Well..... my number was based off of NPD charts I saw last month. So, if there's a discrepancy, its a big one.KDR_11k said:
Japanese Analysts Speculate on Nintendo Crash
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
- Start date
Dude. It's a recession. Japan is in a BAD recession. Nothing is selling well in Japan right now, especially right now, the beginning of the fiscal year, when companies are laying people off. At this point, something doing well ought to make the news, not something underperforming.
The best thing they could do for their pockets that is, too bad it wasn't the best thing for people who don't work in Nintendo, and are actually expecting to play something in the Wii that is not another mini-games shovelfest.ward. said:
Also, everybody here seems to be forgeting that what really keeps a console alive is the games. Sure, Nintendo has made a ton of cash with the sales of the Wii, but if the games are not selling well that's not good news at all. Their solution in this case is just to release another Wii sports, and then probably another Wii music and so on. Let's see what face they put when people start to get bored with those.
I guess its Karma getting back at them for their "Not leaving out our fans, we're just aiming at a different crowd" quote they came out with a while back.skitzo van said:
Still, Nintendo better stay on the market, it keeps the majority of the kids away from ruining my PSonline games with annoying mic chat.
They aren't selling that well anymoro, and they are fearing how this will perform in the future, otherwise this note wouldn't have been published at all.Kwil said:
Sure, they aren't constrained with people demanding a "hardcore" game, now they are constrained with people just wanting more family oriented games. Really, what kind of innovation has come out from all the shovelware that Nintendo is throwing in the Wii? Getting dad and mom to play along? What about innovations with the actual games? So once more, neither market is "better" or more "open" than the other. So please, stop trying to pretend that.
They are selling that well (apparently the Wii Balance Board has outsold the 360 in the US!), there's just been a lack of new games from Nintendo. Of course they can't sell games they haven't made. Without new software to increase the appeal of the system the hardware sales slow down as the people who are willing to buy the system with its current library all get their system and they run out of willing customers (note, NOT households, any talk about "everyone has one" is nonsense, the PS2 sold about three times as much so there's obviously at least enough people to buy three times as many consoles as long as you actually appeal to them).ElTigreNegro said:
Shovelware? They aren't making the shovelware, that is made by third parties. Nintendo is making about 70-80% core games (not just Mario and Zelda, hell, their next releases are Excite Bots and Punch Out!) and their new market games are very high quality as well (though Wii Music fell fairly flat, selling merely a few million copies since "here's your tools, make your own experience" does not sell). The stupid minigame collections with botched controls aren't their products, the only minigame collections they made were near-launch titles (okay and Wario Ware but that one really doesn't count since it's been around like that since the GBA). They're simply not producing enough games to sustain a platform by themselves without droughts (not a new issue, the N64 and Gamecube had the same problem) because third parties are trying to fly by flapping their arms (making "casual" games without understanding what a "casual" gamer IS, obviously games aimed at imaginary people cannot sell and with a wrong understanding all they can do is copy existing successes and hope the parts they copy contain the magic spark).
By the way, for all the people who complain about abandooning the gamer, did you know that the strategy Nintendo is following actually requires ramping up the complexity of the games and producing "gamer's games"? However they won't look entirely the same as the old gamer's games (at least not the ones that dominate the other platforms). They've rebooted gaming back to the 8 bit age in a new form and expand from there with new values for new gamers that look casual to the old gamers just as the console gamers look casual to the PC elite that was made obsolete by the various consoles in a move that looked EXACTLY like the one we're seeing now. So if you think the complaints from PC gamers about all console games being dumbed down are retarded you know you're part of the previous wave of casual gamers.
I hope they don't, because then I'll end up having to buy one. Too many things to buy!!!NoMoreSanity said:
Wii fit is still selling, yes, but recently released games for the Wii not that well, and that's the point of the article.KDR_11k said:
Right, because Wii music and wii fit have shown to be the new standards of gaming and......
About 70-80% of core games? Where are those games? Mario and Sonic at the Olimpics? I fail to see the 80% there, or the "core" for that matter. What exactly is keeping Nintendo for producing more games? With such good sells you would think they will be more than ready for that task.
So, the master plan goes something like this:
-Release a "next-gen" console with lackluster hardware
-Release a bunch of gimmicky pointless games to promote the gimmick that is the wii mote (both first and third party games) with the usual rehashed Zelda and Mario Kart
-Attract a bunch of people to this gimmick, they sell a ton of consoles and wii fits and such
-They start making real games again?
That's a very weird masterplan if you ask me. Once more, for making money it worked, for making good games? I'm not seeing the results.
Well isn't that interesting? I guess we'd always just assumed because the wii had sold so well Nintendo was in a very healthy position as a company, but its easy to forget in the Western World just how badly japan is in the recession at the moment. It shall be interesting to see what comes out of this, and if Nintendo is significantly affected by this at all.
The Wii itself is quite innovative, but the games they make for it are not. People need to start thinking of ways to make that motion-sensing an innovative godsend for action games. Don't forget that not all games released on the Wii are just made by Nintendo. Nintendo just sells the license. It's up to the devs to think of a way to make a brilliant action game that makes the wiimote seem... seem.... I hate when I forget an obvious word, someone help me out here?
The game that's "not selling" is a sequel to a game that worked primarily through deception (by pretending to be related Wii Sports but having a completely broken implementation) selling 2.5k on the first day. Even if we leave aside the "fool me twice shame on me" issue these are FIRST DAY SALES. They're meaningless, there's still about 364 other days for the game to sell on. If you want to point at other platforms keep in mind that the Wii market does not work like that, Wii game sales are not front loaded.
"Setting new standards in gaming" and "shovelware" is not a dichtomy. By that approach about 99% of the software on all systems is shovelware, including all the big titles. Shovelware is stuff produced at the minimum level of effort to be put into a box and on shelves in the hope that people buy it by accident. Games like Wii Music and Wii Fit had tons of effort put into them. Just because it doesn't appeal to YOU doesn't mean it's shovelware.
The core games, let's see... Super Mario Galaxy, Super Paper Mario, Zelda TP, Metroid Prime 3, Mario Kart Wii, Mario Strikers, Wario Land Shake Dimension, Exite Truck and Excite Bots, Punch-Out, Battalion Wars 2, Disaster, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Animal Crossing CF, Mario Sluggers, Mario Party 8, DK Barrel Blast
The list may be incomplete, I couldn't find a good way to simply have a website list all Nintendo games so I had to pick them out of a platform listing. Punch Out and Excite Bots are close enough to release that I counted them, other upcoming games weren't counted. Only retail games were counted, japan-only games were not. Yes, they're mostly tied to existing franchises but that doesn't make them less core or less of an investment and last gen the pattern didn't differ much. The games outnumber the "casual" games Nintendo made by far. They've still got only so much dev power though, they can't just say "we'd like to have a game ready at date X" and automatically have one, they only have a limited pool of developers that can be put on a task and when that pool has been busy for most of the time on a game that's released now they won't have had enough time to make the next game yet.
The plan IS to make good games but good by different standards. To the people Wii Sports was aimed at something like Fallout 3 or Gears of War is a horrible game and Wii Sports is much, MUCH better than those because it's actually fun to them. That's what the whole Blue Ocean Strategy and making the competition irrelevant means, to many people who buy a Wii the other systems are not even worth considering because they do nothing these customers want. Of course Wii Fit wasn't so much designed to be fun but neither was Microsoft Office. Some software isn't meant for entertainment but for doing certain tasks and well, there's quite a demand for software that helps you lose weight.
"Setting new standards in gaming" and "shovelware" is not a dichtomy. By that approach about 99% of the software on all systems is shovelware, including all the big titles. Shovelware is stuff produced at the minimum level of effort to be put into a box and on shelves in the hope that people buy it by accident. Games like Wii Music and Wii Fit had tons of effort put into them. Just because it doesn't appeal to YOU doesn't mean it's shovelware.
The core games, let's see... Super Mario Galaxy, Super Paper Mario, Zelda TP, Metroid Prime 3, Mario Kart Wii, Mario Strikers, Wario Land Shake Dimension, Exite Truck and Excite Bots, Punch-Out, Battalion Wars 2, Disaster, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Animal Crossing CF, Mario Sluggers, Mario Party 8, DK Barrel Blast
The list may be incomplete, I couldn't find a good way to simply have a website list all Nintendo games so I had to pick them out of a platform listing. Punch Out and Excite Bots are close enough to release that I counted them, other upcoming games weren't counted. Only retail games were counted, japan-only games were not. Yes, they're mostly tied to existing franchises but that doesn't make them less core or less of an investment and last gen the pattern didn't differ much. The games outnumber the "casual" games Nintendo made by far. They've still got only so much dev power though, they can't just say "we'd like to have a game ready at date X" and automatically have one, they only have a limited pool of developers that can be put on a task and when that pool has been busy for most of the time on a game that's released now they won't have had enough time to make the next game yet.
The plan IS to make good games but good by different standards. To the people Wii Sports was aimed at something like Fallout 3 or Gears of War is a horrible game and Wii Sports is much, MUCH better than those because it's actually fun to them. That's what the whole Blue Ocean Strategy and making the competition irrelevant means, to many people who buy a Wii the other systems are not even worth considering because they do nothing these customers want. Of course Wii Fit wasn't so much designed to be fun but neither was Microsoft Office. Some software isn't meant for entertainment but for doing certain tasks and well, there's quite a demand for software that helps you lose weight.
As mandatory as the DS's touch screen after you've played Chou Soujuu Mecha MG?Lios said:
I'm pretty sure their plan is to let the DSi* drive things for now and release the Motion Plus soon. The primary leap in value from previous consoles to the Wii was based around the user interface. No signifcant innovations in that area have been offered since then by either "competitor" but it's pretty much universally acknowledged that motion controls could be implemented better. Microsoft and Sony have announced no plans to counter this, instead focusing on doing what they've always done, offering complex and graphically impressive software at above-mass-consumer prices, despite a demonstrated lack of interest in such titles from the general public.
* It has a built in browser, a music player, an app store, an SD card reader, upgradeable firmware, more processing power, and more pixels on the screen. These were all features gamers questioned the absence of in the original DS package, especially given comparable features in the PSP. This is to say nothing of the two cameras that are integrated into games. How is this not a significant upgrade over the previous iteration? To put it another way, if someone who was previously a non-gamer but then bought a DS and got hooked is looking to upgrade, which provides more value to them? The PSP, which has somewhat more processing power, or the DSi, for which they already own a number of titles, has two cameras, and only costs about $20 more?
* It has a built in browser, a music player, an app store, an SD card reader, upgradeable firmware, more processing power, and more pixels on the screen. These were all features gamers questioned the absence of in the original DS package, especially given comparable features in the PSP. This is to say nothing of the two cameras that are integrated into games. How is this not a significant upgrade over the previous iteration? To put it another way, if someone who was previously a non-gamer but then bought a DS and got hooked is looking to upgrade, which provides more value to them? The PSP, which has somewhat more processing power, or the DSi, for which they already own a number of titles, has two cameras, and only costs about $20 more?