Alright, now I've been saying this ever since the launch of the Wii to my friends and I wanted to make sure that I had it cemented somewhere before it actually comes to fruition so that everyone doesn't say I',m just jumping on a band wagon when I was one of the first to come up with the idea.
Now, what I am to say will shock you. It will shake you and jar you. It may anger you, make you scream "Are you out of your mind?!?," or post a comment berating me and telling me I am wrong. Or it would if anyone actually read any of these posts. However, it must be said because it is what will come to be. What is it that I am going to say?
The Wii is a fad. The Wii is not going to last. The Wii has little going for it. The Wii will fare no better than the GameCube. Now, we will handle that last part first. Many may immediately jump up and say the Wii is already well on its way to skyrocketing past the number of consoles sold that the GameCube achieved. To that, I would respond that you are right. The Wii most likely will far surpass the GameCube in sales. However, console sales mean absolutely nothing in terms of how well a console fairs within the generation.
There is nothing in the console war more pointless than raw console sale figures. Even though they basically decide who "wins " the console war, that could not be further from the truth. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is that companies do not make their money from selling consoles. Almost all console makers lose money by selling their consoles, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, all of them; and if they don't well they don't make much at all when they do see the consoles. They have varying degrees to which they lose money, Nintedo doesn't really lose any money, as have the least advanced and the least expensive console to sell and they are selling it at a much closer price point to what it costs. Sony and Microsoft are losing hundreds and hundreds of dollars on every single console that they sell. However, this is offset for all three companies buy the games that sell on their system. Game sales are the primary source of profit for all console makers, not console sales. The Wii, while having decent software sales, still has hardly any sales in comparison to how many consoles it has sold. Let's look to some raw data from an NDP report from September (the most recent one able to be located that included software sales):
Xbox 360: software total sold - 44.8 million
Wii: software total sold - 15.5 million
PS3: software total sold - 6.8 million
Now, these software sales include the sales of Wii-play, which is an unjustifiable addition, as it was just an extra thrown in that people bought with the Wiimote. So, cut a few million off of that to adjust and, being generous, we will round to 10 million for the Wii. Now, think about this logically. Even if you cut the 360 sales in half (since it has been out for twice as long, so twice the opportunity to sell games), the 360 still has twice the software sales as the Wii and they were within only a couple million console sales from each other at that time. Now, compare it to the PS3 sales. It is more than the PS3 software sales even with the adjustment, but only by a couple million. However, the Wii was killing the PS3 in console sales back then, having well over twice the console sales of the PS3, but have only slightly higher software sales.
What does all this mean? Basically, it boils down to people are buying Wii's, but they are not buying games. Which is the first reason why the Wii will not fare better than the GameCube, because the software sales, as with the GameCube, are dismal and will continue to be.
The second reason stems from the former. This is the Wii will have the same, limited 3rd party support that the GameCube had. All you have to do is look at the coming offering for all systems to see it already happening. You want UTIII? You want CoD4? You want Stranglehold? You want DiRT? Won't find them on the Wii. Developers have too much to deal with when working with the Wii version of a game and the PS3/360 version of a game. The PS3 and 360 have very similar graphical abilites and identical control (aside from sixaxes, which is merly an add-on that no one has to use). The Wii has both controls and graphical abilities that are at odds with the other consoles. The full potential graphical abilites of the Wii only amount to something that is slightly better than the GameCube and X-box. It's abilites cannot compare to the other consoles and therefore the graphics would either have to be immensly altered to place the game on the Wii, (which is way too much work to port a game to one system, especially where it probably won't sell, but we will get to that later,) or the Wii game would have to be made as the base development console, which would ensure poorer graphical quality for the PS3 and 360 versions of all multiplatform games and that would cause sales to really hurt on all platforms. Then there are the controls, which hardly any developer wants to deal with the huge task of assigning button-based controls to movement-based. It is entirely possible, but it is not easy, and in most cases would not return enough of a profit to be worth it. Not only that, but very few companies look only at hardware sales and decide to put games on a system. Going back to the software sales listed above, a developer and publisher will look at those numbers and say, "Well, if you look at this data in comparison to the install base (number of consoles sold), the 360 and PS3 both have a very high ratio of software sales to console sales when compared to the Wii. The best choice is to put our game on those two systems to ensure sales."
We will get back into this when discussing why the Wii has little going for it, but I would like to revisit something else I stated earlier, dealing with the Wii's full graphical potential being only slightly above that of the GameCube and X-box. I keep reading everywhere people who have purchased Wii's saying that it is a next-gen console. Some going as far as to say it is the only true next-gen console because of its "innovative" controls. This is just plain not true. The Wii is not a next-gen console. There is a very, very, very simple reason for this, "next-gen" is an industry term that corresponds to the ability of a console to produce higher quality graphics and more expansive games. It is not a term that relates to the most innovative console. It is not a term that is used for all consoles that are released in a particular generation. It is an industry term that corresponds to graphical abilites, processing power, and nothing else. And therefore, the Wii is not a next-gen console because its graphical abilites and processing power are far below that of the 360 and PS3. Still don't believe me? Nintendo themselves stated it as fact when they announced the price of the Wii as being "less than $300" some E3's ago. In fact, the fact that the Wii was not a next-gen console was their entire standpoint as to why they were charging under $300 for it.
As we come back from that little side-trip, we come back to why the Wii has little going for it. This again goes back to the low software sales and the lack of third-party support. As already stated, if you want multiplatform games and you buy a Wii, you are completely out of luck. There are a few, Soul Calibur 4, Spider-Man 3, James Bond 007, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Harker, The Darkness, Blazing Angels, Alien FPS, Alien RPG, Black 2, Madagascar 2, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, but guess what, that list right there is at least half of all the multiplatform games that are on the Wii. Everything else on the Wii is either a PS2 game port, a Nintendo made game, one of very very very few good third-party made Wii exclusives (No More Heroes, Batallion Wars II, Spore, and possibly Kenjustsu are all that make up that list), or are very poorly thrown together games that are aimed squarely at the casual gamer and thusly, dumming down gaming as we know it.
So, who actually would get a Wii as a worthwhile purchase? There are only 4 types of people that could possibly find the Wii a worthwhile purchase. The first are Nintendo fanboys. If you absolutely love Nintendo games, well, you won't be finding them on any other system, so yes, the Wii is for you. Metroid, Zelda, Mario Galaxy, StarFox, Excite Truck, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Fire Emblem are all good Nintendo-made games on the Wii and will keep those who can't live without Nintendo very happy throughout the current generation.
The second are children. They are simply too young to look at their options and notice that their are a lot more games to play on the other consoles. They will see the bright colors of Nintendo games and think that the motion controls are very neat and want the system.
The third group are casual gamers. People who do not buy a console every generation or have never bought a console before will most likely love the Wii. They will get a kick out of the games that lack a lot of challenge which are deamed as "family oriented" or "casual" and the cheap price point will pull them in to a impulse purchase. These are the people that will eat up all the sub-par casual gamer games on the Wii made by no-name companies or buy companies that only spent a couple months to throw something out and try to cash in. But because they are casual gamers, they won't know the games are horrible. They haven't played many, or perhaps any video games before and will be completely happy with mediocer games.
The last group are people that buy a system for only one game. There won't be as many of these, as there aren't that many games to make someone who isn't in the above three groups buy a Wii. However, there will be some, especially for a game like Super Smash Bros. Brawl. They will play this one game they bought the system for and not play much else if anything at all.
Anyone who doesn't fit into the above categories will not recieve much enjoyment from their console if they buy a Wii and it will collect a lot of dust in the corner of the basement. Because these groups are the main groups that will buy a Wii, they will not purchase more hardcore gamer games such as Monster Hunter 3 (Capcom doesn't seem to learn from their mistakes, your games did not sell well on the GameCube because the gamers that buy Nintendo consoles prefer Nintendo games, the same is going to happen if you try to put your games on the Wii, they won't sell and you will come back and port all the games to the PS3/360 once again), The Darkness, the Alien FPS and RPG, Black 2; none of these games will sell anywhere near as well on the Wii as they would/will on the PS3/360 because anyone in the above categories are getting a Wii because it's cheap (but will find it has many poorly made games which they will either like, or dislike and the console will collect dust), because they find it to be a "party console," or because of the games Nintendo is making.
All in all, the console will make Nintendo a lot of money. It is selling well and all of their games like Zelda, Metroid, Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart, Wii-fit, Wii-play, and StarFox will all sell very well on the console, and since they are made by Nintendo will be a great profit to the company and there will be no outside publisher to take from the pot. However, because it shows in the software sales that all the nearly all the games selling well on the Wii are made buy Nintendo and most all third party games make hardly anything on the console, third-party developers will continue to stay away from the console and it will essentially be "the machine that plays Nintendo games" like the GameCube was. Most anyone who has a Wii and one of the other two consoles hardly ever touches their Wii in favor of the other console and that is how it will continue to be.
I leave you with a test. Ask any Wii owner how often they play their Wii, but tell them not to include time spent playing Nintendo games or games that were on the PS2 or X-box and see if it adds up to anything even remotely significant.
Your friendly, gaming skunk,
Scynt
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