant number. This December has been the 360's biggest selling period in Japan, and that includes when it launched. It has consistently sold over 15k since Blue Dragon launched. Whether it will remain that high once the New Year Holiday money is spent is what everyone is waiting for. It'll be another week before we know the answer to that question.
Still, all in all, this is the first month that the 360 has been tracking higher than the Xbox, despite the releases of the PS3 and Wii, so even though they're getting their asses handed to them, Microsoft has got to be pleased.
The NPD does not get online retailer numbers, no. They only get brick and mortar numbers, then use statistical sampling to predict what sales should have been for online retailers. Statistical sampling is very accurate when you're using a high enough percentage of the total, and NPD gets reports from about 70% of all retailers, so their numbers are about as close to exact as we will ever likely get.
That's not really true. If the PS2 did make a loss initially, it was very small, and was only for the first couple of months.
Contrary to popular belief, what Microsoft did, and what Sony is doing now is not standard in the industry. Especially in the case of the original Xbox, which was never profitable on the hardware, which is why Microsoft killed it so quickly and thoroughly. The reason is, unlike every other company, Microsoft purchased the parts wholesale and put them together into the Xbox case. All other consoles (including the 360), the company contracted to fabricate the parts themselves, so basically they pay a license fee to the original developer of the hardware, but they build and combine the hardware in their own fabrication plants. That's why there are usually hardware shortages when a system initially launches, because the company has to either open up, or convert, fabrication plants, and get them up to speed.
Because they're actually building the hardware themselves, instead of just buying it prebuilt, when the cost to build the hardware is reduced, the company saves money. In the case of the original Xbox, when the cost to produce the hardware was reduced, it wasn't Microsoft who was making more money. They were still paying the same amount per chip to Intel & Nvidia, even though the chips became cheaper to make.
Microsoft learned their lesson, and the 360 is both designed and constructed much more like a home console gaming machine than the original Xbox, which was basically a miniature pc sold for about half the price an equivalent pc would cost.
Also, while hardware does produce more revenue than software, software produces more profit. There is a reason that Nintendo is the most profitable of the console makers, and always has been. They concentrate on software, so have the smallest revenue of all, but still end up with the greatest profit.
In that case, get a DS. It gives you access not only to the DS RPGs out now and in the future, but also to all the GBA RPGs, which there are quite a few of, going all the way back to Golden Sun & Golden Sun 2 (which are great). Since all handhelds are region free, you can also import GBA & DS games that were never released in your region and play them easily.
The reason the PS2 took so long to drop in price was because Sony could sell it for $300 for a long time. Now that the launch rush and Holiday are over, it remains to be seen whether the general public will actually pay $600 for a gaming machine.
Although admittedly, it's been over a year for the 360 and it hasn't seen a manufacturer price drop, and it hasn't been tracking much better than the original Xbox, so maybe we'll still have to wait a year.
Also, most of the buttons on the Wiimote stick are not as a accessible as those on a gamepad. It's not even in the same ballpark. It may be a lot of good things, but since the gamepad is superior for many things, that means the Wiimote is not superior over all. Just different.
That one is wrong. The positioning of the buttons you actually use on the Wiimote & nunchuk is actually better than on a standard pad. The A, B, C, Z and d-pad are all in extremely convenient locations, and for a game requiring quick reflexes, you end up having just as many buttons readily available on a Wii as you do on a PS3. The +, -, 1 & 2 buttons are a bit out of the way, but they are not usually primary action buttons.
As for waving around the controller for everything, that is highly dependent on the game. In a game like Zelda, you have to wave the controller to move the sword, but this is not especially onerous as it is gesture based, not direct movement so a simple flick is as good as waving the controller. About half the games require no more movement than what you'd probably do unintentionally with any other controller. If all you feel like doing is sitting with your hands on your knees, the Wii works fine with that for about half the games. Those are also the games you'd have found on the PS2, GC or Xbox. The Wii just also happens to include an entire group of other games that wouldn't have been possible on the other systems at all, which don't really require a great deal of movement, but they work better without it. I mean, if you really wanted to, you could play Wii Sports leaning back on the couch and flicking the controller with altogther less movement than it would take to control an analog stick. But no one does that, because it's not any fun.
The advantage of the Wii is that it still has buttons, still has a d-pad, still has an analog stick, it just adds motion sensing and direct pointing to the existing input options. It also separates the controller, and provides an overall better design. If you just want to sit there (and believe me, I guarantee you there is no way you could ever possibly be lazier than me, my primary interest in the Wii is that it will finally generate a consistent group of RPGs that only require one hand to play, and can be played lying on my side in bed, sitting up requires too much effort) and barely move, the Wii supports that. And if you want to get up and act wild and crazy, the Wii supports that, too. It's like the difference between rocking out in Guitar Hero and tearing through a crowd of enemies in Dynasty Warriors. Two entirely different styles of play, and you go with the one that you prefer. The advantage is the Wiimote supports both styles of play automtically out of the box.
Please clarify which products you are referring to.