Console Wars

[deanb]

 

And ever since then viagra has been illegal in console wars.

 

if your consoles continue to sell for more than 10 years, please contact your local GP.

 

[Mal]

Almost sure we'll see something similar with the PS4 with the X1 being about half of the PS4.

 

But... I suppose I can eat my words in ten years.

[Mister Jack]

Bad news for you Europeans.  Microsoft is raising the digital game prices for Xbox One games in your territories.

 

So I guess at this point they've just given up on ever beating the PS4 overseas and are just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.

[Strangelove]

Does anyone here truly and honestly believe the Wii U is ever going to recover? Theyre running out of sequels. Pretty much just Smash and Zelda. Otherwise, weve gotten sequels to everything else. I dont count Metroid though, because Nintendo doesnt seem to count Metroid anymore. 

I cant predict the future any more than anyone else can, but I dont think it will be a success like the Wii was. I dont even think it will ever in it's lifetime sell more than half of what PS4/XBO sells.

 

Then again, by next year itll have quite a bit of critically acclaimed exclusives to it's name, the price will probably go lower and MAYBE people will get it then. If the gamepad, the last gen resolution, or the lack of third parties doesnt bother them. And hopefully it goes to $199 retail. It just has so much stacked against them.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

I know I've said this like five times already: give me a god damned D&D game where the DM uses the gamepad. That's all I need. ALL I NEED!

[TheMightyEthan]

It was never going to be a success like the Wii was.  Best case scenario for Nintendo is another Gamecube.  It was never going to be a good place for third parties because, just like the Wii, it is so much less powerful than the other consoles that multiplatform games aren't going to continue to be ported over to it.  It'll keep getting them as long as they're still coming to PS360, but once that stops it'll stop on Wii U too.

[TCP]

Does anyone here truly and honestly believe the Wii U is ever going to recover? Theyre running out of sequels. Pretty much just Smash and Zelda. Otherwise, weve gotten sequels to everything else. I dont count Metroid though, because Nintendo doesnt seem to count Metroid anymore. 

I cant predict the future any more than anyone else can, but I dont think it will be a success like the Wii was. I dont even think it will ever in it's lifetime sell more than half of what PS4/XBO sells.

 

Then again, by next year itll have quite a bit of critically acclaimed exclusives to it's name, the price will probably go lower and MAYBE people will get it then. If the gamepad, the last gen resolution, or the lack of third parties doesnt bother them. And hopefully it goes to $199 retail. It just has so much stacked against them.

 

This was the year for the Wii U to get solid footing, but they pissed that chance away. If Smash and Zelda are the Wii U's saviours than they might be in trouble. Smash is coming to 3DS. Zelda has never able to move units. What I'm expecting is major changes with upper management at Nintendo in the new year, we'll see if a drastic change in approach can help. 

[Strangelove]

Its going to be really awkward when a portable version of the same game sells 20 times more than the better looking, probably better playing(thanks to the gamepad and local multiplayer) home version. I don't think thats ever been the case before.

Honestly, the gamepad inflated the price and so far it's useless outside of offscreen play. And you know what? Its nice and I use offscreen play quite a bit myself, but it's not $100 nice. I feel like the decision to have it backfired. Outside of Nintendoland and Zombi U, the thing has been useless. I feel XBO made the same mistake with packing in Kinect, but XBO had next gen graphics to fall back on.

[TCP]

Yeah it's an interesting comparison. Sony has the right model, IMO... you can do off-screen play for 200 dollars but it's completely option and you get an entirely new gaming platform as well.

I wonder if Nintendo will drop the game pad and just do a standard controller and drop the price another 50 bucks? 

[TheMightyEthan]

That'd be really hard to do now that it's been established and there are games that require it.

[Mr. GOH!]

Microsoft claims that Xbone sales have topped 2 million so far. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/11/us-microsoft-xbox-idUSBRE9BA0LB20131211

 

I bet PS4 has similar numbers.

 

Adios, Wii U. You always sucked, but at least it's been a real joy to see Wii U boosters getting increasingly desperate and divorced from reality. Reminds me of the propaganda coming out of Baghdad that claimed everything was fine, even though the US forces were closing in and the Iraqi army was dissolving. 

[deanb]

I know I've said this like five times already: give me a god damned D&D game where the DM uses the gamepad. That's all I need. ALL I NEED!

 

Thing is PS4 and Xbox One both have second screen features so it's not even a type of game limited/exclusive to just the Wii U.

[TheMightyEthan]

Microsoft claims that Xbone sales have topped 2 million so far. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/11/us-microsoft-xbox-idUSBRE9BA0LB20131211

 

I bet PS4 has similar numbers.

Huh, wonder why it fucked up the formatting so bad originally.

 

Anyway, Sony said last week that they'd hit 2.1 million units.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

There should always be enough Nintendo fans to buy a Nintendo console and Nintendo games even if other consumers and publishers ignore it so the Wii U can survive if Nintendo can push the costs down to make a profit on the hardware. They could carry on like this for generations if it weren't for investors wanting more.

 

I think it could do semi OK (or maybe it's successor) if they push the price low enough that it is an easy choice for a second console, and would only need a couple of games you're interested in to justify the low price of entry. It would obviously have the NIntendo first party games. With middle tier games getting increasingly difficult to sustain on the high end consoles (they seem to be polarising toward mega budget and indie games) if Nintendo could try and push to get the second tier games (like Bayonetta) and have the console seen as a testing ground for new ideas that can't afford to be tested on the other two people who are keen gamers could see it as a viable choice.

 

The problem with that is that Nintendo doesn't seem to have good enough relationships with the publishers to pull it off so I guess we're stuck with the first of my two scenarios.

[Mr. GOH!]

The Wii U needs to cost $200 with a real game packed in and have a good-sized library that appeal to casuals. Neither of those conditions seem anywhere near filled. And even if the Wii U were $200, Nintendo might be taking too much of a loss. 

 

The investors who clamor for more money are also the owners of the company. Why should they tolerate Nintendo making consoles that barely break even when it's clear Nintendo can cut the dead weight and make money on handhelds? 

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Hooray capitalism!

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I'm not saying investors aren't right to want money (obviously that is why they invested...) What I'm saying is that because investors want to maximise profit (and often in the short term at the expense of long term growth) at all costs we often don't get what may be the best decision for consumers in the short term or for anyone in the long run. E.g. people wanting Nintendo to put their IP on mobile may rake in a bit of short term cash and big moves like that often appeal to investors but in the long term it means people have no reason to buy Nintendo's portable hardware and if people don't have their Nintendo hardware and their precious few Nintendo games to play on it would the games even seem that special to them after the novelty of playing them on a phone wore off?

 

Without investors to satisfy Nintendo could have it's core business strategy as building a console that they only plan to sell 10 million of to the Nintendo fans that will always buy Nintendo hardware to play Nintendo games. That is a perfectly valid long term business plan if you don't have investors clamouring for more.

Edited December 11, 2013 by TheFlyingGerbil

[deanb]

If people don't want to play Nintendo's latest and greatest games on a nintendo handheld then the issue there wouldn't be with mobile, but with their latest and greatest, and that issue would be there regardless of Nintendo releasing official apps or not.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

not really - if you have a smart phone already and want to play the new mario game most people would be happy to pay for the game on the phone and a slightly less optimal experience rather than for the game and the console to get a slightly better experience. Doesn't mean the game isn't any good. There's also the problem that people will buy the game for £30 on the handheld, but would be really unlikely to pay that on a phone.

[deanb]

I've asked before and been answered in the affirmative, but you all know when talking about Nintendo's IP on mobiles that I've always been in the "GBA/N64 and earlier" right? Not saying that they put their brand fire new 3DS games, that they've made for the 3DS, out on mobile phones cos that'd be dumb as fuck, but the games that we already know from the unofficial and totally not making Nintendo a fucking penny, emulators and ROMs on phones. A fair chunk of the emulators are open source too, so they wouldn't even have to do much work (and doubtful anyone would sue them either) to rejig it into an official and polished app with a big official catalogue of games at 69p/99c a pop as opposed to the zilch they get at the moment.

 

Heck, hook up with Square, they've got the whole "porting DS/PSP games to mobiles, and somehow doing quite well from £5-a-pop" stuff down to pat.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

if they stop making hardware and go software only, which is what I said was being posited by many investors/people who act like they're investors, then where are all these big new games going if not mobile phones? Would they just stop making new games and only sell their legacy games? cos that would be dumb as fuck

[TheMightyEthan]

But you said that the phone apps would compete with their hardware.  How would that be relevant if they weren't making hardware anymore?

[Mr. GOH!]

If Nintendo stopped making hardware, they'd make software for Sony's and Microsoft's consoles. But Nintendo is not going to stop making hardware any time soon, since the 3DS is making good money.

 

Making a series of consoles for a small group of fans is a bad business strategy in the long term. It makes Nintendo vulnerable to otherwise surmountable crises, whether such a crisis would be an economic downturn, a hot new development in entertainment technology that competes with consoles, or a sudden drop in the 3DS's profitability. Nintendo should invest in stronger opportunities for growth than try to maintain a small, breaking-even Wii U division. At this rate, the Wii U will end up like the Gamecube; just a way for Nintendo to keep its hand in the game in the hopes the next deal (console generation) will be a better one. Even that is a barely-defensible business strategy, but Nintendo is the very picture of an unagile and inertia-driven corporation, that may be the best it can achieve. 

 

It is pure fantasy to believe that Nintendo would operate like some sort of employee-owned creative syndicate that just wants to make quality Mario, Zelda and Pokemon games regardless of profitability because they share their hardcore fans' fondness of those IPs. 

[CorgiShinobi]

I don't like the "GameCube did shit" outlook. It's only a hindsight perspective from looking at the PS2, a console that stayed on the market for so much longer due to Sony properly supporting the console as a low income alternative for families who wanted the incredible catalog of cheap games and the few IPs that continued to be ported over to the platform in the middle of the next generation (of the time). It's what could be happening to the Wii now, but Nintendo isn't putting focus on it and allowing third parties and consumers to carry it on. It won't last as long as the PS2, but it's the current dilemma we've discussed before about consumers keeping their Wii and not seeing any need of having a Wii U.

 

The big difference is that there was an obvious divide between the PS2 and PS3. The average consumer doesn't see it between the Wii and Wii U. It's why, early on, there was confusion about the GamePad being an accessory for the Wii rather than being part of a new console. I like my Wii U, I've got games for it and more I haven't bought yet for it, but I'm also a gamer who dabbles in different genres. When Nintendo made the Wii, they made a divide, the infamous "casual-hardcore" divide. It's something that has been maintained and transferred over to this new generation. I wouldn't be surprised if the Xbox One is going to be labeled as the "CoD machine" like the 360. Kids who grew up on the "cool and mature" Xbox 360 becoming teens with an Xbox One, and the same could be said for the PS4.

 

It's something that I don't think Nintendo may recover from, even if they begin to directly compete with Sony and Microsoft again. Nintendo was a big part of growing up with video games for me, but kids today don't have the same circumstance. In fact, a lot has changed in the industry where the past can't be compared to the present. The PS4 and Xbox One are not like Super Nintendo and Genesis. There's hardly anything we can truly relate to those generations. The PS4 may be the fast selling console of all time, but it was noticeably easier to get a console Day One this generation than 2005 or 2006. I would have had a PS4 through Amazon, not waiting in line at Wal-Mart or Best Buy.

 

Only, I fear Sony and Microsoft will have a decline in hardware a few years down the line. It happened with the Wii, where everyone massively bought out the console, but after the second year you were hard-pressed to find more consumers to meet demand. They'll still sell well, but I can't see every year for these consoles selling higher and higher. Oh, but Smash Bros. for the Wii U will definitely sell more than the 3DS counterpart. Even if more 3DS are out there, the title alone is Nintendo's indisputable system seller. Not to mention the multiplayer might work better on the Wii U whereas the 3DS is probably going to be a stuttering 10fps online, a la Brawl in Random Match. Great with Friends, horrendous with strangers.

[Mr. GOH!]

Why is Smash Bros an indisputable system seller? Only a fraction of Wii owners ever bought it. I'd wager that if Mario can't sell Wii Us, Smash Bros won't be able to, either.

 

Sony and MS will be making money off of their online subscriptions and other offerings for years. Once they've exhausted initial demand (as there will always be folks entering the market for the first time and folks buying replacements), MS and Sony plan to make money elsewhere, whether from licensing or direct sales or subscription fees. Nintendo had only direct sales and licensing, and it's doubtful they'll be making much on licensing this time around.