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[Papacheeks]

sony and microsoft have held off making a product affordable for the mass-market since around 2004. sony eventually made the ps2 $100 when it was nine years old. the ps3 and 360 should have hit the $149.99 price at some point in 2010 or at least when the third version of each platform actually made it to the market. but if sony and microsoft want to make an expanded user base by making dedicated gaming hardware too expensive to buy in or drop the price on comfortably as time goes on, that's the bed they'll have to sleep in.

and yes, systems made to sell at $300 or $250 would be great. i feel like $400 was too much to ask for in 1995 and it's too much to ask for in 2014.

edit: and Nintendo is super guilty of this too. $349.99 for a video game system - what were they thinking. and over $149.99 for a handheld is crazy (and i still believe handhelds should be $100 with $30 games).

• Playstation when it was first released was released in 1995 for 299.99. Games drop in price much faster than they did back in the 90's as some people pointed out.
• Compared to the technology that's out and what is in their Box, 8GB of GDDR 5, 500gb HD, Multicore CPU, x6 Bluray drive, and Technology in the controller for 399$ out the gate is actually a accomplishment for them as a company.

If you take out the Kinect for Xbox their box is also for what your getting a decent buy, although not as much bang for the buck you get power wise as the PS4 still a decent investment.
Since they are not using Power PC components like they did Previously, prices for the cpu/gpu AND MEMORY CHIPS will get cheap year over year.

I don't know why your complaining on 2 companies that have actually made strides in what they manufacture and what they are giving you for your money.
The Original PS2 and Xbox may have only been 299 out the gate, but add in things you need to play like Memory cards, and for Xbox a DVD play kit for movies, and it get's pricey.

Out the box for 399 your getting a mid range gaming pc like experience that can play a bunch of F2P games out the gate for minimal investment.
Try and see what it cost you at PS2 launch for a console, memory card and a game.
We are seeing prices drop with bundles sooner than any console generation.

• It took PS3 at least 2 years to have an official price cut on the main model (60,80gb). Same went for Microsoft.
  [*]Now within a year Microsoft is slashing the price for the Holiday's and probably going forward(349.99 set price).

Sony will follow soon since they have been actually making money on each console sold, and their price for the GDDR5 chips are getting better.
You have very little basis on why your pushing this idea that the console maker's are not efficient. If your argument was to have any valid points it would be on NIntendo, but if they had not thrown in the gamepad, and gone power PC architecture the price would have been 249.99.

But that's one instance as well with the release of 3DS that they over priced their product.
Nintendo has always kept it a family price, and SO has Microsoft and Sony.
For what you were getting for 299 during the PSX and PS2 days was a bargin to shoppers because you could use them for other things other than video games.

People see the value proposition then, and they see it now which is why record sales have been seen this generation.
Don't knock company products just because your personal taste's don't see value in that they are making.

Same could be said about Apple products how they are over priced. Which they kind of are, but the value proposition makes up for it, when people see the ease of use. And quality software behind it.

Compared to Apple Sony and Microsoft are angels.

 

[ninjablade]

There are over 100 Wii games that sold over 1m each. It's a bit more diverse than that.

And that's only retail, with Virtual Console and Wiiware who knows what we could be looking at for attach ratio.

well i was talking about games that sold great 2 million plus sellers.

 

[1st Course]

But that is mostly milking off of the existing userbase. I think digital sales are estimated to account for 1/3 of software sales which means they're up slightly. Let us all remember that 2013 was a horrid year for the industry with the best selling home console hovering around XB1 sales.

My point is that it's not all about full game downloads vs packaged. IAPS/DLC are also a big part of the industry. When you have companies like EA expecting to make $1B from Ultime Team just this year and Take-Two saying GTA Online been their biggest digital money maker every quarter since it's launch this just shows how it's just not that simple anymore.

Whenever NPD plans to start tracking digital I hope that would include IAPs + DLC too. Digital downloads + packaged alone are not enough to give you a full picture about the industry.

 

[StevieP]

Really? the industry clearly does make a distinction, other wise third party's would have made way more AAA games on the wii, instread of shovelware, they clearly look at what's selling and try to copy it to some extent.

PS4 = Fastest selling console ever so far. Those are the only relevant statistics when talking about sales.

Your colours are showing again. There are a whole multitude of ways publishers (including Nintendo) fucked up on the Wii last gen. You could have discussions for pages on the amount of fuck-ups made. Which, if you look at past NPD threads, we've already had.

Are they counting Wii Sports as like five games or whatever?

That's what I'm getting at. I know a lot of people with Wiis, but only one who bought software for it. I didn't really know anyone with very-young children at the time, so was that where all of the software went? Are they counting those $5 retro-ports they had available online? What games were selling? You say games are games so it doesn't matter, but apparently it mattered to the big pubs, who largely abandoned it. So if EA weren't making money on the Wii, who was? Who exactly is it that's now gonna go bankrupt with the "loss" of the Wii user base?

They're counting the same things they've always counted when counting sales: games that sold. When Singstar sells well, the collective industry doesn't say "well fuck, we may as well erase that from our attach rate calculations" because that would be retarded. I can't believe people are actually advocating the loss of major markets of people to sell games to under the traditional model and celebrating the consolidation of publishers into a few mega-moguls that, as has been demonstrated clearly recently, REALLY love the consumer.

 

[AniHawk]

Eh? I thought that was just on handhelds? Like I said, I think we should be careful about lumping handhelds and consoles together. I'll agree that a lot of handheld-game spending has moved from "dedicated gaming hardware" to smartphones and tablets, but I don't see how that's an inherently bad thing in and of itself, and I'd argue that it has very little to do with console gaming specifically.

Since a Vita can't make phone calls, there's very little reason to buy and carry one, given that you need an iPhone anyway and it already plays games. Consoles don't really have much to do with that. People looking for a console-level gaming experience aren't going to sit in front of a TV and play with their iPhone. Now, maybe people don't care about having a console-level gaming experience anymore, but going on 20M PS4 sales at $400+ in just over a year would seem to indicate otherwise, I'd argue.

it has a lot to do with general spending habits of consumers and publishers. when publishers start making games people want to play that aren't part of the traditional model, it will have an impact on how people perceive the traditional model. steam was a neat little project for valve ten years ago, and now it's a huge platform unto itself. it's the sort of place where gone home can sell hundreds of thousands of copies in just a few months, or where bastion can sell a million copies. you see people looking for cheaper and accessible gameplay at cheaper prices, and you're not just seeing an exodus from the handheld market, but from all sectors.

I have to disagreed. The Wii was the definition of a fad. It wasn't sustainable. From my personal experience, there was nothing they could have done to keep a lot of thos audiences. They rarely buy games, they rarely plays the games. Even when they did, it was mostly in group setting. I.e parties, get together, and other events where there are groups of people. These audiences weren't gonna stay up to date with gaming and buy the latest console. Which is why the Wii plummet so badly while Xbone and PS4 is doing relatively well. Those audiences were never gonna transfer to the Wii U. They don't care about new games or better graphic.

perhaps the growth may not have been sustainable, but the audience was still there. hell, it's still there on the wii. you can see it whenever a new skylanders game or lego game comes out. just dance sold a million copies on the wii last year in america. instead of trying to reach out to this audience and putting the same effort they do towards the 18-34 male gamer, they treated it like shit. of course the people who were part of this market were only going to buy the best of it, or the cheapest, as that's where the value was. if there had been as much attention put towards trying to figure out how this market could be predicted, it might have been something they could have held onto. it could be a big segment of the industry. it isn't. it's everyone's failing.

motion controls haven't completely died off, but in the sense of being able to push consoles, and being super popular, those times are over, like the hula hoop fad, they still make them, it's just nobody is going crazy for them, and rushing out to buy them. microsoft really tried with kinect, they even sacrificed the specs and price, and look at where it got them.

the problem really isn't about motion controls. it's about understanding what was appealing about motion controls. it was about accessibility and new ideas. microsoft, nintendo, and sony only offered iteration after iteration until people grew tired of it and then the only publishers who really cared just stopped trying altogether. it should have been nintendo or sony or microsoft who led the way on toy games, on drawing-pad games, etc. instead, each first-party retreated to their safety zones. sony with killzone and uncharted, microsoft with forza and halo, and nintendo with mario and more mario.

 

[sörine]

well i was talking about games that sold great 2 million plus sellers.

You were? Neither RE4 nor any Sonic game sold over 2m on Wii?

 

[Papacheeks]

it has a lot to do with general spending habits of consumers and publishers. when publishers start making games people want to play that aren't part of the traditional model, it will have an impact on how people perceive the traditional model. steam was a neat little project for valve ten years ago, and now it's a huge platform unto itself. it's the sort of place where gone home can sell hundreds of thousands of copies in just a few months, or where bastion can sell a million copies. you see people looking for cheaper and accessible gameplay at cheaper prices, and you're not just seeing an exodus from the handheld market, but from all sectors.



perhaps the growth may not have been sustainable, but the audience was still there. hell, it's still there on the wii. you can see it whenever a new skylanders game or lego game comes out. just dance sold a million copies on the wii last year in america. instead of trying to reach out to this audience and putting the same effort they do towards the 18-34 male gamer, they treated it like shit. of course the people who were part of this market were only going to buy the best of it, or the cheapest, as that's where the value was. if there had been as much attention put towards trying to figure out how this market could be predicted, it might have been something they could have held onto. it could be a big segment of the industry. it isn't. it's everyone's failing.



the problem really isn't about motion controls. it's about understanding what was appealing about motion controls. it was about accessibility and new ideas. microsoft, nintendo, and sony only offered iteration after iteration until people grew tired of it and then the only publishers who really cared just stopped trying altogether. it should have been nintendo or sony or microsoft who led the way on toy games, on drawing-pad games, etc. instead, each first-party retreated to their safety zones. sony with killzone and uncharted, microsoft with forza and halo, and nintendo with mario and more mario.

In 2013 you call The last of Us, The puppeteer, Safezone? You call Sunset Over drive a safe zone game?

How bout Transistor , The Tomorrow CHildren?

AAA games help get people in the door, but games like I mentioned keep people invested in the echo system, and keep them talking about the system.

 

[Raist]

The industry has never made distinctions as to what kind of software that is counted. No qualifiers apply. Just as they didn't when $10 shovelware was flying off the shelves for the PS1, PS2, the DS, or any other successful platform.

Wii = gaming console with 100m units sold. 9 games per person = attach rate. Those are the only relevant statistics when talking about sales.

Compare the lists of top selling games on the PS2 and the Wii. Maybe you'll notice a pattern or two.

 

[Superman00]

Out of the 900 million pieces of software sold, 300 million or so were from Nintendo iirc.

I highly doubt this. According to the wiki, I just sum up the top 13 games from Nintendo and it is already over 300 millions. Let alone all the other games.

Wii Sports 82.54 million

Mario Kart Wii 35.53 million

Wii Sports Resort 32.58 million[

New Super Mario Bros. Wii 28.65 million

Wii Play 28.02 million

Wii Fit 22.67 million

Wii Fit Plus 21.03 million

Super Mario Galaxy 12.22 million

Super Smash Bros. Brawl 12.14 million

Wii Party 7.94 million

Mario Party 8 7.6 million

Super Mario Galaxy 2 6.36 million

Donkey Kong Country Returns 6.01 million

= 303.29

That's only the sum of 13 games. There is no way Nintendo only sold 300 millions games.If the list is wrong then my bad, but otherwise.......

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games

 

[ninjablade]

You were? Neither RE4 nor any Sonic game sold over 2m on Wii?

resident 4 sure did, just confirmed on capcom website, as for sonic and the secret rings, i got that off wiki.

 

[AniHawk]

• Playstation when it was first released was released in 1995 for 299.99. Games drop in price much faster than they did back in the 90's as some people pointed out.
• Compared to the technology that's out and what is in their Box, 8GB of GDDR 5, 500gb HD, Multicore CPU, x6 Bluray drive, and Technology in the controller for 399$ out the gate is actually a accomplishment for them as a company.

• 
  
  the sega saturn in 1995 was $399.99. that's what i was referring to.

 

[Tutomos]

Out of the 900 million pieces of software sold, 300 million or so were from Nintendo iirc.

I have to guess that people who were buying third party software for Wii outside of the music genre must be picking up budget titles from "insert your local mart" bargain bins. Otherwise I can't explain why all the big publishers don't even release their biggest games on Wii and WiiU. They must hold some kind of grudges against Nintendo as some conspiracy theorists will tell you and they must also hate money.

Seems to me this only points out Nintendo's failure to create a healthy ecosystem for third party. They failed to cultivate a platform where the biggest none AAA game developers like Mahjong can consider to be a Nintendo partner first and be successful on the platform before mobile/tablet gaming got big.

 

[StevieP]

Compare the lists of top selling games on the PS2 and the Wii. Maybe you'll notice a pattern or two.

Again, we're discussing numbers not whether God of War counts but Singstar doesn't.

I highly doubt this. According to the wiki, I just sum up the top 13 games from Nintendo and it is already over 300 millions. Let alone all the other games.
snip
That's only the sum of 13 games. There is no way Nintendo only sold 300 millions games.If the list is wrong then my bad, but otherwise.......

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games

Someone will have to pour over the financial reports again to get the exact numbers (as some sales-agers here did months ago) but the number was most certainly in favour of third party publishers out of that 900m.

 

[CosmicQueso]

You were? Neither RE4 nor any Sonic game sold over 2m on Wii?

Mario & Sonic Olympic passed that threshold, not sure that counts. My numbers say RE4 was close, but apparently Capcom released shipment numbers that say it did.

In any case, the Wii was not this magical market of unlimited profits and sales some make it out to be.

Over 1,250 games released on the Wii in its life. Nintendo published 56 of those titles (4%) and those 56 titles drove over one third of total software sales.

Just Dance and Guitar Hero did well, yes. But for every Just Dance (10 of them) there were 3 other Dance games that did not sell particularly well (Dance Sensation, Boogie, High School Musical, Dance on Broadway, etc etc.)

And the really innovative titles, the ones the critics loved, failed to sell at all or make money.

The Wii has this aura around it as though it were some kind of money making machine that no one was able to figure out. The truth is there were literally hundreds of games in every conceivable genre that failed to sell. It became a crap shoot to release a game on the Wii. And really, once the iPad launched, it was all over for the Wii anyways. Consumers moved on.

By the way, the last Lego game to launch on the Wii was Lord of the Rings about two years ago.

 

[legend166]

They're counting the same things they've always counted when counting sales: games that sold. When Singstar sells well, the collective industry doesn't say "well fuck, we may as well erase that from our attach rate calculations" because that would be retarded. I can't believe people are actually advocating the loss of major markets of people to sell games to under the traditional model and celebrating the consolidation of publishers into a few mega-moguls that, as has been demonstrated clearly recently, REALLY love the consumer.

This is what I don't get. People seem happy that 100 million people no longer care about console gaming. And they're happy that publishers died off in the race for AAAAA blockbuster 'event' gaming. And they're happy that console gaming is consolidating into a few publishers who want to sell you a $60 game + $40 'post release' content, + microtransactions that actually have a material effect on the design of games.

 

[AniHawk]

In 2013 you call The last of Us, The puppeteer, Safezone? You call Sunset Over drive a safe zone game?

How bout Transistor , The Tomorrow CHildren?

AAA games help get people in the door, but games like I mentioned keep people invested in the echo system, and keep them talking about the system.

wasn't really talking about the gen that is ending. i was talking about the one that was starting. the games sony pushed were killzone, infamous, and knack. knack was the only new ip at launch, and i suppose i shouldn't give them much shit for it since they were at least trying something different.

i think it's cool that microsoft and sony are promoting and investing in new ips such as transistor or the tomorrow children, but the push they give those is not the same push they give say, titanfall or destiny. or ryse. sunset overdrive is a lone exception, but i doubt it's reaching out to broader demographics than the one they targeted with titanfall. it's like saying nintendo's really reaching out to a different demographic with the wonderful 101 when it's pretty much the same sort of colorful action game people might expect from the company.

no, new ideas i mean finding ways video games can do things people hadn't thought of before. or trying to bring back forgotten genres in unexpected ways, like how the wii became home to a revival of the light gun genre in a big way.

 

[Raist]

Again, we're discussing numbers not whether God of War counts but Singstar doesn't.

Yes, I'm also talking about numbers, too. Just have a look.

 

[sörine]

resident 4 sure did, just confirmed on capcom website, as for sonic and the secret rings, i got that off wiki.

Oh I forgot RE4 Wii shipped an additional 100k recently, it was at 1.9m for years. Not bad for a game only expected to do 400k.

The wiki source on Secret Rings is incredibly suspect, it refers to an unsourced editorial which reeks of a quick chartz check. Last number from Sega was 1.2m in 2007 iirc. The only Sonic games confirmed above 2m on Wii are the Olympics crossovers with Mario.

 

[Fredescu]

And really, once the iPad launched, it was all over for the Wii anyways. Consumers moved on.

I'd say that's because the Appstore was a much better way to access novelty than the Wii. Wii Sports was new and exciting and drew people in craving novelty, but the slow and cumbersome nature of traditional retail console games development drove them away.

 

[AniHawk]

Oh I forgot RE4 Wii shipped an additional 100k recently, it was at 1.9m for years. Not bad for a game only expected to do 400k.

The wiki source on Secret Rings is incredibly suspect, it refers to an unsourced editorial which reeks of a quick chartz check. Last number from Sega was 1.2m in 2007 iirc. The only Sonic games confirmed above 2m on Wii are the Olympics crossovers with Mario.

secret rings was 1.1m units between the us and japan by the end of 2011. it's not a stretch that it could have done better in europe where sonic was popular

 

[Effigenius]

sony and microsoft have held off making a product affordable for the mass-market since around 2004. sony eventually made the ps2 $100 when it was nine years old. the ps3 and 360 should have hit the $149.99 price at some point in 2010 or at least when the third version of each platform actually made it to the market. but if sony and microsoft want to make an expanded userbase by making dedicated gaming hardware too expensive to buy in or drop the price on comfortably as time goes on, that's the bed they'll have to sleep in.

and yes, systems made to sell at $300 or $250 would be great. i feel like $400 was too much to ask for in 1995 and it's too much to ask for in 2014.

edit: and nintendo is super guilty of this too. $349.99 for a video game system - what were they thinking. and over $149.99 for a handheld is crazy (and i still believe handhelds should be $100 with $30 games).

Yeah, there's this thing called inflation? Tell me, since you want prices from 1995 again, are you ok with making the same money you made in 1995 also?

 

[CosmicQueso]

I'd say that's because the Appstore was a much better way to access novelty than the Wii. Wii Sports was new and exciting and drew people in craving novelty, but the slow and cumbersome nature of traditional retail console games development drove them away.

Novelty was a huge draw for the Wii, sure. After Sports got grandma to bowl, that audience might have picked up Guitar Hero during the craze, maybe Wii Fit, wrapped it up with a Just Dance. Maybe picked up Mario Kart. By then the novelty had worn off, and here's the shiny new iPad.

Not sure traditional development drove anyone away. I think they just kinda drifted off when the new shiny came around.

 

[shinra-bansho]

it has a lot to do with general spending habits of consumers and publishers. when publishers start making games people want to play that aren't part of the traditional model, it will have an impact on how people perceive the traditional model. steam was a neat little project for valve ten years ago, and now it's a huge platform unto itself. it's the sort of place where gone home can sell hundreds of thousands of copies in just a few months, or where bastion can sell a million copies. you see people looking for cheaper and accessible gameplay at cheaper prices, and you're not just seeing an exodus from the handheld market, but from all sectors.

perhaps the growth may not have been sustainable, but the audience was still there. hell, it's still there on the wii. you can see it whenever a new skylanders game or lego game comes out. just dance sold a million copies on the wii last year in america. instead of trying to reach out to this audience and putting the same effort they do towards the 18-34 male gamer, they treated it like shit. of course the people who were part of this market were only going to buy the best of it, or the cheapest, as that's where the value was. if there had been as much attention put towards trying to figure out how this market could be predicted, it might have been something they could have held onto. it could be a big segment of the industry. it isn't. it's everyone's failing.

the problem really isn't about motion controls. it's about understanding what was appealing about motion controls. it was about accessibility and new ideas. microsoft, nintendo, and sony only offered iteration after iteration until people grew tired of it and then the only publishers who really cared just stopped trying altogether. it should have been nintendo or sony or microsoft who led the way on toy games, on drawing-pad games, etc. instead, each first-party retreated to their safety zones. sony with killzone and uncharted, microsoft with forza and halo, and nintendo with mario and more mario.

It was accessibility in all forms (play, price). And technology change came and presented even simpler, more accessible, more convenient, cheaper.

I think your bolded is again far too optimistic in terms of what marketing (in the integrated and holistic sense, not as a synonym for advertising) can do. The flipside of your scenario of investing heavily in a lot of projects based on trying to attract segments that aren't in the category is a bunch of failed products, because they have no substantial reachable market.

Over 1,250 games released on the Wii in its life. Nintendo published 56 of those titles (4%) and those 56 titles drove over one third of total software sales.

This is a really telling stat. Although, tbf and play Devil's advocate I would imagine a small number of titles also garner a disproportionate chunk of sales on other platforms. But I guess those wouldn't all be the fruits of the platform holder and would be distributed between the different software players.

 

[Captain Smoker]

I highly doubt this. According to the wiki, I just sum up the top 13 games from Nintendo and it is already over 300 millions. Let alone all the other games.

(...)

That's only the sum of 13 games. There is no way Nintendo only sold 300 millions games.If the list is wrong then my bad, but otherwise.......

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games

It's around 400.000.000 units.

All million sellers sum up to 367.040.000 units (35 games), the rest is maybe 30.000.000 units or less.


3rd Parties achieved around 500.000.000 units.

 

[Fredescu]

Not sure traditional development drove anyone away. I think they just kinda drifted off when the new shiny came around.

I should have said traditional distribution. If the Wii had an Appstore equivalent back end with open slather for indie devs, it would have retained a lot of users. That's a lot to ask, so I'm not saying they "should have known" or anything, but the Wii really failed to deliver a breadth of new experiences. Especially for vanilla hardware. They were way too quick to bring out more peripherals.

 

[mrklaw]

I wonder if the relatively recent trend of people paying hundreds of dollars for tablets and smartphones means that the Xbox and Ps4 prices are actually seen as a relative bargain? The fixed spec means security in buying in for a few years, unlike the constant desire to update with smartphones and tablets. $400 for five years of entertainment? Sounds pretty good.

 

[AniHawk]

Yeah, there's this thing called inflation? Tell me, since you want prices from 1995 again, are you ok with making the same money you made in 1995 also?

well i was nine years old in 1995 so probably not.

 

[Tidus_Great]

if MS cant outsell ps4 in November it's gonna get crazzzyyy

 

[AniHawk]

It was accessibility in all forms (play, price). And technology change came and presented even simpler, more accessible, more convenient, cheaper.

I think your bolded is again far too optimistic in terms of what marketing (in the integrated and holistic sense, not as a synonym for advertising) can do. The flipside of your scenario of investing heavily in a lot of projects based on trying to attract segments that aren't in the category is a bunch of failed products, because they have no substantial reachable market.

but that's the difference in playing it safe and doing something new. sony brought cinematic gaming to the market forefront and the industry grew. microsoft brought online games to traditional markets, and the market grew. nintendo offered alternative ways of playing with games and the market grew. apple introduced a platform and an ecosystem where games could be even more accessible from a gameplay perspective and cost perspective, and the market grew. sony, microsoft, and nintendo are no longer innovating in their space, and it's something that's going to hurt them in the long run. i am not sure what else they can do - that's up to them to figure out. i am sure the immediate reaction is going to be to emulate apple. it will most likely end in failure.

This is a really telling stat. Although, tbf and play Devil's advocate I would imagine a small number of titles also garner a disproportionate chunk of sales on other platforms. But I guess those wouldn't all be the fruits of the platform holder and would be distributed between the different software players.

it's interesting because there were so many games. you'd think if it was such a toxic environment that after the first couple failures, companies would have stayed away. instead it seems it was such a wide environment that you didn't need to sell three million units to turn a profit. you probably didn't even need to sell three hundred thousand units to turn a profit on some projects. i'm not sure how many mergers, buyouts, and closures had to have occurred because of the costs associated with wii-only development.

 

[legend166]

Yeah, there's this thing called inflation? Tell me, since you want prices from 1995 again, are you ok with making the same money you made in 1995 also?

Have you seen wage growth in the US over the last two decades?

 

[Frankfurter]

Yeah, there's this thing called inflation? Tell me, since you want prices from 1995 again, are you ok with making the same money you made in 1995 also?

There is no such thing as inflation for anything related to computers.

 

[Papacheeks]

but that's the difference in playing it safe and doing something new. sony brought cinematic gaming to the market forefront and the industry grew. microsoft brought online games to traditional markets, and the market grew. nintendo offered alternative ways of playing with games and the market grew. apple introduced a platform and an ecosystem where games could be even more accessible from a gameplay perspective and cost perspective, and the market grew. sony, microsoft, and nintendo are no longer innovating in their space, and it's something that's going to hurt them in the long run. i am not sure what else they can do - that's up to them to figure out. i am sure the immediate reaction is going to be to emulate apple. it will most likely end in failure.



it's interesting because there were so many games. you'd think if it was such a toxic environment that after the first couple failures, companies would have stayed away. instead it seems it was such a wide environment that you didn't need to sell three million units to turn a profit. you probably didn't even need to sell three hundred thousand units to turn a profit on some projects. i'm not sure how many mergers, buyouts, and closures had to have occurred because of the costs associated with wii-only development.

Games like The tomorrow CHildren, Rime, Ori, Sunset Overdrive, D4, Until Dawn, Transistor, Bloodborne, are all new IP's and have unique hooks to them.
I feel your grabbing at straws here when it comes to the outlook of the three companies. You havn't even touched on what is being done on these systems that has become huge.
Streaming and sharing the gaming experience with other's. That's what's helping grow the market, in the past couple years twitch, and youtube have exploded in gamer's showing their games and giving smaller ones more exposure.

Before for indie games unless a big publication made it a big deal, you would overlook games or not even know they existed.
Now Sony and Microsoft have a way for everyone to share, play and view games, and alot of the smaller games are getting more exposure. The ones that are helping grow the market that you think isn't growing.
You keep bringing up past generations, but are not telling the whole story. Nintendo is also not exempt now in terms of "growing" the market.
They produce similar product lines that are also available on their handheld. You say SOny's golden years of the PS2, PS1 era didn't have the problems PS4 has now.

I call bullshit on that. Go look at the first year launch. Mostly sequels in already established franchises. Twisted Metal black, Gran Turismo 3-spec, MGS2, Final Fantasy, GTA3, tekken.
They are all from previous franchises, wasn't till second-third year we saw the creative new IP's like Dark Cloud 2(another sequel), Dragon Quest, Shadows of the Colossus, God of War, DMC, Mark of Kri, Ratchet and Clank, Yakuza, among many others.
Times change and so does the industry and it's consumers. People want their devices to do more, and their games experiences to be shared outside of just conversations.

We now have AAA indie developed games coming from small studios, and smaller team made games coming from industry vet's.
Which actually hearkens back to the PS2 days when we had budget 20 dollars games that had the values of 50-60 dollar games.
I think your just Jaded by what has been coming out this past year, and your not alone. But don't let one year slate of games ruin your outlook on what's to come. And the smaller games coming out almost outweighs my excitement for large AAA games.

 

[Game Guru]

the wii may have been unconventional, but it was very much a traditional console. it was dedicated hardware with software sold at retail from mostly developers who were versed in the console space. activision, sega, ubisoft, and electronic arts among others all saw success on the machine. you couldn't be two guys in a room and make a game that sold millions. it didn't introduce the world to a bunch of rovios, but it did introduce a lot of new people to the traditional market. and i don't know about you, but i'd rather stick with the devil i know than the one i don't if it came to finding an additional revenue stream. activision seems to be giving it a shot. either they feel there's an audience there or they see the writing on the wall. even then, it looks like skylanders is an ill-fit for this new market, at least in its current form. these mega-publishers will have to change and adapt in big ways if they want to make money on the platform with the lowest software costs to customers. it's a far, far cry from what the wii was.

Skylanders and Disney Infinity make most of their money off of figure sales. So long as people are buying the figures, Activision and Disney are happy. Even though Nintendo took a different approach, there is a reason why they followed the leader in this particular field. And you mention how Activision, Sega, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts made money on the Wii, but Activision, Sega, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts are making bank off PC and Mobile now as well.

In addition, retail sales don't show the full picture since digital distribution is a thing now even on consoles, and signs point to 20% digital sales of even titles available at retail on consoles. There is this... gas station that I go to every week because they have $0.79 Slushees, and I noticed that they sell gift cards to many different online services... Google Play, Amazon, and iTunes were all expected... But I also saw gift cards for Steam, PSN, and Xbox Live. I can literally go to a gas station, buy a $10 to $25 gift card for the service of my choice and pick up a new game while drinking a 80 cent Slushee. I also see these sorts of gift cards in the checkout line at Kroger. That's what $60 retail games is competing with... People picking up a gift card at a place where they need to go like a gas station or a grocery store and then using them to buy digital games on mobile, PC, and consoles. I mean, I'm a guy who is happy with having a console and a computer, but even I own a smartphone and a tablet now and my computer is a laptop. This is because smartphones and tablets are affordable enough that I can just replace a house phone and my extensive book collection with a smartphone and a tablet for the most part. What they didn't replace for me is my PC and console.

 

[shinra-bansho]

but that's the difference in playing it safe and doing something new. sony brought cinematic gaming to the market forefront and the industry grew. microsoft brought online games to traditional markets, and the market grew. nintendo offered alternative ways of playing with games and the market grew. apple introduced a platform and an ecosystem where games could be even more accessible from a gameplay perspective and cost perspective, and the market grew. sony, microsoft, and nintendo are no longer innovating in their space, and it's something that's going to hurt them in the long run. i am not sure what else they can do - that's up to them to figure out. i am sure the immediate reaction is going to be to emulate apple. it will most likely end in failure.

it's interesting because there were so many games. you'd think if it was such a toxic environment that after the first couple failures, companies would have stayed away. instead it seems it was such a wide environment that you didn't need to sell three million units to turn a profit. you probably didn't even need to sell three hundred thousand units to turn a profit on some projects. i'm not sure how many mergers, buyouts, and closures had to have occurred because of the costs associated with wii-only development.

I'd frame your examples of Sony and Microsoft's "risk taking" as identifying incipient needs within the existing market place towards existing segments and providing solutions to them.
Late generation PS2, Sony did engage in creation of software like SingStar towards further market development.

Nintendo identified this as an under-served market and created a product towards those consumers needs, yes, I'd agree on that.
And Apple came along with their convergent devices that satisfied those needs even better and the market we're referring to, the dedicated devices market, shrank. While gaming as a whole continues to grow.

I'm not clear if you're suggesting the traditional market should have somehow created a platform even cheaper, more accessible and more convenient than free and on a device you already own and carry where gameplay is based on finger swipes.
Or if you're saying that simply continuing to invest in software products aimed at these other segments would have prevented their shift to these substitutes?
I personally don't think either situation would have retained these consumers.

On your latter point, I don't think these companies are particularly interested in subsistence of just turning a profit. It seems to be brought up a lot as a metric on here (particularly with regard to platform decisions.) They're chasing CoD and GTA dollars and looking at project opportunity cost.

 

[Fdkn]

There is no such thing as inflation for anything related to computers.

wut.

 

[BakedYams]

gif that will never be forgotten

 

[serversurfer]

They're counting the same things they've always counted when counting sales: games that sold. When Singstar sells well, the collective industry doesn't say "well fuck, we may as well erase that from our attach rate calculations" because that would be retarded. I can't believe people are actually advocating the loss of major markets of people to sell games to under the traditional model and celebrating the consolidation of publishers into a few mega-moguls that, as has been demonstrated clearly recently, REALLY love the consumer.

No, what would be retarded would be not eliminating SingStar sales from your projections if you don't plan to make a karaoke game. Similarly, it would be pretty retarded to expect similar overall attach rates this generation if half of the games sold on PS3 were RockBand variants, because nobody wants to play that anymore.

You keep telling us that as gamers, we should be concerned about all of the awesome, high-selling Wii software we've lost and that it doesn't matter what specifically was lost, but I'm telling you that it does matter. What have we lost? What are we concerned about, exactly? Please stop saying it doesn't matter and just answer the question. What games aren't being made anymore??

it has a lot to do with general spending habits of consumers and publishers. when publishers start making games people want to play that aren't part of the traditional model, it will have an impact on how people perceive the traditional model. steam was a neat little project for valve ten years ago, and now it's a huge platform unto itself. it's the sort of place where gone home can sell hundreds of thousands of copies in just a few months, or where bastion can sell a million copies. you see people looking for cheaper and accessible gameplay at cheaper prices, and you're not just seeing an exodus from the handheld market, but from all sectors.

Okay? Sorry, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. You think the PS4 is incapable of providing its users with a Steam-like experience? =/

perhaps the growth may not have been sustainable, but the audience was still there. hell, it's still there on the wii. you can see it whenever a new skylanders game or lego game comes out. just dance sold a million copies on the wii last year in america.

Oh? Then perhaps those users just haven't moved to the new generation yet. PS4 is pretty expensive compared to a Wii. More of those users may jump in once the PS4 is sub-$300.

instead of trying to reach out to this audience and putting the same effort they do towards the 18-34 male gamer, they treated it like shit.

Geez. Perhaps traditional game developers just weren't very good at predicting what Just Dance users wanted to play apart from Just Dance?

the problem really isn't about motion controls. it's about understanding what was appealing about motion controls. it was about accessibility and new ideas. microsoft, nintendo, and sony only offered iteration after iteration until people grew tired of it and then the only publishers who really cared just stopped trying altogether. it should have been nintendo or sony or microsoft who led the way on toy games, on drawing-pad games, etc. instead, each first-party retreated to their safety zones. sony with killzone and uncharted, microsoft with forza and halo, and nintendo with mario and more mario.

I think Wii did poison the well a bit when it came to motion controls, thanks to the inaccuracy. I know a few disc golf players who I could never persuade to try the outstanding Sports Champions because they'd already been disappointed by the Wii version, and didn't understand how it could be significantly different/better on the PS3. Plus, the inaccuracy kinda limited the range of experiences developers were able to deliver in the first place.

Regardless, I expect a motion renaissance should VR catch on.

 

[QaaQer]

Are they counting Wii Sports as like five games or whatever?

That's what I'm getting at. I know a lot of people with Wiis, but only one who bought software for it. I didn't really know anyone with very-young children at the time, so was that where all of the software went? Are they counting those $5 retro-ports they had available online? What games were selling? You say games are games so it doesn't matter, but apparently it mattered to the big pubs, who largely abandoned it. So if EA weren't making money on the Wii, who was? Who exactly is it that's now gonna go bankrupt with the "loss" of the Wii user base?

There were several shovel-ware houses like Bold Software that made games really cheap games and don't anymore. As far as EA/ubi etc, they had some decent earners like dancing, Red Steel, CoD downport; but, nothing that was fundamental to profitability.

 

[CosmicQueso]

This is a really telling stat. Although, tbf and play Devil's advocate I would imagine a small number of titles also garner a disproportionate chunk of sales on other platforms. But I guess those wouldn't all be the fruits of the platform holder and would be distributed between the different software players.

Yep, the top titles and franchises do take a majority share of sales on other platforms, but on the Wii the 3rd party publishers didn't try to get into the top 10, it was more like trying to get into the top 25. Consumers were very much focused on 1st party games, Just Dance and Guitar Hero/Rock Band.

To be fair, in that huge mountain of 3rd party games, a whole bunch of them were absolute garbage shovelware. If a super casual Wii owning household bought a third party game, they most likely bought a terrible one and then never repeated that mistake.

it's interesting because there were so many games. you'd think if it was such a toxic environment that after the first couple failures, companies would have stayed away. instead it seems it was such a wide environment that you didn't need to sell three million units to turn a profit. you probably didn't even need to sell three hundred thousand units to turn a profit on some projects. i'm not sure how many mergers, buyouts, and closures had to have occurred because of the costs associated with wii-only development.

It wasn't a toxic environment, but it was an opportunity cost environment. Development wasn't super expensive, but there were no benchmarks to go off to make games that would sell. Carnival Games sold great, but the other 40 games like it didn't. Just Dance did, the others didn't. Zak and Wiki didn't sell, Mad World didn't, Boom Blox didn't, Little Kings Story didn't, etc etc.

You could turn a profit with 300k on some titles, sure, but getting 300k was a lot harder than you're making it out to be. And, for every Wii title in development, you're using resources that could be applied to games that you think are more sure bets to sell. So, there was a big opportunity cost in Wii development.

All those companies, all those thousands of people, all those publishers who tried to battle on the Wii, and only Just Dance and Guitar Hero truly broke out.

Sorry, continuing development on the Wii was not going to solve for the current climate.

I should have said traditional distribution. If the Wii had an Appstore equivalent back end with open slather for indie devs, it would have retained a lot of users. That's a lot to ask, so I'm not saying they "should have known" or anything, but the Wii really failed to deliver a breadth of new experiences. Especially for vanilla hardware. They were way too quick to bring out more peripherals.

Grandma just wanted to bowl on the Wii... Internet connectivity on the Wii was quite low overall, and the 3rd party eShop games did not do particularly well generally. Now, it's a different story. Connected console rates are approaching 95%+. But back then, not so much. You're right though, Wii households bought a ton of plastic crap. Now, people buy a ton of virtual crap, heh.

On your latter point, I don't think these companies are particularly interested in subsistence of just turning a profit. It seems to be brought up a lot as a metric on here (particularly with regard to platform decisions.) They're chasing CoD and GTA dollars and looking at project opportunity cost.

There you go. Yep. One to two years of a dedicated team to be applied to a platform where sales can best be predicted using a dartboard is a tough way to do business, and highly risky.

 

[Final Verdict]

• It took PS3 at least 2 years to have an official price cut on the main model (60,80gb). Same went for Microsoft.
  [*]Now within a year Microsoft is slashing the price for the Holiday's and probably going forward(349.99 set price).

I'm fairly sure that Sony cut the price of the PS3 by $100 just 8 months after launch...
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/fun.games/07/09/sony.price.reut/

 

[jvm]

Sorry for being a stick in the mud. I believe that software-per-system is "tie ratio". Percentage of user base that buys an item for a system is "attach rate". My 2¢.

 

[CosmicQueso]

Sorry for being a stick in the mud. I believe that software-per-system is "tie ratio". Percentage of user base that buys an item for a system is "attach rate". My 2¢.

But how do you pronounce "GIF"? (And you're right of course!)

 

[jvm]

But how do you pronounce "GIF"?

Gee-eye-eff. Why?

 

[Fredescu]

Grandma just wanted to bowl on the Wii... Internet connectivity on the Wii was quite low overall, and the 3rd party eShop games did not do particularly well generally. Now, it's a different story. Connected console rates are approaching 95%+. But back then, not so much. You're right though, Wii households bought a ton of plastic crap. Now, people buy a ton of virtual crap, heh.

If they were all just Grandmas wanting to bowl on the Wii, there's no use saying "consumers moved on" as you did. Given that the Wii's primary distribution model was disks at retail, the low connected rate isn't surprising. A critical mass of popular apps on the eShop would have increased that.

 

[Papacheeks]

I'm fairly sure that Sony cut the price of the PS3 by $100 just 8 months after launch...
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/fun.games/07/09/sony.price.reut/

Yea, thanks for the correction. but still 500 bucks?

Took them 3 years to get a slim refresh which was 2009 to get it to $299.

These new consoles are built more efficiently and using part's that are cheaper and will become even more cost efficient as refresh's come out.

 

[allan-bh]

Yea, thanks for the correction. but still 500 bucks?

In november 2007 they launched a new 40GB model for $399.

 

[ZSaberLink]

(this may have been discussed over and over but here's my take)

I always felt that the problem with third parties on Wii was that they were completely unprepared for the Wii's success and were already focusing on the PS3 (being the successor to the successful PS2) and 360 (thanks to MS making ports very easy).

Thus when the Wii became a huge success as it did, they tried to get things out quickly and you got quite a few cheap efforts from third parties. Enough of those sold stupidly well because the audience that just bought a Wii for Wii Sports wanted to get other games for their new console. However, they typically weren't shooting for the typical 18-34 male demographic on Wii and those games took a while. If you'll notice, the earlier high profile and/or solid efforts to reach the 18-34 male demographic on Wii did quite well. These games mostly came out in 2007.

Examples:
RE4 Wii - 2007
RE: Umbrella Chronicles - People gave a RE light-rail game a shot - 2007
Sonic and the Secret Rings - 2007
Red Steel - (right demographic, crappy game) - launch 2006
Dragon Quest Swords (at least in JP) - 2007
Tiger Woods series (good use of motion controls) - better than 360/PS3 versions until 2008-09?
MHTri (1M+ in Japan) - 2008

Unfortunately, thanks to the failure of third parties, I think the Wii started gaining a reputation for that demographic for spin-offs of core titles except from Nintendo. If you then think about the titles trying to appeal that demographic again, most released way too late after the demographics were much more set or were odd experiments of not so big titles.

 

[theprodigy]

But how do you pronounce "GIF"? (And you're right of course!)

Gee-eye-eff. Why?

10/10 deflection there jvm

:lol

 

[speculawyer]

Who's gonna win November NPD? Smash Bros., GTA V, or CoD: AW?

 

[ZSaberLink]

Who's gonna win November NPD? Smash Bros., GTA V, or CoD: AW?

CoD: AW easily imo.