Wii Outsells 360, PS3 Worldwide 491
Wowzer writes "Despite confusing consoles produced, shipped or sold reports, the Nintendo Wii is now the best-selling system worldwide. Its sales exceed that of the Xbox 360 despite Microsoft's console having a year-long head start. And it's way ahead of the PS3. From the article: 'Sales figures from each console's launch date through the end of July (and the end of August in Japan) were added up, with the Wii just barely edging out the 360: 9 million for the Wii, 8.9 million for the 360, and 3.7 million for the PlayStation 3.'"
Re:Sooooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Surprising in some ways, unsuprising in others (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, I find it QUITE surprising that the Wii can so handily outsell the 360 when its game library is, all things considered, horribly outmatched. This is a very strong example of the fact that games do NOT sell the system, as many gamers like to think. Advertisements and price tag do a LOT more than the shelves of dvd-size plastic boxes with the console's logo on them, it seems.
More games please (Score:3, Insightful)
I got myself a Wii. Just need a proper LAN multiplayer FPS and a Summer Smash Brothers, and maybe even a hardcore Mario kart.
I've actually spent hours playing Super Mario Brothers on the Virtual Console
I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
And the shock comes..... (Score:2, Insightful)
You are wrong, sire (Score:3, Insightful)
and this IS a games sell a console situation.
for the first time in around, like, 8-10 years, a major brand (nintendo) came up with the now-forgotten idea of making FUN games instead of ones that has loaded sounds and graphics and repeats old concepts.
thats why wii is outselling all consoles.
Nintendo is great, but Xbox is still doing well (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, I do not expect the Xbox 360 to become a non factor any time soon. It may be in a #2 position, but holding its current position without the benefit of Japan is a pretty strong feat. If they ever crack the Japanese market, they will likely give Nintendo some strong competition. Conversely, if the PS3 can build some decent momentum as its prices drop, it could overtake Microsoft overall with core gamers. If this does happen, it will happen very late in this console cycle (no earlier than say, 2010). And if it does do so, it will not overtake the 360 in the US.
I had been saying for some time, before the Wii's launch, that it probably had at worst, the #2 slot locked up in the console war, and a real threat to be #1.
I would say that right now, Nintendo is #1 over all, but only #2 with respect to hard core gamers. While a broad market strategy may be a good one, the core segment has proven consistently strong, and not one you want to cede to a rival.
If the Wii is ever going to get a grip on the core segment of the console market, they have to do it within the next year. Developers of titles that appeal to core gamers jumped on the Wii band wagon late, so the games that could push Wii into an untouchable #1 standing simply do not exist yet. On top of that, Nintendo did have a pretty bad game drought between February and July on the Wii. With the 3rd party developers coming on stream, that may change.
So to sum up:
- Right now, Wii has the #1 spot over all, but is only #2 with core gamers.
- I expect that the Xbox 360 will stay #1 with core gamers unless the Wii starts to get alot of games that will appeal to core gamers. Given the Wii's market positioning, I do not think this will happen.
- I expect the Xbox 360 to be guaranteed #2 unless Sony starts to build alot of momentum. I would be very surprised if this happens.
END COMMUNICATION
Re:Sooooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Different doesn't always mean better, and features on paper don't necessarily describe the experience. How well has motion control worked in the past? How precise will the controller be? Assuming everything else remained the same, but the wiimote was looser, that alone could sink the console. Game controls need to be consistent and precise because that control mechanism is their only connection to the game. Plus the hardware is specced lower than the other two consoles. And their previous console came in last of the three. The Wii was not the safe bet, thus developers went with the tried and true formula on the other platforms and are now scrambling to play catch-up.
Even Nintendo didn't bet on doing this well, the numbers of consoles sold were constrained by Nintendo's supply, not demand. You can find a Wii without camping out now, after all this time, but they still get cleared off the shelves before the next shipment. When the holiday season rolls in they may be a chore to find once again.
But the upshot through all this, is that it's indeed the most prolific console now, and though developers may be a little late to the party, there will probably be a nice big wave of games hitting all at once as they finish their late-starting Wii games.
Re:Surprising in some ways, unsuprising in others (Score:4, Insightful)
FUN counts! (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology, the PSP trashes the DS. The XBox360 makes the Wii look like a joke graphically and computationally.
But the new interfaces (touch screen, WiiMote) have lead to entirely new classes of games, and new ways of doing traditional games.
EG, after playing Metroid for a few hours, I can't see how anyone could go back to the classic FPS controls, especially on a console. On a DS, the touchscreen allows very rich UIs, which are not possible with just the D-pad and buttons.
That is the lesson from Nintendo: Fun Must Come First .
Re:You are wrong, sire (Score:2, Insightful)
"Fun" is relative, period. A lot of people are having "fun" on their PS2. More than on all the other current-gen consoles combined, by far. So, what's been "long-forgotten" again?
"Loaded sounds and graphics" makes no sense, either. Gears, Oblivion, FFXII, Bioshock, and other visually appealing games get VERY good reception from both critics and gamers alike. They are NOT the problem.
"Repeats old concepts"... hmm, yeah how about a Zelda title, Metroid Prime title, Virtual Console, and a Resident Evil 4 remake for a "repeats old concepts"? If anyone goes for tried-and-true, it's Nintendo.
This is NOT a games sell a console situation in the slightest.
Re:I guess that means they're actuall making them (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally, I do not think most wii owners only have one or two games. There are a lot of people who are "gamers", but aren't hard core enough to pay $600 for a system. There are lots of good games for the Wii, many of which aren't available on other consoles (just wait till smash brothers comes out).
Plus, when taking profits into account, you can't forget about the profit on accessories. How many Wii owners also have at least 2 or 3 wii motes. Those aren't cheap by any means, and likely lead to more profit for Nintendo. Particularly in the short term Nintendo is dominating the field when it comes to profit. I doubt the others have even recouped their development costs.
Phil
Small TV sets outnumber big TV sets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sooooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not supporting HD meant the Wii (1) cost less for consumers to buy, and (2) cost less for developers to write titles for. Throw in the fact that HDTV is still a minority in all of the world's video-game markets, and there's no compelling reason for Nintendo to support it other than to satisfy the resolution-counting techno-geeks.
Re:Sooooo... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Surprising in some ways, unsuprising in others (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Surprising in some ways, unsuprising in others (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just barly (Score:3, Insightful)
Either way, the Wii has sold more in 10 months than MS has in 2 years. That alone should say something about the target markets.
Oddly, I was actually considering buying a 360 due to some games that looked interesting. But that 33% chance of a red-ring-of-death definitely puts me off. Yeah, I know the warranty covers it, but if my machine is in the mail every few months, for several weeks at a time, that doesn't seem very useful for playing games.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Breaking news! (Score:3, Insightful)
Except, oh, one small thing: ferrari makes money on every car sold, does Sony make money on every console sold? Didn't think so. Sony is relying on a large base of support in order to get the publishers to make the games that make the money, and so far, they're failing - not that it matters much, it's such a bloated company they can just absorb the loss anyways.
Re:Sooooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, I don't think Nintendo expected cruise [kotaku.com] ships [joystiq.com] wanting Wii's or people purchasing multiple consoles for home and travel.
Out of curiosity, I talked to a GameStop employee and asked him how the Wii was doing? Long story short, he claims they get an average of 25 units a week and sell out within 48 hours. 25 units a week (for one store) and they're still selling out months later. It is pretty surprising.
Of course, the real under-rated news is not the Wii but the DS. For all the people I know who won a Wii, I know twice as many who also have a DS. People who wouldn't buy a Wii as even that is too much 'video game' for them. Those "brain" games (Brain Age, Big Brain Academy) is by far the sleeper "killer ap". Who would have thunk that someone would drop $120 just to do some math equations? =P
Though, the DS does have a lot of great (and cheap) games. The Wii? Zelda, Mario Party, Metroid, Raymon, Wii Sports/Play... I've not been impressed with a whole lot else. So, that does say something about the unique frenzy the Wii is causing. Or maybe it's because I'm spending more time playing the Virtual Console? =P (yes, I've been playing on emulators on my PC since 2000, I still prefer the VC)
Cheers,
Fozzy
Re:Just barly (Score:3, Insightful)
NPD (not NDP) numbers are indeed 'sales' not 'shipments'.
However, due to the way NPD tracks numbers, warranty exchanges/replacements handled and documented by retailers, those units frequently count as 'sales' as far as NPD counts are concerned.
To sum up, NPD numbers show units that have been delivered to end users. Which is more useful than Microsoft's number telling us how many they've shipped to retailers (and which may be sitting in warehouses for months to come)... but as to the question of how many of these are 'new sales' vs 'warranty replacements'; its anyones guess.
It will be quite a bit less than the actual failure rate, becauwse NPD doesn't count warranty units shipped direct from microsoft. But if you take your ringed unit into BestBuy and they send you home with a new one, it will likely count as a new sale by NPD's sales tracking. It all depends on how the retailers process warranty exchanges and doa replacements.
Normally, the likes of NPD don't care about warranty exchanges because the rates are low enough that its just noise in the data, and not worth the trouble to track, and all consoles are expected to have similiarly low failure rates, so even if they are over reporting a half percent or so; it doesn't really skew the data in anyones favor.
Finally, this is not a new problem. The PS2 worldwide sales is similarly badly distorted. The PS2 didn't have the level of problems the 360 has, but first generation PS2's had weak drives, that burned out (especially if used for watching movies). This led a LOT of them to die AFTER the 1 year warranty.
Of the 100 million+ PS2's sold. How many of them were just re-purchased to replace dead out of warranty PS2's? I've heard estimates as high as 20-35% there too.
Of course, in this case at least, Sony got paid twice, so in some sense its fair to call the 2nd sale "legitimate" and count it in 'total sales'. But from a developer's standpoint the size of the market is grossly inflated.
In the same way that 400 million downloads of firefox don't count as 400 million users.
Re:Surprising in some ways, unsuprising in others (Score:4, Insightful)
I see what you're trying to say, but I respectfully disagree. My reason is that "Wii Sports" is the "killer ap" that is selling the system. A close second is the Virtual Console.
It's always been people's enjoyment of Wii Sports that they see the 'potential' of the system and the motion sense. When my old man picked up the controller and held it like a baseball bat, he thought it was the coolest thing. Like virtual reality. When my mom played bowling, she thought it was as real as you could get. Everyone enjoyed playing Tennis as a family activity.
For the dedicated gamers, Zelda helped sell the system at the start, before others had a share of the fun. Also the promise of Smash Bros., Mario Cart, Mario Galaxies, and the recent release of Metroid, had a lot of fans picking up the system in simple anticipation.
My fiancee (who doesn't like video games) is adamantly playing Zelda, Zelda 2, Donkey Kong Country, Mario Bros., etc. on the Virtual Console. Explaining to me she never got the chance to play them as a kid as her father dominated the system. She's reliving a lot of nostalgia (and showing me up that she knows more about the original Zelda games than I do).
The 360 has a lot of great games and a lot more of them, but the Wii definitely has the exclusive 'killer ap' game, Wii Sports. Even if it gets old real quick. It only takes once to get addicted and when people leave to buy the system on impulse and they find they're all sold out (still) they are overcome by the "must have" bug as the Wii is more than just a video game system now, it's pop culture.
If Andy Warhol was around, he's probably paint a picture of it.
Cheers,
Fozzy
I am in that core audience (Score:5, Insightful)
Games like God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Assassins Creed, Zelda, Metroid Prime, Gears of War, Dead Rising, Battlefield 1942, Counterstrike, Grand Theft Auto, Fable, System Shock 2, Ninja Gaiden, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are all great games. I want to see more games of that sort continue to come out. And I would love to play them on my Wii. But I really do not think those types of games will come out on the Wii any time soon. At least, now with the Wii as the primary platform.
Manhunt 2, ratings controversy aside, apparantly makes use of the motion controls quite impressively. Swing the remote, and you get to smash someones head in. But outside of that game, I have not heard much coming out for the Wii that appeals to my particular tastes of a gamer.
At the moment, I do own a Wii. But I have not played very much on it lately. That will change when I get my hands on a copy of Metroid Prime. Being able to play Wii games with non gamer friends is nice. But quite frankly, I also want some good single player games with some real endurance to them. Most casual geared games do not do that.
The Core Audience sustained this industry for a long time. It may be niche, but it is a lucrative one, and one worth trying to hold on to.
END COMMUNICATION
Re:Surprising in some ways, unsuprising in others (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:People are still talking about this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analogy is apt, but your statement is false. A lot of people are shopping for a gaming system for themselves and their kids and they're picking between the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS 3. It is the same market and unlike cars, you can't look at the number of seats or mileage before buying. Teens and young adults are also mommies these days. We're talking overlapping market segments, not separate market segments or different markets altogether. People are buying Wii who would otherwise be buying one of the other consoles.
I don't own any of the next generation consoles and I doubt I will for a long time. I have no bias coming into this. I'm not invested in trying to justify my expensive purchase. I've played on other people's systems a few times. Right now, the Wii seems the most fun to me and that is what I care about, but who knows what the future will bring.
Re:Surprising in some ways, unsuprising in others (Score:3, Insightful)
My personal experience has given me the following impression: most of the demographic that the Wii is aimed at (in terms of the "untapped" market, that is) knows three things: Xbox and Playstation are complicated to pick up. Wii is not as complicated. Guitar Hero is fun. And, well, Wii is cheaper than Guitar Hero ^_^
Even some friends of mine bought Wiis only to realize that they have nothing to play on them except for maybe one game they like. And they certainly didn't consider games available when they purchased the thing.
What sold the Wii was the controller and the intuitive playstyle it promises.
Meh, basically I still stand by my OP. "Gamers" (folks who keep up with upcoming titles, etc.) pay a LOT more attention to a console's game library than do other folks, and it's these other folks who are buying up Wiis in such numbers.
Re:You are wrong, sire (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unsolicited math analysis that might have value (Score:2, Insightful)
Sony has sold 3.7 million units (according to the main article). Sticking with the assumption that they were all $499 units, that would be a total of $1.85 billion in gross revenues. However, according to the article from the poster above, Sony sold the $499 console at a loss of $306.85. That means it cost Sony $805.85 to make the $499 PS3, and that they actually lose $306.85 on every sale. So while they brought in about $1.85 in gross revenues, they actually lost about $1.14 billion on the sales. Of course, some were actually $599 versions (with lower losses) and I'd bet Sony has reduced the manufacturing costs at least a little since launch, so the $1.14 billion loss a worst case scenerio. Microsoft is probably still in a hole as well, although they're supposedly making money on new consoles now. Nintendo has been making a profit on console sales since launch though.
Also, counting the full price of games as net revenue is similarly misleading. Sony, MS, and Nintendo don't see the full price as profit. Instead, they get a fee per game sold (I imagine it's a set ammount, but I don't know the exact numbers). The designers, publishers, distributors, retailers take the rest. Games aren't free to make, after all.
Re:Nintendo is great, but Xbox is still doing well (Score:5, Insightful)
I maintained my own patches to Wine to let me have more function keys in WoW. I maintain addons for WoW, too. I still have my Sega CD. I stil have my 3DO, too. I regularly beat RPGs under a strict "no characters die ever" policy because I think it's more challenging. I play Angband, and have submitted patches to it (which were accepted!). I've learned new programming languages to work on games, and I've written games for competitions.
People who play FPS games, and nothing else, dismiss my gaming tastes as "casual". WTF?
Imagine if you had someone who reads nothing but romance novels. Dismisses sci-fi as geeky, literature as dull, mysteries as pointless and irritating, technology books as uninteresting, humor books as too silly, biographies as pointless, newspapers as too short, and so on. Just reads romance novels.
According to the PS360 marketing engine, he's a hardcore reader. No, that's softcore.
Re:Sooooo... (Score:2, Insightful)
You could have, though... those same games could have been released on the xbox or PS2, identical but for a cut in graphic quality. Different people may have a different opinion about how drastically that would affect the game. I wouldn't mind at all, but perhaps you might find it much less fun. I think, though, that console makers have been catering to you, not to me, until the release of the Wii (and arguably the DS).
Re:Unsolicited math analysis that might have value (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft: 890m loss
Sony: 550m loss
Nintendo: 630m profit
Factoring games, then, with a 60/60/50 price structure:
Microsoft: needs to sell 30.4m games to catch up to Nintendo at selling zero games
Sony: needs to sell 23.6m games to catch up to Nintendo at selling zero games
Nintendo: 3.6m copies of Zelda, alone, means they are $144m ahead; throw in Metroid, Super Paper Mario, WarioWare, Mario Party 8, etc, and Nintendo has something like 10m games sold, trivially.
Which means the numbers for each console are actually:
Microsoft: needs to sell 40m games to catch up to Nintendo
Sony: needs to sell 33m games to catch up to Nintendo
Nintendo: Clear winner and currently the only profitable game company
Re:Sooooo... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He might not have the 480p cable (Score:3, Insightful)
And honestly the guy saying it looked like crap on his TV probably doesn't even have a 56-inch television, much less a Wii.
Re:Unsolicited math analysis that might have value (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, they make them on games. Developers pay a fee per disc to release on the system.
It's not a percentage. It's usually a flat, per-disc fee. That was why the original Playstation was so much more popular with developers than the N64 despite its hugely inferior hardware: the per disc fee was something like $5 compared to $10 or more for cart fees for the N64. That meant even bad games with low sales numbers could turn a profit.
I don't know it offhand, but I'd probably bet the per-disc fee is somewhere around the $6-$8 range right now for the Xbox 360/PS3, and probably a couple bucks cheaper for the Wii.
No one's implying anything: that's an absolute fact. Microsoft's games division and Sony's game division have been posting losses in the Billions for quite some time. Last year Sony Games racked up a loss of $1.969 Billion, Microsoft Games Division's fiscal year end was a loss of $1.892 Billion (though to be fair, the Zune and a couple other "devices" are in the same division) and Nintendo's end of year profits were $1.915 Billion (they don't have a seperate game division, games are all they do.
If you stood on a corner and offered to give everyone who paid you $50 a $100 bill, you'd have lots of consumers giving you money, but that wouldn't help you any financially. If someone else down the block was getting people to give them $100 bills in exchange for hundreds, even if they only got ONE PERSON to do this they'd be better off than you at the end of the day.
This is essentially how Sony/Microsoft's business model works. They let the consumers hurt them by buying the loss-leader (the console) and hope to make back the money over the life of the product with licensing fees for software. This is doubly true for Sony as they're using the PS3 to push their Blu-ray format.
Their shareholders were probably thinking the same thing a year or so ago.
Being the number one seller doesn't help you if you go bankrupt doing it.
That was the original XBox business model. They believed they could buy the market. The 360's business model is just a wee bit less suicidal, but pretty much still the same. Microsoft just wants to establish their brand in hopes of winning the market by their third generation system. I think they have a shot at it. I refused to buy an XBox but I recently dropped a good chunk on a brand new 360 Premium. It's a fine system and almost worth the money.
Sony however can kiss my ass if they think I'll pay over $300 for that glorified heat sink they're selling.
Re:Sooooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed, most of the games available on virtual console were great games when they were first released and are still great games. My kids (younger teens), are somewhat surprised at the difficulty level, but enjoyability of these games.
VC games are basically the same cost as a rental game but the fun doesn't end (until you beat the game).
Re:Sooooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, your view of the situation is very limited. The main concern of Nintendo was that their core market, the japanese market, was dangerously decreasing. Nintendo stated countless times that they had to revitalize it to survive.
The DS and the Wii were made for that specifically, and succeeded. Just look at the software sales since the DS was out. It's pretty obvious that the DS started monopolizing the charts, with a fraction of the PS2 marketshare.
Nintendo games are for everybody, not just for the younger market. That mantra comes from the "hardcore" that believe that a game rated E means younger, when it means everybody.
Anyway, you could apply what you said to nearly any game genre except sports.
Re:He might not have the 480p cable (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have 1/4 the number of pixels in 480p, then you have 1/8 in 480i in the same time frame.
And going interlaced to progressive WILL IMPROVE the picture quality. There are countless artifacts caused by interlaced signal.
What you're saying is BS anyway. If you get oversized pixels that look more grainy, you have a HDTV with a very bad scaler, that's all.
Re:Sooooo... (Score:3, Insightful)
A bunch of us play Mario Kart DS in the office at lunch, using the ad-hoc wireless network; for a number of the players, this was the "killer app" that made them buy the system.
I'm pretty impressed with the DS overall, it's probably the best tech gadget I've ever bought. Still haven't had time to hack around with it (I bought a SuperCard DS a while back to run homebrew apps on the thing) though, unfortunately.
Re:Surprising in some ways, unsuprising in others (Score:3, Insightful)
Because, whaddya know: A generic racer and a generic beat-em-up.
Wow, that's real innovation there. I bet no one could ever have made a racing game, or a beat-em-up, on older hardware.