Barrett Garese

My brother Eric, commenting on this post, and probably accurately predicting the future. (via lizlet)

No offense Liz, but I totally disagree with your brother’s premise, as well as his conclusions.

The Wii was the most successful console of this generation, so I don’t understand his “still be the underperforming console…” comment. It sold more consoles and more games than any other, and made more money than PS3 and 360 - combined. Chart here, numbers on the right hand side.

Coupled with the fact that it sold 50% more consoles than either Sony or MS, is the fact that Nintendo is the only console manufacturer that sells its consoles at a profit - the other two lose money on hardware, hoping to make it up later on software licenses. So even if they all three sold the same amount of hardware, Nintendo would have made more money already. 

Speaking of software, yes, the Wii lacked in 3rd party support, but no - I don’t think Nintendo minds. In fact, they might happily continue giving EA and Activision the middle finger because doing so made them a metric fuckton of money. Since they sold more software (again, see the chart here) and since it was mostly first-party developed, they made far more money than they would with robust third party support. A single copy of Mario Kart makes them 2-3 times more than a copy of Madden (this is sort of an oversimplification, but at million sales+ scale, it ends up being somewhere between 2 and 3x.)

So given the above, where they make more money on a single console sale, more money on a single software sale, and sold (by FAR) more software and hardware than their competitors…how are they underperforming?

Their market strategy as brilliant - “we’re not going at it like last time, where it was the gamecube VS the PS2 VS the Xbox, we’re going to be the system you have *in addition to* your hardcore platform. AND, since we won’t have as many cross-platform games as the other two - who will be forced to duke it out against each other for the Metal of Battlefield Warfare crowd -  most of our best games will be exclusive to our platform.”

Genius.

(via spytap)

Healthy debate! Though I think Eric’s point has more to do with the creative success of the Wii as opposed to the business. Nintendo might be happy with how the Wii has performed, but what about the millions of users who got bored of bowling and Rayman after six months? And that alone could have an effect on Wii U sales — it’s a cool toy, but people might be wary of shelling out for a new device to gather dust.

(via lizlet)

I think *some* people got bored with the console, but the reality is that by setting itself up as the “additional system” it was never going to be the primary console for hardcore gamers. Additionally, those other consoles (the 360 and PS3) set themselves up as media centers with a ton of extra functionality beyond gaming - I, for one, spend a fair amount of my “PS3 time” with Netflix, Blu-rays, TV shows, and other assorted non-gaming areas. So yes, for some people the Wii may have gathered some dust in between sporadic game purchases, but the reality is that for the vast majority of the Wii’s consumers, it did so about on par with the other consoles, and that’s reflected in the software sales.

It’s tough to calculate a formal attachment rate (i.e. median number of games purchased for each system sold) so we’re going to fudge it a bit by going for the average by dividing the software sales by the hardware sales and calling it close enough. Within those guidelines, it was very close for every console.

Wii - 7.8 games sold per console sold

360 - 9.0 games sold per console sold

PS3 7.8 games sold per console sold

It’s right in line with the PS3, and just a little more than one purchase behind the 360. So from an overall standpoint, it doesn’t look like there were that many “bored” consumers who stopped purchasing Wii games. Some did, probably, but some also did for 360 and PS3.

But to put more of a point on the question “what about the millions of users who got bored of bowling and Rayman after six months?” Well, they bought new games. That’s pretty much how it goes. For every Wii customer who bought two games and then let it gather dust, there was another who bought 18 - just like the 360 and PS3. If there were that many unsatisfied consumers, Nintendo wouldn’t have sold almost 700 million pieces of software. The retail, if you will, doesn’t match the rhetoric; or rather, the constant refrain of the rhetoric.

So where does the refrain come from? Well, I’ve got my opinion, but it’s probably going to make more than a few people feel like I’m personally insulting them. Sorry folks, I promise it’s not personal, but it needs to be said:

What I think this comes down to is the eternal argument of the “true” (read: “more hardcore”) gamers who spurned the Wii, and their very vocal opposition to the casual people’s gaming machine. “They’re not real gamers” was a frequent comment I’ve read over the past few years, coupled with “the Wii is just kiddie games” mantra, reiterated ad nauseum. It’s similar to how Halo players feel about Farmville - that’s it’s not a real game, and the “culture” surrounding it isn’t representative of “gamer culture.”

But here’s my real issue: gamer “culture,” isn’t. I’ve been playing video games since I was about 4, and given my background there’s no way anyone could question my gaming credentials (Proof? I’ve owned six consoles, several hundred games, built and rebuilt my own gaming PC a dozen times, logged about a thousand hours into CS, and co-captained a TRIBES clan - just to start.) But the reality is that gaming “culture” is inherently exclusionary. I get it, it started as a self-embracing response to being spurned and mocked by the mainstream, but despite being a bigger industry than feature films, it still has these vestiges of “US VS THEM” that permeate and seek to exclude certain factions.

These exclusionary factions believe that there is one “right” way to be a gamer, and that involves a certain amount of necessary hazing from outside the community to earn one’s stripes, and when that ceased to be applicable due to the mainstreaming of gaming, that hazing started to come from within. This vocal faction is, I believe, the minority. I sort of have to believe this to be willing to continue calling myself a gamer, because this minority, vocal as it is, also serves often to reinforce the least appealing aspects of gamer culture.

Need an example? Go play multiplayer Halo on the 360, the most “hardcore credible” console. Within thirty seconds you’ll conclude that the only solution for humanity is to nuke the entire planet from orbit - it’s the only way to be sure. Granted this single example doesn’t apply to everything, but it serves as a valid illustration to knowing where a lot of the Wii criticism is coming from. This contingent A) expects online multiplayer to be a part of every game, B) vocal communication to be a part of every online multiplayer experience (whose sole use is generally to mock the defeated) and C) that games *must* be hardcore to be “real games.”

None of this - not one single iota is accurate. But by choosing to embrace exactly zero of these “understood” rules, and by actively eliminating that hazing element, Nintendo put itself against the vocal minority. This pissed them off. When Nintendo won, as demonstrated in sales - this pissed them off further. So they stopped playing the Wii, and the world continued on, and the Wii continued absolutely dominating the charts despite that minority’s exclusion of the platform, which bruised a few community egos. So the vocal minority did their best to expunge the Wii from the ranks of “real gaming.”

To which I respond: if gamer culture is best represented by calling someone a fag after you shoot them in the face, then I’ll gladly sign off to play Mario Kart with friends while having a beer.

I enjoy gaming, I really do. We’re in a golden age of gaming, that - proliferation of the Madden and Halo series aside - is better in almost every respect than ever before. I’ve loved the Uncharted series, and both Portals are still in my go-to list. I still get giddy at any Half Life 3 or even Episode 3 rumor, and have spent some time recently getting to know the intricacies of my friendships through who heals my ass in Left 4 Dead 2. But I also like the various versions of Mario, Zelda, and Metroid I’ve been playing on the Wii. They’re different, but that’s not a bad thing for me. Some are better, some are worse, but all are - and this is the really key thing here - enjoyable to play.

All the above serves to illustrate my main point: that I believe the rhetorical refrain of dust-covered Wiis and millions of disappointed customers is more likely the backlash of a small subset of vocal gamers who are more than a little mad that gamers aren’t the Rebel Alliance anymore; but in fact the Empire. Perhaps it’s that more importantly, the erstwhile leaders of the rebel alliance have been usurped by a less militant majority - the people who just like playing video games because they’re fun, and have no desire to wave a flag of allegiance. That’s who the Wii caters to, and as it turns out that’s a bigger consumer audience.

(via lizlet)