August 13, 2009 | 6:29 PM PST Overall North American hardware sales saw an annual revenue fall of 37% in the NPD's report for July 2009, with every platform experiencing a drop. ... .. .. The hardest hit platform was the Wii with a 55% year-over-year plunge in sales, closely followed by the current generation Sony platforms, both experiencing falls of around 45% in sales. The top-selling platform this month – the Nintendo DS suffered an 11% drop while the Xbox 360 fell the least with only a 1% change from last July.
Look at the graphs...of course every platform has a pretty bad decline except the Xbox360 which has a slight decline. wii expectedly has the largest decline in sales of them all...
since the release of the wii, i can confidently that i always knew the Wii was a joke and an insult to the gaming industry.
i cant apologize for you Wii lovers because Nintendo really spit you in the face and you just don't get it...
Last edited by omer on Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
To each his own. I still enjoy my wii, playing samurai shodown anthologies and wii sports resort right now. Will be getting murusama when it comes out. I think all the retirement homes bought them last year and dont need any more
Nintendo never spit in my face, they released all the same old franchises that they release for every console they own and a bunch of third party devs released a load of shovelware, somthing Sony's machine has always suffered from and hardly Nintendos fault.
Sales are declining because they have reached market saturation. Good for them, they took a risk and deserve to win after the N64 and GC didnt do so well.
The Wii is a massive success as far as making money is concerned. However, not only is the Wii a massive failure when it comes to the actual games, it has a strong influence on the industy. Thanks to the Wii, the Xbox 360 and PS3 suck more. There is less importance in quality or fun nowadays. It's unfortunate but putting out lower quality products brings in more money, so that's what companies will do. Businesses are there to make money and nothing else matters. Nintendo was smart to capitalize on all the idiots out there, while Sony and Microsoft targeted gamers. Now that everyone sees Nintendo getting rich from it, they want a piece of the pie too.
Here is the thought process for the video game industry as they watch the Wii start off: - "Wii? What a horrible name." - "What the fuck is this? You call this a controller? It barely works!" - "The same graphics as the gamecube? No HDTV support either." - "These games are pretty crappy. They are so dumb-downed." - "Virtual console sucks. Who is gonna pay this much money for a lower quality version of the game that may not last very long?" - "Friend codes? No communication in any way whatsoever online?!" - "We don't even consider Nintendo in the same industy as us. They make shit while we make real games."
And here is what the game industy thinks of the Wii today: - "Wow! Look how much fucking money Nintendo is making!" - "Let's release dumb-downed software so we can make money too." - "Let's release our own motion controller so we can make lots of money." - "Let's do whatever we can to get some of that money from Nintendo, even if it means sacrificing quality."
The current generation of video games isn't doing as well as it could be, and the next generation is likely to be worse. We will have all the major companies planning out there next consoles/strategies based on what they know today. Dumb-downed, underpowered, crappy, family friendly hardware/software is where the money is at.
tl;dr The average person is a moron so when the video game industry grows large enough to include many non-gamers, the video games will suffer because of it.
wow. we gamers sure have issues. Can you really say there aren't good hardcore games coming out this generation? Personally my "to beat" pile is getting larger and larger.
Just because some small companies release games that is not to your liking (and no it's not all crap. Just because a fisher price toy, is for babies, doesn't make it a crappy toy.) you can't say this generation is crap.
And I think the reason the Wii sales have declined, is the economic crisis. I mean come on, it's the same with Japan. When the casual demographic doesn't have a job, they are not going to waste money on a freaking game console.
But us "hardcore" gamers, seam to prefer to go without food as long as we have video games.
BoneSnapDeez wrote:The success of a console is determined by how much I enjoy it.
Inazuma wrote: The current generation of video games isn't doing as well as it could be, and the next generation is likely to be worse. We will have all the major companies planning out there next consoles/strategies based on what they know today. Dumb-downed, underpowered, crappy, family friendly hardware/software is where the money is at.
tl;dr The average person is a moron so when the video game industry grows large enough to include many non-gamers, the video games will suffer because of it.
You could have worried the same about the movie or music industries, While i accept that we may have to look harder the games will still be there even if we move away from the 18-30 demographic. When developers thought that's where the money was we were flooded with identikit FPS games, No one points to the lack of verity on the 360 though.
I also think "dumbed down" is unfair, the wii waggle is only an extension of the "best games use one button" ethos that Nintendo tried to push with the 'Cube again no one said anything I get the feeling it because 'Imagine: Baby' or whatever wasn't available on the GC...
The anti-Wii rhetoric is getting old. I own a PS3, a NTSC-U and a NTSC-J Xbox 360, as well as a Wii. Between them Wii is probably my least played system.
But this doesn't blind me of the fact that the Wii has managed to do something the other systems haven't, and that the Wii library continues to get stronger and stronger. Nintendo's first-party titles are stronger than they've been in a decade. Games like MadWorld, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and the upcoming Sin & Punishment 2 show that the Wii has a place for what I consider hardcore games (not dime-a-dozen FPS games). And because Nintendo has a focus on casual gaming, it seems to be ignored that some of those same casual games are completely valid. Hell, some of them are good. Boom Blox is in every way, on the surface, geared towards the casual (it's Steven Spielberg, for crying out loud), yet the game and its sequel have rich yet demanding gameplay suitable for both the casual and the "hardcore".
As already alluded to, venomous anti-Wii fans seem to forget what the majority of the 1900 PS2 titles were compromised of. Mary-Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16 - Licensed to Drive? Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue? Or wait! Barbie the Island Princess! PS2 was utterly inundated with shovelware aimed squarely at the casual but, what, because those same titles on Wii are selling more successfully Nintendo deserves the bulk of the blame? Does anyone blame Majesco for pushing games like Cooking Mama when it was the gamers who failed to see the brilliance in Psychonauts?
Is there even blame to give? These so-called "hardcore games" are still profitable. Capcom isn't going to suddenly forget that Resident Evil exists simply because their casual divisions are making easy money. The "hardcore" gamers haven't suddenly shifted to a casual demographic. They're still purchasing the "hardcore" games and individually they're buying more games than the casual gamers are. As long as publishers can make a profit they will continue to push high development cost games as ever before. We'll see more divisions for casual games as long as they continue to be successful, but if you can't manage to see the benefits of a stronger industry than don't complain simply because you have trouble pilfering through what you don't like to get to what you do. I've been doing it for the last twenty years.
