Not quite. The straps they use are rated for a certain force. If you exceed that force, the strap will break. None of the reports say the strap just snapped, in each case, the player did not simply let go of the controller, but were actually swinging it with force at the time it left their hand. Even the "snakey metal" you speak of, has a rating beyond which it will snap. Using a stronger strap would guarantee nothing, and Nintendo would still have to educate people not to release the controller when they're flinging it at their tv at high speeds.
1. Already in the PS3 OS.
2. Already in the PS3 OS.
3. Yes, you'd need Linux for this one.
4. Already in the PS3 OS.
The point is, no where near 50% of the people buying a PS3 are going to care about Linux. Most of the stuff they would want to use a full OS for can be done directly from the PS3 without installing Linux. With advancements being made in web apps to provide basic productivity, and a built-in web browser, there's suddenly no need for a 'Other OS' on the PS3, and so no one but hardcore geeks who want to program the hardware will ever use it.
Actually that thinking was pretty much started by Microsoft. There are, unfortunately, no reliable records, but the PS2 was proven to break even at launch. The n64, GC, PS1 & DC all sold for a profit on launch. It's possible the Saturn was sold for a loss, but, again, no reliable information there.
Now, to be totally, horribly pedantic about it, at one time the GC was sold for a loss. When Nintendo first reduced the price to $99, they were selling it at a loss for about a month before cost reduction on the hardware caught up. That has probably happened to other consoles that reduced prices quickly for competitive reasons (certainly in the case of the DC), but so far we only know of 3 consoles for sure that were sold at a loss at the begging of their lifespan, the Xbox, the Xbox 360 & the PS3.
Actually, Nintendo never said SSB:B would be availabe at launch. The earliest tentative date they ever gave was March 2007. Now it looks like it probably won't hit until early Fall, but they have guaranteed online play. In fact, aside from the few characters they've shown, online play is the only thing they've guaranteed.
In that case, you may want to import a North American Wii. Wii games are region coded, so they will only play on the system from the same country. If you don't mind paying a premium, you might want to try picking one up off ebay.
This "revolutionary" (aka: gimmicky) input method they came up with will work well for very few games, and even then only where the game is extremely simple in nature. Everyone was drooling about how this would work with FPS games, but so far that's turning out to be a big letdown, as demonstrated by Red Steel and Splinter Cell: Double Agent.
Just because something is gimmicky doesn't mean it's not revolutionary. And if you read the reviews, the control scheme actually does work better for FPS. SC:DA was a complete mess, yes, but most reviews say the only good thing about Red Steel is the control scheme (for the shooting, apparently the swordplay is pretty bad). Otherwise, check the reviews for Call of Duty 3, with the Wii version so far considered the best version, although it gets knocked hard for a lack of multiplayer.
And speaking of DA, this is a taste of things to come with multi-platform titles. Seriously, check out how badly this game was butchered in it's translation to the woefully-underpowered Wii. Dammit, the XBox 1 version looks better than this, and the Wii controller just isn't sophisticated enough to handle the input on this game, just like the GC couldn't do it properly in last-gen's versions either.
How does that make any sense? The GC controller has exactly 1 less button than the PS2 and Xbox controllers (not to mention better analog sticks than either) and the GC was more powerful than the PS2, and pretty close to the Xbox in power. Loss of a single button can be significant, yes, but shouldn't break a game. Depending on how you plan to use it, the Wii is either 2 or 4 buttons short, and you can often replace those with gestures. So if you really just want to port a game over without using the motion controlling you can. No one does that because the motion control is better.
And let's put this ignorant, tired line of "all the other consoles have to rely on is better graphics" to rest already. It's being parroted all over the place by fanboys who don't understand. The PS3 and X360 are far more powerful in: CPU, GPU, system memory, and storage space. This allows for more than just better graphics, you know. It means bigger, deeper games with more realism, immersion, and freedom for the developers and the players. It means better AI is possible in single-player elements. All of this means BETTER gameplay, not worse like some people seem to be insinuating.
That is partially true. PS3 & 360 games will certainly have better physics. They may have more immersive environments, that mostly depends on art direction and programmers. Zelda:TP is immersive because of the art direction and the attention to detail, despite the weaker graphics compared to the other systems, and it's a GC game. PS3 & 360 games will certianly have more realism, and more freedom for the developers (although that also means more work). This does not mean the games will be bigger or deeper, however. When designing to a 720p spec over a 480p spec, you're using more space and more memory. Because of the weaker graphics on the Wii, it can have environments just as large and deep as anything on the 360. Here the PS3 will have the advantage because of the Blu-ray drive, but then it has limitations in memory access, so chances are it's a wash across all three systems. As for better AI, the primary cores in the PS3 and 360 are actually inferior for AI. The cores they purchased from IBM are heavily enhanced for graphics, but have several issues which causes AI to suffer. The Wii processor is a far more advanced at handling AI, and it's memory architecture has less latency, so it's likely the Wii will see better AI than either other system. On the other hand, the processor is slower, so it probably can't run as many AI at once, so there it's a tradeoff.
My objection is, you see the Wii as an inferior system automatically. I've played the Wii and the 360 (haven't had a chance with a PS3 yet, none of my fri
The funny thing is, even though Nintendo only makes software for Nintendo consoles, if you count total software sales internationally, Nintendo is first overall. Nintendo published software outsells software made by every other company in gaming, EA is a distant second.
Don't take this wrong, but that path of thinking doesn't really pan out in reality. Just, for a moment, assume that the PS3 does tank and Sony bows out of the console race. Suddenly, the guy who was on top for 2 generations disappears. Do you really think anyone with the technology and the money to put their hand in isn't going to consider it?
The only reason no one is trying anything right now is because they'd have to go against Nintendo, the company that dragged this industry out of the gutter 20 years ago and still isn't dead, Microsoft who can draw nearly limitlessly upon their OS & Office products, and Sony the biggest name in electronics who has pretty much owned the industry for the last 10 years. With that kind of competition, nobody really believes there's room for another player, but I guarantee you, if any one of them drops out, especially if it's Sony, don't be surprised to hear announcements that other major technology giants are putting their bid in to control what is now a multibillion dollar market that rivals the film industry. Apple, IBM, even Dell or Google can afford to risk it, and are smart enough to provide true competition, and most importantly, learn from Sony's (and even Sega's & Nintendo's) mistakes.
That's the beauty of capitilism. Competition breeds creativity. And the chance to make money breeds competition.
Nintendo is actually in a better position to make a more powerful console than either Sony or Microsoft.
While Nintendo is not as large a business as either of their 2 competitors, Nintendo has, at last estimates, around $10 billion in liquid assets. That's over twice what Microsoft lost on the original Xbox. Sony and Microsoft have to make up for any losses from other divisions, because they don't keep large amounts of cash on hand. Nintendo could afford it, if that's what they wanted to do, but you know what that would get them? The most powerful console of this generation and still being in 3rd place.
The n64 was more powerful than the PS1 and lost, the GC was more powerful than the PS3 and lost. If the Wii was more powerful than the PS3, but still used a standard controller, it would still lose. If you read the article, it has nothing in it about what Nintendo wants, it simply says that Nintendo can survive comfortably in 3rd place from now until people give up video games.
But if you look at what Nintendo is actually saying, you'll see that what they want is 1st place, and they know that more power isn't the way to get it, at least not for them. After E3, a Microsoft exec (Howard Lincoln?) is quoted as saying 'you could buy a 360 & a Wii for the price of a PS3'. Days later a Sony exec (Kaz Hirai?), is quoted as saying, 'We see no reason people wouldn't buy a Wii as a second system to go with their PS3'. When a Nintendo exec was question about these comments (Reggie Fils-Aime?), his response was 'Well, really, I'd rather people buy our system instead of our competitors.' (All quotes are paraphrased from memory, hence the single-quotes.)
Nintendo's goal is to be the company people turn to for gaming first, and they've realized that more power is not the way to do that. They way to do that is to provide something that no one else does, and to be the first one to do it. It doesn't matter that Sony & Microsoft can emulate or even directly copy what Nintendo is offering. Nintendo is the first to do it, and unless they can do it better than Nintendo does, people will assume that Nintendo is the only one offering.
The way to do that is to appeal to people who don't normally game. Gamers are a small percentage of the total population. If you can sell to every non-gamer, even if not one single gamer buys your console, you win. Realistically, they can't sell to every non-gamer, and the hardest of the hardcore gamers are going to buy all 3 consoles. Plus they still have Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Smash Bros., Fire Emblem, Pikmin, F-Zero, Donkey Kong and countless other IP exclusive to their console, so they've got at least the 20 million from last generation locked up. They get to add to that everyone who loved an NES or Atari 2600, but couldn't wrap their head around the new controller. They get to add everyone who thinks just sitting in front of a screen pressing buttons is stupid, but getting up and moving around is fun. They get to add everyone who enjoyed watching games, but could never really play them before. They get to add everyone who just wants to play a few minutes at a time, and not spend their entire day exploring Vice City. And of equal importance, they have a chance to change the image that gamers have of them. That's why they're hyping 3rd party efforts like Red Steel & Call of Duty 3, and working of 1st/2nd Party projects like Disaster, Necro-Nesia & Project HAMMER.
Nintendo has done anyting but concede the game. All they've done is change the rules.
Assume HD adoption does pick up to a decent rate. Then the next PS & Xbox consoles come out, and nobody can tell a difference. The next Wii comes out, and it may be only slightly better than PS3 & Xbox 360, but it's such a marked improvement over the Wii that people are astounded. Suddenly Nintendo is the only one who can sell consoles in teh 8th generation, because the people who already have a 360 or PS3 see no point in upgrading their consoles, but the people with a Wii do, and the ones with a 360 or PS3 who decided against the Wii, decide that HD-Wii is finally worth owning, especially if it's fully backwards compatible.
Totally ridiculous scenario, probably, but I'd be amused.
You are right, casual gamers are much more fun of FPS, RPGs & Strategy games than hardcore gamers, so Nintendo should probably take those games they have scheduled off their release list, snub Square-Enix (cause who cares about Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest), and focus on casual gamers.
Also, while graphical enhancements do add to gameplay, you're wrong about open-roaming games. Open roaming games existed for years before 3D graphics. The only difference is the appearance of the game. What about Zelda:OoT, that was an open roaming game in 3D, that existed before the PS2 did. In fact, their entire design focus in the game was to make it so that any place you could see, you could go to. Certainly the world wasn't as big as GTA3, but that was a limitation of the storage format, not of the graphics.
What about AI & Physics? There's plenty of room for improvement there. The Wii may not be able to match the graphical prowess of the 360 or PS3, but it can match (and possibly exceed) them in AI, and shouldn't be too far behind them in physics.
Graphical limitations are a mental constraint, not a physical one. Improving graphics makes it easier for developers to institute new game ideas, but once those ideas exist, other developers have gone back and remade those ideas with less need for the graphical advancements. So yes, there will be game innovations that only exist because of the graphical prowess of the 360 & PS3, but that does not automatically mean they will be impossible on the Wii. In fact, their very existence on the other consoles will be incentive for some developer to find a way to put them on the Wii.
That is unbelievably not true. Nintendo does focus on gameplay, but in every generation they have been graphically superior to their competitors. The problem is it wasn't working. The n64 was graphically superior to the PS1 and lost marketshare. The GC was even more graphically superior to the PS2, and still lost marketshare. Like any species, a company that doesn't change to fit the environment, doesn't survive. Nintendo could have made a machine more powerful than the PS3, but what would that have gained them? Not much, since nobody cared that the GC was more powerful than the PS2. So they created something people would care about, then sacrificed their normal graphical superiority for the sake of keeping the price reasonable. Because this is something new, something different, they have to convince people to try it, and it's a lot easier to convince someone to try something new at $250 than it is to try something new at $400.
There is so much wrong with this comment. First, Sony did ship less than 400,000 units, but it's been impossible to confirm exact numbers as of yet. Nintendo has not shipped 1 million yet, though, so far they've sold 600,000. Second, the PS3 release for Europe has been pushed back to March 2007, so there are no PS3s sitting on any shelves anywhere, at least not for very long. Unless you count the ones being sold on ebay, but as far as Sony and NPD are concerned, those are sold consoles.
You realize that's not even possible right? Currently there are more people playing Gears of War online than there are people who actually own a PS3. That's not an exaggeration, it's a simple fact. Even over the next few months, its unlikely Resistance will hit more total players online than Xbox gold members for a while, March at the absolute earliest.
I'll admit, it's suspicious that Microsoft refuses to give a number for people who are actually paying for Gold service, and only state the number of consoles that have gone online at all, but they give numbers for how many people are playing specific games online occasionally (like when Gears of War surpassed Halo 2) and those numbers are decent...and higher than the total number of people with a PS3, at least for now.
Why do most Wii games look like gamecube games or worse?
Answer: Most of them are gamecube games?
Why are you fucking over third party developers for online support?
Answer: We're not. We don't want the servers to all crash as soon as everyone gets online, so we're bringing people online slowly, you know, like Microsoft did with Xbox Live the first time. We want to avoid the WoW situation where servers crash every five minutes, that's just not good customer service.
What the fuck is going on with the hardware/software problems with the Wii? Bricked consoles from flakey firmware updating. And huge numbers of Wiimote problems.
Answer: There are no software problems with the Wii. Nor are there any Wiimote problems. There were hardware problems with the first revision of Wii units produced. We are replacing those, but it is well within standard error for any piece of technological equipment, and in fact less than most.
What the hell is going on with third party support? Why are you letting developers dump half-assed gamecube era engines with some pointing or swing bolted on? Where are all these 'innovative' games you've been bragging about?
Answer: We have plenty of 3rd party support. We are letting developers dump half-assed gamecube era engines with some pointing or swinging bolted on because that's what 3rd party developers want to do. There are 1400 PS2 games in existence, 900 of them are totally worthless. We figure it worked for Sony, it can work for us. The entire goal is to make development as easy for 3rd parties as possible, so we can have 900 crappy games that people can point to, just like everybody else. Don't worry, we'll keep making the new and innovative games we've always made, but it takes us time. We're not special gaming fairies with magical pixie dust that sprouts a Mario game fully formed from the ether. We're just normal programmers and artist who give a shit about video games and are willing to take a few hits to our image to release a game that doesn't suck. Unlike THQ, but don't tell them I said that.
Goldeneye would be for VC, a classic download, not a new game. Nintendo couldn't make a new Goldeneye game, because Activision (or maybe someone else by now) has the license to make Bond games.
Also, Animal Crossing, as well as it did, was not a new franchise, it was released as Animal Forest on the n64 and did moderately well in Japan, then did better in updated release on GC.
But if you're honestly looking for new franchises, though Nintendo has not announced release dates for them, they actually have 3 in the works. Disaster, H.A.M.M.E.R. and I forget what the other was called. They're just giving games like Smash Bros., Metroid, & Mario priority because A) most of the people with Wii's right now are hardcore Nintendo fans who have been looking forward to those games and B) they're already pretty far along in production and it'd be silly to just stop them and finish up another game first. Nintendo has several games in development all the time, but they can't all have full dev time devoted to them simultaneously.
He can't give a release date because the head developer on the project doesn't have one yet. Because of the nature of the game, it's entirely possible for them to go from being 50% complete to being 90% complete in as little as a month. Then it would have to be localized for other markets, although admittedly, Smash Bros. games do not require particularly intensive localization.
I...you.....what does that have to do with this story? This story is 100% about US sales numbers. It doesn't consider the Japanese sales numbers at all since the Wii isn't even out in Japan yet, and the US already has more PS3s than Japan does, and it released 2 weeks earlier in Japan.
I understand your point. I don't agree with it, since gaming is a worldwide market and all sales should be considered, not just sales for any one region, but the least you could do is stay on topic.
Those are just the numbers for the US (for Nintendo). Don't forget they still have Japan and Europe who will be receiving Wiis this year. Considering how poorly Microsoft is doing in Japan, Nintendo could pull ahead a lot quicker than Microsoft expects (4 million of those 8 million 360s went to the US).
Since R&D was done prior to the release, that information should already be availble in Nintendo's publicly released quarterly reports. These would be in Japanese, however, which I don't read, but you should be able to find the information on how much the system cost to make somewhere. They have already given an estimate of their marketing budget (I think it was $200 million? There's an article about it somewhere). They have not given a number on how much they make on each console sold (probably not very much), or each accessor sold (probably a lot more), but in general, you can assume they make about $15-$20 on each 1st party game sold, and probably another $5-$10 on each 3rd party game sold.
In that case the numbers would still be exactly correct.
Nintendo sold you the console. The console failed (in this case, it was a hardware defect, the firmware was not the problem, it simply exposed the defect) and Nintendo replaced it. That replacement does not count as an additional sale, however, since you've already bought one console, their sales numbers remain unchanged.
As for how many of the systems had that defect, Nintendo has not officially confirmed, but 3rd party estimates have it at less than 1% for the time being, and Nintendo has claimed that future shipments will not have the defect.
1. Aside from FF12: Revenant Wings for DS, they are also working of an FFCC sequel for DS, as well as the one for Wii.
2. Actually, FF sells better in the US than it does in Japan, or at least it has since the PS generation of FFs. Dragon Quest is the big seller in Japan, so if they moved the FF series to 360, it would make the 360 competitive in Japan, but would not win it the race overnight. On the other hand, the 360 would blow up in the US if they did that.
3. Square-Enix also has a second DQ spinoff in the works for DS (the first was Rocket Slime, the next is Joker), well, they also have the weird DQ/Mario boardgame they're working on for DS. Anyway, if their DQ spinoffs for DS & Wii do well, there will be ample temptation to take the DQ series to the Wii instead of the PS3.
Also, it would be in Square-Enix's best interests to split up their two best selling franchises on different systems, thereby insuring high sales of both systems. At this point, it seems unlikely for Square-Enix to move to the 360, so most likely the main FF series will remain with the PS3, and DQ will be moved to the Wii. That insures high sales of both systems, and pretty much guarantees them the maximum in software sales. Since DQ gmaes are usually less graphically intense than FF games (due to a complete difference in the art direction), developing for the lower powered Wii is no hardship. It just seems like the smart business decision.
Actually, Nintendo never game an official launch number. The only thing they ever said was 4 million units worldwide by the end of the year. They still have launches for Japan, Europe & Australia/New Zealand to go, not to mention the rest of the year. They did recently claim that they will have 2 million units in North America by the end of the year, so we'll have to see how they manage that.
Sony said 80 thousand units for Japan, and beat it by 3 thousand. They also said they would have 400 thousand units for the US, but reports seem to indicate they missed it by at least 100 thousand. On the other hand, they seem to be getting new shipments out fairly regularly, so while they may have missed the launch numbers, they still have a chance of reaching their shipment target of 1 million (to 1.2 million) units in the US by the end of the year.
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite. The straps they use are rated for a certain force. If you exceed that force, the strap will break. None of the reports say the strap just snapped, in each case, the player did not simply let go of the controller, but were actually swinging it with force at the time it left their hand. Even the "snakey metal" you speak of, has a rating beyond which it will snap. Using a stronger strap would guarantee nothing, and Nintendo would still have to educate people not to release the controller when they're flinging it at their tv at high speeds.
1. Already in the PS3 OS.
2. Already in the PS3 OS.
3. Yes, you'd need Linux for this one.
4. Already in the PS3 OS.
The point is, no where near 50% of the people buying a PS3 are going to care about Linux. Most of the stuff they would want to use a full OS for can be done directly from the PS3 without installing Linux. With advancements being made in web apps to provide basic productivity, and a built-in web browser, there's suddenly no need for a 'Other OS' on the PS3, and so no one but hardcore geeks who want to program the hardware will ever use it.
Now, to be totally, horribly pedantic about it, at one time the GC was sold for a loss. When Nintendo first reduced the price to $99, they were selling it at a loss for about a month before cost reduction on the hardware caught up. That has probably happened to other consoles that reduced prices quickly for competitive reasons (certainly in the case of the DC), but so far we only know of 3 consoles for sure that were sold at a loss at the begging of their lifespan, the Xbox, the Xbox 360 & the PS3.
Actually, Nintendo never said SSB:B would be availabe at launch. The earliest tentative date they ever gave was March 2007. Now it looks like it probably won't hit until early Fall, but they have guaranteed online play. In fact, aside from the few characters they've shown, online play is the only thing they've guaranteed.
In that case, you may want to import a North American Wii. Wii games are region coded, so they will only play on the system from the same country. If you don't mind paying a premium, you might want to try picking one up off ebay.
This "revolutionary" (aka: gimmicky) input method they came up with will work well for very few games, and even then only where the game is extremely simple in nature. Everyone was drooling about how this would work with FPS games, but so far that's turning out to be a big letdown, as demonstrated by Red Steel and Splinter Cell: Double Agent.
Just because something is gimmicky doesn't mean it's not revolutionary. And if you read the reviews, the control scheme actually does work better for FPS. SC:DA was a complete mess, yes, but most reviews say the only good thing about Red Steel is the control scheme (for the shooting, apparently the swordplay is pretty bad). Otherwise, check the reviews for Call of Duty 3, with the Wii version so far considered the best version, although it gets knocked hard for a lack of multiplayer.
And speaking of DA, this is a taste of things to come with multi-platform titles. Seriously, check out how badly this game was butchered in it's translation to the woefully-underpowered Wii. Dammit, the XBox 1 version looks better than this, and the Wii controller just isn't sophisticated enough to handle the input on this game, just like the GC couldn't do it properly in last-gen's versions either.
How does that make any sense? The GC controller has exactly 1 less button than the PS2 and Xbox controllers (not to mention better analog sticks than either) and the GC was more powerful than the PS2, and pretty close to the Xbox in power. Loss of a single button can be significant, yes, but shouldn't break a game. Depending on how you plan to use it, the Wii is either 2 or 4 buttons short, and you can often replace those with gestures. So if you really just want to port a game over without using the motion controlling you can. No one does that because the motion control is better.
And let's put this ignorant, tired line of "all the other consoles have to rely on is better graphics" to rest already. It's being parroted all over the place by fanboys who don't understand. The PS3 and X360 are far more powerful in: CPU, GPU, system memory, and storage space. This allows for more than just better graphics, you know. It means bigger, deeper games with more realism, immersion, and freedom for the developers and the players. It means better AI is possible in single-player elements. All of this means BETTER gameplay, not worse like some people seem to be insinuating.
That is partially true. PS3 & 360 games will certainly have better physics. They may have more immersive environments, that mostly depends on art direction and programmers. Zelda:TP is immersive because of the art direction and the attention to detail, despite the weaker graphics compared to the other systems, and it's a GC game. PS3 & 360 games will certianly have more realism, and more freedom for the developers (although that also means more work). This does not mean the games will be bigger or deeper, however. When designing to a 720p spec over a 480p spec, you're using more space and more memory. Because of the weaker graphics on the Wii, it can have environments just as large and deep as anything on the 360. Here the PS3 will have the advantage because of the Blu-ray drive, but then it has limitations in memory access, so chances are it's a wash across all three systems. As for better AI, the primary cores in the PS3 and 360 are actually inferior for AI. The cores they purchased from IBM are heavily enhanced for graphics, but have several issues which causes AI to suffer. The Wii processor is a far more advanced at handling AI, and it's memory architecture has less latency, so it's likely the Wii will see better AI than either other system. On the other hand, the processor is slower, so it probably can't run as many AI at once, so there it's a tradeoff.
My objection is, you see the Wii as an inferior system automatically. I've played the Wii and the 360 (haven't had a chance with a PS3 yet, none of my fri
Oh please.
Sime Wii is so obviously a better name.
The funny thing is, even though Nintendo only makes software for Nintendo consoles, if you count total software sales internationally, Nintendo is first overall. Nintendo published software outsells software made by every other company in gaming, EA is a distant second.
The only reason no one is trying anything right now is because they'd have to go against Nintendo, the company that dragged this industry out of the gutter 20 years ago and still isn't dead, Microsoft who can draw nearly limitlessly upon their OS & Office products, and Sony the biggest name in electronics who has pretty much owned the industry for the last 10 years. With that kind of competition, nobody really believes there's room for another player, but I guarantee you, if any one of them drops out, especially if it's Sony, don't be surprised to hear announcements that other major technology giants are putting their bid in to control what is now a multibillion dollar market that rivals the film industry. Apple, IBM, even Dell or Google can afford to risk it, and are smart enough to provide true competition, and most importantly, learn from Sony's (and even Sega's & Nintendo's) mistakes.
That's the beauty of capitilism. Competition breeds creativity. And the chance to make money breeds competition.
I...I don't know. Are there people in the world who don't read slashdot? No...probably not.
Nintendo is actually in a better position to make a more powerful console than either Sony or Microsoft.
While Nintendo is not as large a business as either of their 2 competitors, Nintendo has, at last estimates, around $10 billion in liquid assets. That's over twice what Microsoft lost on the original Xbox. Sony and Microsoft have to make up for any losses from other divisions, because they don't keep large amounts of cash on hand. Nintendo could afford it, if that's what they wanted to do, but you know what that would get them? The most powerful console of this generation and still being in 3rd place.
The n64 was more powerful than the PS1 and lost, the GC was more powerful than the PS3 and lost. If the Wii was more powerful than the PS3, but still used a standard controller, it would still lose. If you read the article, it has nothing in it about what Nintendo wants, it simply says that Nintendo can survive comfortably in 3rd place from now until people give up video games.
But if you look at what Nintendo is actually saying, you'll see that what they want is 1st place, and they know that more power isn't the way to get it, at least not for them. After E3, a Microsoft exec (Howard Lincoln?) is quoted as saying 'you could buy a 360 & a Wii for the price of a PS3'. Days later a Sony exec (Kaz Hirai?), is quoted as saying, 'We see no reason people wouldn't buy a Wii as a second system to go with their PS3'. When a Nintendo exec was question about these comments (Reggie Fils-Aime?), his response was 'Well, really, I'd rather people buy our system instead of our competitors.' (All quotes are paraphrased from memory, hence the single-quotes.)
Nintendo's goal is to be the company people turn to for gaming first, and they've realized that more power is not the way to do that. They way to do that is to provide something that no one else does, and to be the first one to do it. It doesn't matter that Sony & Microsoft can emulate or even directly copy what Nintendo is offering. Nintendo is the first to do it, and unless they can do it better than Nintendo does, people will assume that Nintendo is the only one offering.
The way to do that is to appeal to people who don't normally game. Gamers are a small percentage of the total population. If you can sell to every non-gamer, even if not one single gamer buys your console, you win. Realistically, they can't sell to every non-gamer, and the hardest of the hardcore gamers are going to buy all 3 consoles. Plus they still have Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Smash Bros., Fire Emblem, Pikmin, F-Zero, Donkey Kong and countless other IP exclusive to their console, so they've got at least the 20 million from last generation locked up. They get to add to that everyone who loved an NES or Atari 2600, but couldn't wrap their head around the new controller. They get to add everyone who thinks just sitting in front of a screen pressing buttons is stupid, but getting up and moving around is fun. They get to add everyone who enjoyed watching games, but could never really play them before. They get to add everyone who just wants to play a few minutes at a time, and not spend their entire day exploring Vice City. And of equal importance, they have a chance to change the image that gamers have of them. That's why they're hyping 3rd party efforts like Red Steel & Call of Duty 3, and working of 1st/2nd Party projects like Disaster, Necro-Nesia & Project HAMMER.
Nintendo has done anyting but concede the game. All they've done is change the rules.
Assume HD adoption does pick up to a decent rate. Then the next PS & Xbox consoles come out, and nobody can tell a difference. The next Wii comes out, and it may be only slightly better than PS3 & Xbox 360, but it's such a marked improvement over the Wii that people are astounded. Suddenly Nintendo is the only one who can sell consoles in teh 8th generation, because the people who already have a 360 or PS3 see no point in upgrading their consoles, but the people with a Wii do, and the ones with a 360 or PS3 who decided against the Wii, decide that HD-Wii is finally worth owning, especially if it's fully backwards compatible.
Totally ridiculous scenario, probably, but I'd be amused.
Also, while graphical enhancements do add to gameplay, you're wrong about open-roaming games. Open roaming games existed for years before 3D graphics. The only difference is the appearance of the game. What about Zelda:OoT, that was an open roaming game in 3D, that existed before the PS2 did. In fact, their entire design focus in the game was to make it so that any place you could see, you could go to. Certainly the world wasn't as big as GTA3, but that was a limitation of the storage format, not of the graphics.
What about AI & Physics? There's plenty of room for improvement there. The Wii may not be able to match the graphical prowess of the 360 or PS3, but it can match (and possibly exceed) them in AI, and shouldn't be too far behind them in physics.
Graphical limitations are a mental constraint, not a physical one. Improving graphics makes it easier for developers to institute new game ideas, but once those ideas exist, other developers have gone back and remade those ideas with less need for the graphical advancements. So yes, there will be game innovations that only exist because of the graphical prowess of the 360 & PS3, but that does not automatically mean they will be impossible on the Wii. In fact, their very existence on the other consoles will be incentive for some developer to find a way to put them on the Wii.
That is unbelievably not true. Nintendo does focus on gameplay, but in every generation they have been graphically superior to their competitors. The problem is it wasn't working. The n64 was graphically superior to the PS1 and lost marketshare. The GC was even more graphically superior to the PS2, and still lost marketshare. Like any species, a company that doesn't change to fit the environment, doesn't survive. Nintendo could have made a machine more powerful than the PS3, but what would that have gained them? Not much, since nobody cared that the GC was more powerful than the PS2. So they created something people would care about, then sacrificed their normal graphical superiority for the sake of keeping the price reasonable. Because this is something new, something different, they have to convince people to try it, and it's a lot easier to convince someone to try something new at $250 than it is to try something new at $400.
There is so much wrong with this comment. First, Sony did ship less than 400,000 units, but it's been impossible to confirm exact numbers as of yet. Nintendo has not shipped 1 million yet, though, so far they've sold 600,000. Second, the PS3 release for Europe has been pushed back to March 2007, so there are no PS3s sitting on any shelves anywhere, at least not for very long. Unless you count the ones being sold on ebay, but as far as Sony and NPD are concerned, those are sold consoles.
I'll admit, it's suspicious that Microsoft refuses to give a number for people who are actually paying for Gold service, and only state the number of consoles that have gone online at all, but they give numbers for how many people are playing specific games online occasionally (like when Gears of War surpassed Halo 2) and those numbers are decent...and higher than the total number of people with a PS3, at least for now.
Answer: Most of them are gamecube games?
Why are you fucking over third party developers for online support?
Answer: We're not. We don't want the servers to all crash as soon as everyone gets online, so we're bringing people online slowly, you know, like Microsoft did with Xbox Live the first time. We want to avoid the WoW situation where servers crash every five minutes, that's just not good customer service.
What the fuck is going on with the hardware/software problems with the Wii? Bricked consoles from flakey firmware updating. And huge numbers of Wiimote problems.
Answer: There are no software problems with the Wii. Nor are there any Wiimote problems. There were hardware problems with the first revision of Wii units produced. We are replacing those, but it is well within standard error for any piece of technological equipment, and in fact less than most.
What the hell is going on with third party support? Why are you letting developers dump half-assed gamecube era engines with some pointing or swing bolted on? Where are all these 'innovative' games you've been bragging about?
Answer: We have plenty of 3rd party support. We are letting developers dump half-assed gamecube era engines with some pointing or swinging bolted on because that's what 3rd party developers want to do. There are 1400 PS2 games in existence, 900 of them are totally worthless. We figure it worked for Sony, it can work for us. The entire goal is to make development as easy for 3rd parties as possible, so we can have 900 crappy games that people can point to, just like everybody else. Don't worry, we'll keep making the new and innovative games we've always made, but it takes us time. We're not special gaming fairies with magical pixie dust that sprouts a Mario game fully formed from the ether. We're just normal programmers and artist who give a shit about video games and are willing to take a few hits to our image to release a game that doesn't suck. Unlike THQ, but don't tell them I said that.
Also, Animal Crossing, as well as it did, was not a new franchise, it was released as Animal Forest on the n64 and did moderately well in Japan, then did better in updated release on GC.
But if you're honestly looking for new franchises, though Nintendo has not announced release dates for them, they actually have 3 in the works. Disaster, H.A.M.M.E.R. and I forget what the other was called. They're just giving games like Smash Bros., Metroid, & Mario priority because A) most of the people with Wii's right now are hardcore Nintendo fans who have been looking forward to those games and B) they're already pretty far along in production and it'd be silly to just stop them and finish up another game first. Nintendo has several games in development all the time, but they can't all have full dev time devoted to them simultaneously.
He can't give a release date because the head developer on the project doesn't have one yet. Because of the nature of the game, it's entirely possible for them to go from being 50% complete to being 90% complete in as little as a month. Then it would have to be localized for other markets, although admittedly, Smash Bros. games do not require particularly intensive localization.
I understand your point. I don't agree with it, since gaming is a worldwide market and all sales should be considered, not just sales for any one region, but the least you could do is stay on topic.
Those are just the numbers for the US (for Nintendo). Don't forget they still have Japan and Europe who will be receiving Wiis this year. Considering how poorly Microsoft is doing in Japan, Nintendo could pull ahead a lot quicker than Microsoft expects (4 million of those 8 million 360s went to the US).
Since R&D was done prior to the release, that information should already be availble in Nintendo's publicly released quarterly reports. These would be in Japanese, however, which I don't read, but you should be able to find the information on how much the system cost to make somewhere. They have already given an estimate of their marketing budget (I think it was $200 million? There's an article about it somewhere). They have not given a number on how much they make on each console sold (probably not very much), or each accessor sold (probably a lot more), but in general, you can assume they make about $15-$20 on each 1st party game sold, and probably another $5-$10 on each 3rd party game sold.
Hope this information helps somewhat.
Nintendo sold you the console. The console failed (in this case, it was a hardware defect, the firmware was not the problem, it simply exposed the defect) and Nintendo replaced it. That replacement does not count as an additional sale, however, since you've already bought one console, their sales numbers remain unchanged.
As for how many of the systems had that defect, Nintendo has not officially confirmed, but 3rd party estimates have it at less than 1% for the time being, and Nintendo has claimed that future shipments will not have the defect.
1. Aside from FF12: Revenant Wings for DS, they are also working of an FFCC sequel for DS, as well as the one for Wii.
2. Actually, FF sells better in the US than it does in Japan, or at least it has since the PS generation of FFs. Dragon Quest is the big seller in Japan, so if they moved the FF series to 360, it would make the 360 competitive in Japan, but would not win it the race overnight. On the other hand, the 360 would blow up in the US if they did that. 3. Square-Enix also has a second DQ spinoff in the works for DS (the first was Rocket Slime, the next is Joker), well, they also have the weird DQ/Mario boardgame they're working on for DS. Anyway, if their DQ spinoffs for DS & Wii do well, there will be ample temptation to take the DQ series to the Wii instead of the PS3.
Also, it would be in Square-Enix's best interests to split up their two best selling franchises on different systems, thereby insuring high sales of both systems. At this point, it seems unlikely for Square-Enix to move to the 360, so most likely the main FF series will remain with the PS3, and DQ will be moved to the Wii. That insures high sales of both systems, and pretty much guarantees them the maximum in software sales. Since DQ gmaes are usually less graphically intense than FF games (due to a complete difference in the art direction), developing for the lower powered Wii is no hardship. It just seems like the smart business decision.
Actually, Nintendo never game an official launch number. The only thing they ever said was 4 million units worldwide by the end of the year. They still have launches for Japan, Europe & Australia/New Zealand to go, not to mention the rest of the year. They did recently claim that they will have 2 million units in North America by the end of the year, so we'll have to see how they manage that.
Sony said 80 thousand units for Japan, and beat it by 3 thousand. They also said they would have 400 thousand units for the US, but reports seem to indicate they missed it by at least 100 thousand. On the other hand, they seem to be getting new shipments out fairly regularly, so while they may have missed the launch numbers, they still have a chance of reaching their shipment target of 1 million (to 1.2 million) units in the US by the end of the year.