Believe this, Nintendo and their Wii console takes another month as top seller. The only product that moves more hardware than the Wii is the DS. As a gamer, it’s hard to understand how the Wii product continues to sell like this with the least supported game library on the planet.
The DS is completely understandable as it has a huge library of games, is more cost effective, comes in pretty colors and can save you tons of arguments and fighting from your kids on a long trip. In many ways the DS is synonymous with peace and quiet. What does the Wii offer us? Wii Sports and a new control scheme along with a few hit titles from Nintendo but little else for now.
I’ll be the first to admit, I thought this would be Nintendo’s chance to turn it all around and get the third parties involved. They have everything going for them in terms of sales, third party developers should be pushing out games each month considering the craze factor of the hardware. This just isn’t true.
More than likely, in this generation, the Wii isn’t really just considered a “kids console” but a console for non-gamers. The difference is obvious in their sales numbers, there are a lot of non-gamers so the console sales are through the roof! However, non-gamers don’t really spend a lot of money on games (after all, they’re non-gamers). It’s a catch-22, Nintendo finally drives huge volume in console units but still cannot manage to get third parties cranking because their sales attach rate (number of games sold per console) is way too low. At least they’re making money!
Nintendo will be the first (and only) to admit their game sales figures are through the roof, much like the console itself, but they’re not breaking out third party numbers. They can easily push the statistics up when considering Wii Play and Mario Galaxy as part of their “sales numbers” when talking about overall attach rate.
Also in the news, PlayStation 3 takes a huge drop off in sales, still beating the Xbox 360 however. They’re heading back to their normal sales figures now that Metal Gear Solid 4‘s frenzy is dying down.
Now, the figures (thanks 1up):
- Nintendo DS: 608,000
- Wii: 555,000
- Playstation 3: 225,000
- PSP: 222,000
- Xbox 360: 205,000
- Playstation 2: 155,000
So there you have it! Wii smokes the competition, PS3 starts to normalize down to where the 360 is at, and the PS2 is still a statistic even though it’s older than many Wii gamers are.
Miyamoto said Nintendo used E3 as a platform for spreading the word to a broad audience based on the media present at the event, they’re not speaking to the core audience. So, if you’re a core audience gamer and you were confused on why Nintendo didn’t build their presentation to be all glitz and glamor, it’s because they weren’t talking to you.
Sony’s done it, they’ve announced a wireless keyboard adapter to plug onto the stock PlayStation 3 controller. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of this, Microsoft pushed out a keyboard for their Xbox 360 controller last year to provide faster chat abilities and, overall, smooth the interface when needing to type.
The most important feature we’ve found with the new console software is the addition of Netflix. The ability to play software in the “Instant Queue” is excellent, fast and done with high quality. If you have children this may be one of the must-have product features; add a ton of family movies to the Netflix Instant Queue and your children will have hours of entertainment.