Will the 2007 holiday season be the decisive moment in the Wii-360-PS3 battle? Will we enter 2008 with a clear idea of which console will dominate for the long term? Or is it too early to tell?
My thoughts:
The Wii will sell an incredible number of consoles for Christmas, no doubt about it. I think the more telling numbers will be the sales of games like Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy. I have the impression that a lot of non-gamers are buying the system purely for the novelty of Wii Sports; in a year or two they will have boxed up their Wiis and moved on to the next tech fad. To keep from fizzling out, the Wii needs dedicated gamers who will continue to buy new games regularly, and I’m not sure it has enough of these.
XBox 360 will keep on rolling along on the strength of FPS’s like Halo 3 and Bioshock. It’s in a comfortable position no matter what the future brings. Even if the Wii’s momentum never does slow down, XBox owners have nothing to fear. And if Wii sales do begin to plummet as the novelty wears off, it could come out on top in the long term.
PlayStation 3-- what a mess. Sony desparately needs to lower the price, and not by releasing “budget” SKU’s with important features yanked out (with the possible exception of the Blu-Ray player). I think a realistic best case scenario for the PS3 is to end up like the GameCube: a solid and respectable third place, with enough important exclusives that serious gamers will want to own it even if they only end up buying six or eight games over the console’s life. Some of those exclusives have jumped ship to the 360, though, and more may follow. Personally, I’m not willing to call PS3 down for the count until after the release of Final Fantasy XIII in 2008 or 2009. The game will be a system-seller, especially in Japan, and it could jump-start the PS3’s momentum again, especially if the price has come down closer to the $300 mark by that time.
Why does it have to be “called”? Last time there were three perfectly good consoles, and many people had more than one for various reasons. It’s not like VHS versus Betamax, IMHO.
As a Wii purchaser I have to tell you that I want to kiss the guys who thought up the Wii controller. I thought it was faddish too until last week when I brought Zelda. The remote has the most intuitive game play I had in as long as can remember. If Nintendo releases a Wii Sports for every Zelda they’ll own my gaming dollars for the long term. Just to give you my pedigree. I’ve been playing since the days of the Atari 2600. I currently have working Gamecube, Playstation and Xbox. I also have a Saturn around here someplace. My thinking this latest generation: I don’t own a HDTV yet so the Xbox 360 wasn’t enough of upgrade for the price. Like you I think the PS3 is a mess.
Certainly my intent is not to start some fanboy debate about which is the One True Console. Ultimately, like most people, I’ll buy whichever system(s) has the games I want to play. But I’m also interested in the business side, and from the hardware companies’ perspective, it’s very much a competition.
Don’t forget, Wii isn’t officially in the running. It’s meant to be just a companion console. Unless, of course, they end up “winning”, then psyyyyyyche! They were in the war the whole time!
I would say we can’t really call it until the next generation are in. The PS2 pretty comfortably won the last go round before the current lot, but things so far seem closer.
First, the next three months are the key moment for this generation.
The Wii line-up for the holiday season is incredibly strong even with the third-party titles and the thing that everyone will be watching for is how well can those third-party titles do on the Wii. Most of those companies were fairly foolish with their development decisions before the consoles were released and have turned weak third-party performance on the Wii into a self-fulfilling prophecy. They need to see some strong performers to drive continued development. I think they’re going to get it but its no where near guaranteed. Hardware sales are going to continue to be strong.
I think the X-Box 360 has stabilized with much the same level of support as the original X-Box had. It’s cut out its niche but lack of strong Japanese support is undercutting it somewhat. Their question is if the price cut is going to get them a large increase in market share. I suspect it may pick up a few more sales but since the model that is $279 is so stripped down I can’ think of it as really helping in the long run.
The PS3 had the name but that’s been lost. On the other hand they’ve dropped backward compatibility to get the price to the same level as the high end X-Box 360. I could see that as actually working to build momentum, especially in Japan where there’s a big hole in the market at the moment.
BTW, don’t expect to see Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3. It hasn’t been announced and Square-Enix moved their even bigger selling Dragon Warrior series (at least in Japan) to the Nintendo DS. They’re not going to do a lot of development for Final Fantasy XIII for a system where they don’t expect a lot of sales.
What do you mean? Which is the fanboy’s line, the first part or the second part? Nintendo has officially claimed that the Wii is just meant to be a “companion console”, and it’s easy to find that claim disingenuous, if you compare it to their stance that the seemingly gimmicky DS was a “third pillar” rather than their new main handheld, and the Gameboy line was still going to be focused upon. Until, of course, the DS worked out afterall, then “psyche-a-boo-boo”, the DS really is the successor of the GBA.
Wii - So far, I’m seeing a gimmick peripheral being pushed to the moon, lots of quirky, offbeat titles that may or may not be any good (nb. quirky & offbeat != good…Fantavision, anyone?), a handful of updated franchise titles, and a few token taken-from-some-other-system arcade hits. I’m still not seeing the bread and butter, and this incredibly wrongheaded movement to bring in female gamers and marginalize the lifeblood of video games for the past 35 years leaves me cold. In all, as pretty and cute and wonderful as this system is, I can’t think of a single reason to actually buy it.
XBox 360 - Loses points for being a product of one of the most despicable symbols of unchecked capitalism in the history of the world, loses points for excessive focus on online gaming, a phenomenon I have absolutely jack spit zilch interest in ever being a part of, loses big points for an overabundance of titles where I have to invest roughly a week of effort before I can avoid getting killed/clobbered/obliterated/taken out every 30 seconds, loses ultra mega garbanzo points for the seemingly endless reliability horror stories…and just where the hell am I supposed to put my OTHER systems, hmm?
Playstation 3 - Sony made a subtle change in their marketing strategy…instead of having absolutely nothing at all available anywhere for a friggin’ solid YEAR, they’re going with glacier-slow releases for the first three years or so. And again, where are the games I actually give a damn about? Why is Time Crisis 4 taking so long? Tekken 6? Dynasty Warriors? For $600, is it too much to expect something better than a Dreamcast, for crying out loud?
It seems like everyone’s forgotten exactly what made the PS2 great…lots of great games in a huge variety of genres. Not JUST Final Fantasy whichever, not JUST Gran Turismo, not JUST Tekken, not JUST Katamari Damacy or Dynasty Warriors or Resident Evil or the latest Tony Hawk offering. The reason it killed the Dreamcast was because it did more. Not because everyone suddenly lost all interest in fast-paced arcade style gameplay and easy-to-understand mechanics. As it is, the current next gen crop gets a big “not interested” from me.
As for when we can call it? Simple…whichever gets the Codebreaker first. That’s show that they care about all their gamers, not just the super-hardcore fanatics who see suffering and endless frustration as weakness leaving the body. For me, this ceased to be negotiable years ago. Get CB or get lost.
I’m saying that if the Wii whups the 360 and PS3 in sales, which it seems to be doing, it’ll be fans and gaming sites/magazines claiming that the Wii is this generation’s winner. I’m not sure Nintendo will make that claim themselves, though.
That would be a pretty huge reversal… the game has been in development for over a year already, and as recently as last month’s Tokyo Game Show, Square was still claiming PS3 exclusivity.
Eh, pretty much the same. If you read the press releases, speeches, and interviews with Nintendo bigwigs from back before the release, the tone was very much “We don’t expect to compete with the other two for gamers, we want to go after non-gamers; there’s a massive untapped market that the industry is missing out on because we’ve all become so caught up in rigourously defined genres and rehashing the same gameplay mechanics over and over. We’re going to change all that, and we’re going to continue to offer the tried and true Nintendo offerings so gamers will buy us as well.”
As for DS vs PSP:
DS all versions worldwide sales: 47.27 million
PSP all versions worldwide sales: 18.07 million (25.3 million shipped, not sold)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; when it comes to handheld gaming, you just can’t beat Nintendo. They won the market with the worst hardware possible back in the day, on the strength of branding and software support; they continue to have the leading edge where this is concerned (PSP’s turned it around a little for a while now, but there was a good year where almost nothing of note was being released for it).
If your talking about who will win from the sales perspective, I expect pS3 to continue to be spanked this holiday season, but I’m fairly confidant that it will prove itself in time, but I don’t believe it will ever have the numerical dominance the PS2 enjoys (best selling console of all time, with something like 80% of console owners in the world having one). Wii and Xbox 360 are oriented at such different demographics that I wouldn’t know where to begin trying to compare them. I already have a Wii, so I’ll be helping 360’s numbers this season.
I probably didn’t make myself as clear as I could. I know Nintendo’s been saying they’re not in competition with Sony and Microsoft. What I am saying is that, should the Wii continue to outsell the hell out of the 360 and PS3, while I don’t doubt that fans and gaming sites may turn around and declare Nintendo the winner of the competition they’re supposedly not engaged in, I don’t really think Nintendo will do any strutting of their own. (There’s a run-on for you)
Given the extremely high failure rate on those 360’s (just anecdotally I know five people who purchased a 360 and all of them have had to return it for servicing at least once) I’d be really hesitant to buy a refurbished one at the moment. Especially since new ones that are promised to be more reliable are starting to reach shelves. I’m not sure how Microsoft would treat a model acquired that way. Better to wait for the inevitable price decrease or for the older models out there to die out.
Meh, I’ve had universally excellent luck with refurb units (cellphones, Apple hardware, etc). A refurb 360 will be tested harder than a new unit…and it comes with the same warrantee.
Shouldn’t matter. Hell, I bought mine used off of eBay and when it took a crap I called up the support line. Even though the previous owner had it registered under his name they simply re-registered under my name and got the warranty ball rolling with no problem. The only complaint I have is how damn long it takes.
Console sales are extremely front-loaded due to the way the industry works (lots of people buy a console means more developers making games on that console which makes more people buy the console and so on).
Everything we know about how consoles work tells us that things are pretty much going to stay as-is. The Wii is going to continue selling like gangbusters, the 360 is going to perform very well and have insane software sales, and the PS3 is going to sort of flounder in 3rd place.
Ultimately, like most people, I’ll buy whichever system(s) has the games I want to play. But I’m also interested in the business side, and from the hardware companies’ perspective, it’s very much a competition.