Nintendo to Address Bottleneck; Dismisses Competitors

[Junaid Alam]

Nintendo to Address Bottleneck; Dismisses Competitors

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said a production bottleneck will be swiftly corrected and also dismissed the possibility of competitors successfully competing in the Wii's casual-player market.

Following publisher complaints that demand for Nintendo Wii software was impeding its ability to launch titles, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said the problem will be resolved in three weeks.

"As every publisher talks about shifting over to Wii it's creating this crush of production right now at our factories for software," Fils-Aime said at a BMO Capital Markets conference.

He sounded a note of assurance, saying the problem was "very short-term." "What we've done is to ramp that capacity up and work with the publishers to ensure that their best titles get into the marketplace and [they] have a productive holiday."

Fils-Aime also dismissed the idea that Sony and Microsoft would successfully enter the Wii's market with casual games and a peripheral imitating the Wii remote.

"They've gone down the path with very expensive machines where they lose money on the hardware on every unit they sell," he said, later adding, "I don't think a consumer paying $600 for a Sony system, software and accessories is the same consumer who wants to play a more casual type of product."

Gamesindustry.biz [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=30365]

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[Chinster]

Reggie wrote:"I don't think a consumer paying $600 for a Sony system, software and accessories is the same consumer who wants to play a more casual type of product."

He's right, I've had my wii for a year and clocked up a total of 20 hours play. On a price-amount of time played ratio I've had much more value out of my much more expensive PS3 and 360.

I guess you do actually get what you pay for!

 

[Katana314]

Wow. Quite a contrast from that 2005 article that just got republished.

 

[Ajar]

"I don't think a consumer paying $600 for a Sony system, software and accessories is the same consumer who wants to play a more casual type of product."

The success of Geometry Wars on the 360 suggests he's wrong.

 

[Evilducks]

"I don't think a consumer paying $600 for a Sony system, software and accessories is the same consumer who wants to play a more casual type of product."

The success of Geometry Wars on the 360 suggests he's wrong.

Comparatively the success of Wii Sports and Wii Play in contrast to the 'success' of Geometry Wars proves he's right.

 

[Ajar]

Wii Sports is bundled with the console in North America, and Wii Play is bundled with a Wiimote and was released at a time when Wiimotes were hard to find in stores; I think you're overreaching there. Geometry Wars on the 360 was successful enough to spawn a multiplatform franchise, so I'm not sure why you put scare quotes around the word success.

If Reggie were right and the people buying PS3s and 360s didn't also want to "play a more casual type of product," the whole Xbox Live Arcade would be an abject failure.

 

[ShakingSpirit]

Comparatively the success of Wii Sports and Wii Play in contrast to the 'success' of Geometry Wars proves he's right.

Do you people even do any research? Microsoft keep their sales figures pretty tight to their chest, but back on march 6th they announced that Xbox Live Arcade downloads (the most popular being Geometry Wars) had reached 25 million. MILLION. Remember that there's only been 13 million Wiis sold, and you can't buy Wii Sports separately. So unless Nintendo have somehow sold more than one copy of Wii Play to every single Wii owner out there, your statement is completely without merit, and denouncing Nintendo's dominance in the casual gaming market over its competitors is ludicrous.

EDIT: Bah, Ajar beat me to it. I was Googling to verify my numbers >_>

 

[imcaseyimhott [deprecated]]

That was unproductive - Joe.

 

[Arbre]

Comparatively the success of Wii Sports and Wii Play in contrast to the 'success' of Geometry Wars proves he's right.

Do you people even do any research? Microsoft keep their sales figures pretty tight to their chest, but back on march 6th they announced that Xbox Live Arcade downloads (the most popular being Geometry Wars) had reached 25 million. MILLION. Remember that there's only been 13 million Wiis sold, and you can't buy Wii Sports separately. So unless Nintendo have somehow sold more than one copy of Wii Play to every single Wii owner out there, your statement is completely without merit, and denouncing Nintendo's dominance in the casual gaming market over its competitors is ludicrous.

EDIT: Bah, Ajar beat me to it. I was Googling to verify my numbers >_>

Well, one must not forget the conversion rate. Downloads are good, but they're only demos, not copies sold.
That said, with good games, the rates can potentially climb to nearly 50% in a good period.
Most of the time, good games, on an average, do something like 20-30%. Which is still good.

But that said, it still impresses me how some people can cite Wii Play and Wii Sports as examples today.

 

[ShakingSpirit]

Well, one must not forget the conversion rate. Downloads are good, but they're only demos, not copies sold.
That said, with good games, the rates can potentially climb to nearly 50% in a good period.
Most of the time, good games, on an average, do something like 20-30%. Which is still good.

But that said, it still impresses me how some people can cite Wii Play and Wii Sports as examples today.

Even so, Nintendo just dismissing out of hand that 360/PS3 owners aren't interested in 'casual' games is clearly foolish, and is only going to come back to bite them in the ass.
Popcap have received huge sales through Steam, and I'd always thought of Steam games as anything but 'casual' - Nintendo needs to realise that there are a fairly substantial overlap between 'hardcore gamers' and 'casual gamers'.

 

[hickwarrior]

But i think reggie doesn't know that kind of stuff, or he might not have said that. Or he is using some kind of stereotype, or something.

 

[Arbre]

Well, one must not forget the conversion rate. Downloads are good, but they're only demos, not copies sold.
That said, with good games, the rates can potentially climb to nearly 50% in a good period.
Most of the time, good games, on an average, do something like 20-30%. Which is still good.

But that said, it still impresses me how some people can cite Wii Play and Wii Sports as examples today.

Even so, Nintendo just dismissing out of hand that 360/PS3 owners aren't interested in 'casual' games is clearly foolish, and is only going to come back to bite them in the ass.
Popcap have received huge sales through Steam, and I'd always thought of Steam games as anything but 'casual' - Nintendo needs to realise that there are a fairly substantial overlap between 'hardcore gamers' and 'casual gamers'.

Foolish, yes. But who's going to bite them exactly?
The ones I could see bite them would be Microsoft, right now, if they considerably revamped their catalogue.
XBLA has a couple of casual games, but many of them also are arcade games, and nowadays, these games don't strike me as Nintendo-type casual, even if you need just to play them for five minutes.

Microsoft initially claimed they tried to prevent a flood of mini games on their system.

Unless they dedicate a sub section of their Live Arcade system, I'm not seeing how this will compete with a console that dedicates its efforts to have casual games in the traditionnal retail market.

Besides, even if they're wrong, their consoles sell a lot.

The bad point is on the masses of games sales. On this, I think they're a tad delusionnal.

Steam is a very good system, but it's still small.

 

[Fordo]

How does Nintendo get bit in the ass by thinking their competitors aren't interested in the casual gamers? It seems to me they're making them either way, and it's not like they don't have experience in that department. The handheld domination can attest to that.

 

[Wicariusly]

Nintendos PR has always bugged. Its almost like they just hired reggie to make aggressive and showy statements and look good in the western market.

 

[WafflesToo]

Well, one must not forget the conversion rate. Downloads are good, but they're only demos, not copies sold.
That said, with good games, the rates can potentially climb to nearly 50% in a good period.
Most of the time, good games, on an average, do something like 20-30%. Which is still good.

But that said, it still impresses me how some people can cite Wii Play and Wii Sports as examples today.

Even so, Nintendo just dismissing out of hand that 360/PS3 owners aren't interested in 'casual' games is clearly foolish, and is only going to come back to bite them in the ass.
Popcap have received huge sales through Steam, and I'd always thought of Steam games as anything but 'casual' - Nintendo needs to realise that there are a fairly substantial overlap between 'hardcore gamers' and 'casual gamers'.

Don't forget that this is the same corperation that dismissed both the CD-ROM drive and On-line Multiplay as mere "fads that would pass"