Metacritic judged that PS3 had overall the best games for 2009. And 2010 is going to be by far PS3’s year (just look at Heavy Rain and God of War III). I continue to find immensely amusing, though not surprising at all, all those masses of players blindly closing their eyes to quality games and instead wasting hundreds of euros on games like Wii Fit (go outside and RUN!!, you moron).
I’m happy to see that PS3’s sales are constantly increasing. My bet is that they’ll manage to outpace XBOX360 by the end of this generation
Yea… but the problem is that while gamers rate PS3 games better, they aren’t selling better. Best selling PS3 titles have sold between 3 to 4 million copies. Best selling Wii titles have sold between 8 to 10 million. Then you have Wii Fit and Wii Play, that are on an entire different level, having sold 20 million each. We’ll ignore those two titles for the moment.
So while PS3 games are rated higher, it’s not as profitable. And “customer loyalty” isn’t as high on the PS3: 11% to 15% chance that PS3 gamers will grab the next Ubergame Solid, while there’s a 14% to 18% chance that Wii gamers will grab the next Uber Brothers. So with a larger number of owners, a larger percentage of them buying, Nintendo is trouncing everyone left and right.
Wii sales have slipped, and PS3 sales have risen, but the numbers aren’t enough to tip the scales¬Ö and to be honest, Sony has been claiming things will get better for the PS3 for over half a decade now. Also Nintendo just reported that they sold 3 million more Wii’s in the US alone, during December of 2009, so it may actually turn out that Wii sales aren’t down after all ¬ñ just that all the numbers weren’t reported yet.
On a personal gamer level: I’m rooting for Sony, because the PS3 is an awesome system¬Ö but there’s nothing I can’t live without that XBOX won’t get, and Wii has all the exclusives I really want. MGS4 is the kind of game I can just watch a playthrough on Youtube and get the same experience, since it’s less gameplay and more FMV.
My beef with Sony is the price tag. They touted the PS3 as an elite man’s system - like the Lamborghini of video games - when most everybody only has a paycheck to get a Fiat. That “I gotta be made of money” attitude of theirs is annoying. PSP GO only proves they haven’t changed that. Plus we’re getting to the point, where talk of XBOX720 and Wii2 and PS4 are becoming more serious. Now I’m expected to buy an uber expensive system, when it may be obsolete in another year or two? Screw that. Sony’s worst nightmare would be if Nintendo or Microsoft release a next gen system, and it’s still cheaper than the PS3. Supposedly Sony will stick with the PS3 until 2016 (ten year life cycle, according to the last press report) - but I can’t see that happening. Not if Nintendo or Microsoft are moving to the next stage between 2012 to 2014. They’ve got two years to catch up in the game. I’m not sure if they can do it, because Nintendo would be idiotic to let them catch up. Plus Sony is an asshole to third party developers (we won’t let your release that game, because we said so).
I’m not contesting that Nintendo has sold much more hardware (and software) than Sony, I’m just saying that as a player I will stick to PS3, because that’s where I’ll find the best games. And I believe my point of view is shared by a large group of gamers - actually, by the majority of gamers who started videogaming before the Wii came out. After all, the basis of Wii success was taking many new people inside the videogame market.
On a different note. Nintendo actually gave up on competing with Microsoft and Sony from a technical point of view. This didn’t cause them any harm in the short period, but will they be able to keep up when the time comes for the next generation systems? I’m not sure.
But that brings in an ugly picture: where are the other 70 million “hardcore” gamers from yesteryear? Is only 27 million actually buying? That only 30% of a previous gaming generation actually returned? Did they out grow gaming? Did they go piracy? Does that mean Nintendo did the right thing: ignore the hardcore and start over from scratch? Does that mean hardcore gamers don’t support their own hardcore market?
Look at it from an investor’s point of view: that’s not very inviting at all.
That’s one way of looking at it I suppose. Another would be that Nintendo challenged them from the prospective of gaming creativity and player immersion, which Microsoft and Sony failed to realize was the future gaming.
In any case… Nintendo has earned this generation:
#1: More money.
#2: Greater customer loyalty and confidence.
They certainly have a much better position than Sony or Microsoft currently do. Which do you think would sell better? A next gen DS would certainly have better confidence than a next gen PSP. R&D wise, Microsoft is a greater threat to Nintendo than Sony, since Sony still hasn’t figured out what they want to do next (there was a major executive shift just a few months ago). Also remember that the only reason why XBOX 360 and PS3 are still around, is because they came from companies who had the money to fund them. Nintendo only sells games. If the PS3 or 360 were from “game only companies”, they’d have long been bankrupt. Nintendo is achieving more than Sony and Microsoft combined, with 25% the budget. That’s nothing short of divine.
Which is precisely why Nintendo needed to win this generation. If they continued to have a weak showing, ala Gamecube, they would go the way of Sega. Sony and MS will always have other product areas that create plenty of revenue for them. Hell, has MS’s console division ever reported a positive revenue? Especially with the RRoD fiasco from a few years back. If they spent another 500,000,000 making the console reliable, they wouldn’t have had to spend a billion replacing a bunch of dead ones. It’s a fucking horrible way to run a business, but it is what it is, and Nintendo being a game only company means you will probably never have to expect that type of shit from them.
I think another reason why Nintendo is successful, is because it costs so much less to make a game on the Wii and DS. Your typical “above average” PS3 and XBOX360 costs in the range of 5 to 10 million to produce. Nintendo does it with 1 to 3 million. PS3 and XBOX360 make the most beautiful games I’ve ever seen: but there just might be too much eye candy. I’ve made an early bet with someone that Capcom vs Tatsunoko will out sell Street Fighter 4.
Fact is, Wii cannot deliver eye-candy at all. And some people want eye-candy (look at me, writing from a last generation quad-core). Nintendo will not really steal that many customers from PS3 and XBOX360 until the Wii manages to get something on the technical level of Ucharted 2. Sure, it can get wholly new customers - but seems like we’re talking about different markets now.
Yea, but you the candy people aren’t buying enough. PS3 and XBOX360 are the ones who want Wii’s population, not the other way around. Nintendo doesn’t have to steal anything: just keep innovation, which they’re doing good at: people fall in like lemmings. If eye candy is what people want in 2 or 3 years, Nintendo has all the capital and investors lined up to make the ultimate eye candy machine (that’s easier to program for than PS3 and cheaper). On the other hand, Sony and Microsoft will have to fork money out of their own pockets. Microsoft seems willing to do that, but Sony does not (they’re hoping to keep the PS3 until 2016).
So ultimately, the eye candy demographic is failing itself by not supporting the ones who are providing it. It’s not the company, it’s the gamers?
Nintendo and maybe Microsoft, are the two in position for redefining gaming of the next generation: Sony is still holding on to the past, when they ruled the market. At present, Nintendo could afford to keep the Wii and release a Giga-Uber Nintendo console for all the bling-bling hardcore gaming… but as the market currently shows, there’s little incentive to do that. I’m sure they even have the blueprints for a super machine… but why bother with it, if no one is gonna buy it?
The challenge is for the people who want ultra expensive games, to buy those ultra expensive games in large numbers. If God of War 4 sold 20 million copies, EVERYONE would be making eye candy titles. But it’s not going to. It be lucky to sell 3 to 5 million at most. Meanwhile, Maro is cranking out at 8 to 10 million units… and those cheap Wii Fit things are pumping an unheard of 20 million apeice. It’s sad when a remake of Pokemon from almost a decade ago, outsells the latest original Metal Gear Solid. I’m investing in Pokemon, not Metal Gear: so you’re gonna see more Pokemon than Metal Gear.
This demographic has pretty well demonstrated by experience they’ll buy PS3 or 360 before they’ll buy Wii. Look at the recent spate of Wii third-party titles that have petered out and sold poorly. So industry people are going to respond in kind and say “people aren’t buying these kind of games, so we’re not going to make them.”
Some of this is due to the test-game-effect (where they release a bad game as a test case, then when it sells poorly, say “See? Nobody buys this”) but some of it is due to honestly good games - that get well-reviewed - just not selling to expectations. Like Dead Space: Extraction.
Of course another problem is that many third parties companies can’t afford to make a top tier PS3 game. Then there’s the added issue that Sony could at any time, refuse to let that game be released, because they feel like it. Enter bankruptcy. So PS3 ain’t exactly looking rosy for them either.
Plus the third party whining is sorta deceptive. Guitar Hero 3 sold 2 million copies alone on the Wii - 8 million total across six different platforms. Resident Evil on the Wii sold more than 1.5 million copies. I mean seriously: name really one awesome must-have Wii title that wasn’t made by Nintendo. It’s not that Nintendo is better at making games, it’s that third party makers have been mostly releasing crap. How many more versions of Wii Cheer and Wii Ski do I want? None. Capcom vs Tatsunoko is the first REAL fighting game being published for Wii, that isn’t an ancient port or some random Naruto/Dragonball junk. If you put garbage in, obviously garbage comes out.
On top of that: third party vendors can’t ignore the nearing 60 million Wii console owners. That’s 50% of the game market… and Nintendo has made it known, that if you stop publishing for the Wii, you can’t publish on the DS ¬ñ which pretty much dominates the handheld market, and is just as profitable as the console market. So they can’t abandon Nintendo, because Sony and Microsoft don’t make enough money and have enough gamers. Maybe if the PSP was successful, Nintendo coudn’t be so threatening about the DS… but yea… Sony screwed that up. Which goes back to Nintendo holding everyone’s balls by the sack, because our other two major players aren’t doing enough to grab them back, or grab them wrong.
Sony got themselves into the same position Nintendo got themselves into with the 64. Sure, it’s not as bad as it was when the big N did it, but here’s the problem.
Sony is not Nintendo. They’re Sony - a huge company - but they don’t live and breathe games. And perhaps most importantly, Miyamoto does not work for them. They have one team (Team Ico) that puts out omigod-everybody-you-have-to-buy-this games, and I don’t think they even sold that well. All the rest of their big series are third party, and while they were obvious PS exclusives in the past, we see where that has led for the current generation.
The problem is, it took something as awesome as the Wii for Nintendo to overcome the “presumption of failure”, wherein the system fails because everyone believes it’s going to fail, so nobody makes any games for it. Nintendo could survive being in that position solely based on their first party titles and locked-down franchises (Pokemon, Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros, Metroid, etc).
But Sony? if Sony ends up in that position, they’re screwed. They’re not in danger of that this generation, but next gen? Considering how things have gone? All the publishers that bought into PS3 have ended up with some problems - how likely are they to invest in PS4 as heavily as they did in PS3?
Well to Nintendo’s credit, they did have a gold mine during their dark days: Pokemon. The franchise is supposed to be valued between 5 to 10 BILLION dollars, depending who you ask.
Sony (and Microsoft) just pulls $$$ from other divisions… though it’s certainly questionable to wonder how long they can keep doing that, before stockholders get tired of it. I will say one thing about Sony though: they’re stubborn as hell and won’t let the PS3 or PSP go down anytime in the next year or two. At least that gives third party developers some peace of mind.
On the N64 and GameCube, everyone knew Nintendo was going to jump ship, so they stayed away from it. Then came the Revolution. Now it’s the total opposite: everyone wants to get aboard, but no one really can figure out how.
^This, but moreso. Even 2nd party companies like Square-Enix and Atlus prefer not to deal with PS3/360 because the cost of developing the game is expotenitally higher with less return because higher price tags and fewer customers. Until the comapnies who develope these high-end systems realize this and lower costs for developing and costs on the shelves this will continue to spell doom.
That isn’t really something they have a large amount of control over. Sure, they have some (regarding the dev tools that come with a professional dev kit - better tools mean game development is better) but in large part, development costs are related to how difficult a console is to program and how intricate the art assets required are. You can change these over time, but you can’t just wave a magic wand and turn the PS3 (with a totally novel architecture and a much higher number of independent processors to juggle in the main program) into the 360 (with just 3 cores using an already-well-understood design).
How to use parallel processors effectively is a hard problem, and since we’ve kind of hit a wall in making a single processor perform faster, they have to go multicore, which means that dev costs are going to continue to be an issue. Good tools and engines that can ameliorate this problem are not trivial to build.
Sony, for example, found out that the PS3 is a bitch to code for. Well, it’s too late. They simply are stuck. They can’t change the PS3’s internal design configuration: that would turn a console into a PC, which is a terrible idea (you can ask Sega about that) and would split their market up; a PS3 where the main game-running processor got swapped out for a new chip that’s easier for programmers to use, isn’t a PS3 anymore. It’s a new console.
They have several gold mines. Many of their franchises are essentially printmoney exploits … in real life. Like you said, how many million copies of the new Mario are they gonna sell? And the new Zelda? The next Super Smash Bros? Any of these games are going to be hits, and they’re going to move enormous quantities of product. The real gold mine is the amount of sheer quality product they release. Nintendo is one of the best game developers in the world.
Nintendo has the oldest and deepest library of classics to cash in on, since the only other company who’s been in the business as long as them (Sega) isn’t a console company anymore. And they hardly ever release duds.
Sony just is not. They have none of this.
They also aren’t terribly innovative, compared to the big N. Both MS and Sony both got blindsided by Nintendo’s strategy. They basically kept going on the path that things had been moving on since the 80’s: same general kind of system, just with more horsepower. And even after Nintendo’s disruption strategy turned out to be so effective, their response is to copy the new features.
When the next generation comes, will the PS4 = the PS3 + the Wii? Or is Sony going to say “what’s the next innovation?”
No, but its something the devs can keep in mind when creating a new console. Sony, and to a lesser extent Microsoft, showed how not keeping 2nd and 3rd party developers costs can affect your own bottom bottom line. It’s an expensive lesson for both of them, moreso for Sony, especially in the long run. It was a lesson that will likely need to be drummed in many more times though; build it and they will come doesn’t work.
History has showm that the cheaper medium wins. The blu-ray victory is kind of an anomoly because the real cheaper medium -standard DVD- with no real advantages to most people is what caused that. Wii has advantages over the GC and the PS2 is much cheaper than PS3. MS got (somewhat) away with the 360 largely because a lot of its framework is based more on PC-like technology, but even they aren’t able to pick up many titles beyond their core genres of the original Xbox.
Seeing as how many hardcore gamers don’t necessarily care for the Wii type of innovation, Sony will probably go more in the fashion of 3d (since the PS3 can already be upgraded to do so).
There is evidence to believe there will be no “next generation” for the foreseeable future because software developers won’t allow them to do so until they have had a chance to make money. Earliest speculation is 2014 or there abouts and later for the ps3…like 2016
