Sony and the PlayStation 3 were saved by the success of the Nintendo Wii, says marketing research group DFC Intelligence.
Speaking in its piece, 'is it time for the PlayStation 3 to shine?', the group claims that the success of Nintendo's console in this generation ultimately blocked Microsoft from snatching the top slot from Sony. So in a way, Nintendo did Sony a favour.
"While Sony's strategy was to crush Microsoft, and ignore what it considered to be an out-of-the-race Nintendo, consumers had other ideas," it says.
"The lowest priced system, the Nintendo Wii far outsold the others. In North America, the PlayStation 3 was soundly outsold by the Xbox 360. Even in Europe, a market normally dominated by Sony, the Xbox 360 slightly outsold the PlayStation 3. The past few years, Sony's very existence in the game business seemed to be in peril."
It continues: "The main danger Sony faced was that the Xbox 360 would become embedded as the system of choice. Instead consumers flocked to the Nintendo Wii.
"The Xbox 360 had solid sales, but they have not been enough to give Microsoft anywhere near a breakout market position. In many respects, Sony was saved by the success of the Wii."
It might not be my cup of tea but thank Jebus the Wii has done the numbers it has, after the Gamecube I seriously thought Nintendo would go the way of SEGA.
And im sure that this thread will be full of Sony Fans proclaiming their long lost brethren Ninty as their glorious saviours (or maybe not) .
i think sony and MS really have to thank the fact the wii is not so powerful under the hood and therefore some of the bigger devs didn't want to know initially that helped them retain a market.
If the wii had the same HD games that the 360 and PS3 had with motion control from the get go, they would of been well and truely f**ked.
this generation I see it all leveling out towards the end. Sony may have had a slow start but the console and its features were always going to help it stay in good competition with MS. I don't think the Wii snatched that many sales from MS to be honest, most households that wouldn't have thought about game consoles before bought Wiis; I don't think that they would have bought 360s instead.
within the more traditional gamers i think the market share was always going to be more or less split evenly between MS and Sony, at least it would in the long term. Nintendo were harder to predict but again would probably have sold as much as the others within the traditional gamers; they just probably would play on it less.
wow, i just realised that was a long ramble, sorry.
i think sony and MS really have to thank the fact the wii is not so powerful under the hood and therefore some of the bigger devs didn't want to know initially that helped them retain a market.
If the wii had the same HD games that the 360 and PS3 had with motion control from the get go, they would of been well and truely f**ked.
That's utter rubbish.
If the Wii adopted HD capabilities from the offset, then it would have been a lot more expensive and less people would have bought it.
i think sony and MS really have to thank the fact the wii is not so powerful under the hood and therefore some of the bigger devs didn't want to know initially that helped them retain a market.
If the wii had the same HD games that the 360 and PS3 had with motion control from the get go, they would of been well and truely f**ked.
That's utter rubbish.
If the Wii adopted HD capabilities from the offset, then it would have been a lot more expensive and less people would have bought it.
I wouldn't say utter rubbish, but the price of the wii compared to the other two definitely helped it get it's foot in the door. Although apart from the last few months, it has continued to do very well sales wise when it has actually been more expensive than the 360. and a lot closer to the PS3 than at launch.
I think a lot of the new customers who bought a wii would've paid north of £200 for it, yet wouldn't buy a PS3/360 if they were £150. It was all about the branding/advertising, a small compact unit that doesn't dominate your living room and the motion control.
i think sony and MS really have to thank the fact the wii is not so powerful under the hood and therefore some of the bigger devs didn't want to know initially that helped them retain a market.
If the wii had the same HD games that the 360 and PS3 had with motion control from the get go, they would of been well and truely f**ked.
That's utter rubbish.
If the Wii adopted HD capabilities from the offset, then it would have been a lot more expensive and less people would have bought it.
I wouldn't say utter rubbish, but the price of the wii compared to the other two definitely helped it get it's foot in the door. Although apart from the last few months, it has continued to do very well sales wise when it has actually been more expensive than the 360. and a lot closer to the PS3 than at launch.
I think a lot of the new customers who bought a wii would've paid north of £200 for it, yet wouldn't buy a PS3/360 if they were £150. It was all about the branding/advertising, a small compact unit that doesn't dominate your living room and the motion control.
And don't forget the crazy prices people were willing to pay when it was in short supply.
i think sony and MS really have to thank the fact the wii is not so powerful under the hood and therefore some of the bigger devs didn't want to know initially that helped them retain a market.
If the wii had the same HD games that the 360 and PS3 had with motion control from the get go, they would of been well and truely f**ked.
That's utter rubbish.
If the Wii adopted HD capabilities from the offset, then it would have been a lot more expensive and less people would have bought it.
I wouldn't say utter rubbish, but the price of the wii compared to the other two definitely helped it get it's foot in the door. Although apart from the last few months, it has continued to do very well sales wise when it has actually been more expensive than the 360. and a lot closer to the PS3 than at launch.
I think a lot of the new customers who bought a wii would've paid north of £200 for it, yet wouldn't buy a PS3/360 if they were £150. It was all about the branding/advertising, a small compact unit that doesn't dominate your living room and the motion control.
And don't forget the crazy prices people were willing to pay when it was in short supply.
Exactly, they were going for £200-300 on ebay at one point, so people would clearly have paid that much.
If you've got a strong brand, then people will buy into it no matter what. That's what Sony used to have, it's what Microsoft want, and it's what Nintendo have right now.
"The Xbox 360 had solid sales, but they have not been enough to give Microsoft anywhere near a breakout market position."
I wholeheartedly agree!
Halo 3 and Gears did a lot for the 360 and I genuinely think they might've won the race were it not for the dagger in teh heart that is the RROD.
I imagine that I was not the only person who bought a PS3 having been left with an out-of-warranty 360 which would cost more than £100 to fix...
If MS can get closer to the Sony this generation compared to the last one, then it will be a (small) victory for them.
There are/were 140 million PS2's out there and about 25 million xbox's, even if Sony beat MS by say around 15-20 million then they will have improved over last gen by quite some way (around 100 million consoles!).
Nintendo? There on another planet to everyone else and they will end up the overall 'winners' this gen, although I dont think they will get past 100 million, I dont think anyone will.
i think sony and MS really have to thank the fact the wii is not so powerful under the hood and therefore some of the bigger devs didn't want to know initially that helped them retain a market.
If the wii had the same HD games that the 360 and PS3 had with motion control from the get go, they would of been well and truely f**ked.
That's utter rubbish.
If the Wii adopted HD capabilities from the offset, then it would have been a lot more expensive and less people would have bought it.
I wouldn't say utter rubbish, but the price of the wii compared to the other two definitely helped it get it's foot in the door. Although apart from the last few months, it has continued to do very well sales wise when it has actually been more expensive than the 360. and a lot closer to the PS3 than at launch.
I think a lot of the new customers who bought a wii would've paid north of £200 for it, yet wouldn't buy a PS3/360 if they were £150. It was all about the branding/advertising, a small compact unit that doesn't dominate your living room and the motion control.
And don't forget the crazy prices people were willing to pay when it was in short supply.
Exactly, they were going for £200-300 on ebay at one point, so people would clearly have paid that much.
If you've got a strong brand, then people will buy into it no matter what. That's what Sony used to have, it's what Microsoft want, and it's what Nintendo have right now.
I also think that in the past, Nintendo would release a more powerful machine to it's competitors, but sell it for a cheaper price and rely on software sales to recoup any losses on the manufacturing of the console. The N64 had a Silicon Graphics chipset for instance. I remember nintendo meeting with SG and saying something along the lines of 'We want you to create a console from your thousands of dollars workstations and fit it in a £250 console'
well, personally if that is the case Sony have been lucky,as a lifelong nintendo fan since first 2d mario games,it was microsoft that tried to wipe nintendo of the face of the earth take casual and leave gamecube/ninty on that brink,but the games franchises the likes of Pokemon,sustained it,so i have always been more comfortable with Microsoft position as number 2 coz i think the 2 companies respect each other,and has been said before that they do.so micrsoft are going to agressively try and do nintendo in,so for that matter i would ratther x360 beats PS3 so their arrogance and towards gamers and comtempt towards nintendo will have to change,not sure what order int finishes but i would like it to stay as it is
i ment it wasn't microsoft that tried to wipe out nintendo it was sony,and i ment microsoft didn't try and aggressively wipe out nintendo,both refering to sony
i find it very ironic that a dude with his name as ps3 f***y boy would own a 360 and he gave a prime example of immaturity with ye olde ps3 fanboy excuse of "i had the rrod" grow up and yes ur name is correct you are a f***y
It wasn't Nintendo who saved Sony, it was Sony who nearly destroyed themselves. The price point at luanch was over £400, and remember the arrogant comments by Ken Kutaragi, about how you'd have to work harder to own a PS3? That alienated a lot of people, as well as the non existant exclusives. I'm a PS3 owner so don't slate me, but it's just a fact, Sony have ruined this generation for themselves. They're making up for it now, with the Slim and lower price point and killer exclusives, but the damage done at the beginning was huge.
I don't think this has legs, the competition is still between Sony and MS as they belong in the same target audience.
Ninty were very brutal with their vision. They saw a gap and went for it. I read somewhere it's called Wii purely to aim it at the casual multi player market, the ii instead of E was to illustrate 2 people, so from the start they had a strategy. And its working.
I cant see that the new Wii audience will upgrade to Sony or MS as the majority of this audience are casual party gamers. But I suppose if you strip away the history of Playstation, the name Playstation is quite attractive for this market, Xbox doesn't, that name was always aimed at teenage boys.
i find it very ironic that a dude with his name as ps3 f***y boy would own a 360 and he gave a prime example of immaturity with ye olde ps3 fanboy excuse of "i had the rrod" grow up and yes ur name is correct you are a f***y
The only one immature here is you. There's nothing fanboyish about his comment unlike yours which is full of fanboy crap. He had a 360, got RROD, so bought a different console. Is that really so hard to believe? Like he's the only one who ever did that.
Anyway, I think it's good that Sony was 'saved' by Nintendo. Thanks to Wii's success they had time to get the PS3 going thus keeping the competition. And we all know that competition helps things moving forward and is good for everyone.
They are making the asumption that had someone not bought a Wii, they would have bought a 360!
The thing is, I know countless people who own a Wii, not a traditional Xbox or PS2 owner, but had played one at a Friend or relatives house once and went out and bought one.
These kind of Families were never in the scope of a PS3 or 360 in the first place and unlikely to be in the future either.
I don't think this has legs, the competition is still between Sony and MS as they belong in the same target audience.
Ninty were very brutal with their vision. They saw a gap and went for it. I read somewhere it's called Wii purely to aim it at the casual multi player market, the ii instead of E was to illustrate 2 people, so from the start they had a strategy. And its working.
I cant see that the new Wii audience will upgrade to Sony or MS as the majority of this audience are casual party gamers. But I suppose if you strip away the history of Playstation, the name Playstation is quite attractive for this market, Xbox doesn't, that name was always aimed at teenage boys.
True, but if I understand it correctly, if Wii didn't have such huge success, then with PS3's slow start X360 could've become the main console for example in Japan and that'd be a total disaster for Sony as X360 and PS3 are targeting similar audience unlike the Wii, so if Japan went for X360 they wouldn't go back to PS3 because there wouldn't really be a need to change. But this way everyone rather bought 5 Wiis. At least that's what I get from the article.
trye. But the wii's insane popularity took a couple of months to kick in at least. I got mine day one and although they were all sold out, you could tell that the guys buying them were nintendo fans as 99% of the guys that walked out the shop left cradling a copy of twighlight princess.
Most people i know who have gotten a wii did so after having a go on one and having a bloody good time with it. and thats what gaming should be about regardless of your tastes.
At the end of the day Sony have always been about helping themselves out as any business are, but to me theyre like the show offs of the market and they got a kicking for doing that. They may have sold units but they made considerable losses for quite some time. Microsoft have held their footing by keeping quiet and as for Nintendo, I would have never imagined the Wii would do quite so well as the Gamecube undersold what it should had. But in all fairness Nintendo have always been about the games, making them more fun and not just about fancy hardware and in theory are the only company who have actually brought something fresh to this generation of consoles. When they release their new console I will be first in line.
this is a bunch of bull mainly because 95% (if not more) of people who own a wii arent gamers who would even consider 360 or ps3. if any1 wanted either a 360 or ps3 then a wii would never stop them getting it.
I agree that the generation will be pretty level by the end. Sony really did have a slow start but as a long term strategy it is working for them. I think that having the price so high early on may also have helped them, it made the PS3 sort of 'aspirational' for a lot of people and generated buzz for it. Most people will want the most expensive product, and the PS3 has remained so for a long time, I think that people were waiting (and some may still be waiting) for the price to drop.
Oxford dictionary defines the Wii as "A brightly coloured box that makes 'fun' noises and creates the illusion tha the owner is a gamer.Often favoured by old people and very young children.The Wii gives old people the nice feeling of having company while young kids enjoy its brightly coloured games and lack of a chalenge.Often the Wii is used by overweight people to give the impression that they're doing excercise." How does this outsell the Playstation and Xbox. Well at least we can have faith that in a few years the Wii will be thrown into the back of the closet as their owners fawn over the newest shiniest object.
So this guy is claiming that the reason Sony are still in the race is purely because more people wanted a Wii than a 360? I can't believe that.
I think it's way more likely that the hype surrounding the PS3's previously unknown CPU made existing fans of the PS brand put up with the wait for their preferred console. I also expect the RROD issue got them some sales.
I can't imagine someone who had played God of War 2, Silent Hill and Gran Turismo 4 suddenly deciding they didn't want improved graphics or deep gameplay and going for the games that launched with the Wii (and yes I know that's improved now), no matter the hype.
I still want to see what Nintendo has planned for the next generation. How do you sell an upgrade to people who weren't interested in games before, are satisfied with the version they have and won't understand the numbers that'll come with the upgrade?
I just want to say that there is probably some truth in what the analyst says, and that not all Wii owners are casual gamers. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I have always been a gamer, and I got a Wii because I was utterly bored with games by the end of the last generation. I wanted to get back to the fun I used to have in the old days, which was missing in a world of fancy graphics. Sure, nicer graphics would be nice sometimes, but the fun is what counts. Some gamers like games as games, because they are fun. Hence arguments that Wii only sold to grannies and families who would not consider getting a PS3 or 360, aren't all that accurate. Perhaps a number of Wii owners are those who, like me, miss the fun of old, motion control or not irrelevant.
i find it very ironic that a dude with his name as ps3 f***y boy would own a 360 and he gave a prime example of immaturity with ye olde ps3 fanboy excuse of "i had the rrod" grow up and yes ur name is correct you are a f***y
Oh my, however did I miss this choice tantrum!
You know, I can’t help but picture you as the console equivalent of the famed Dorian Grey – the more the beautiful PS3 blossoms the more redfaced and rancorous you become by comparison...
Truth is, I felt special owning a PS3 when it came out. It was like I was the high elite with the most expensive and rarely owned console. I mean, I own all three consoles. And do i care about sales? Not really, as Long as games are on all of them that are good, I;m happy. But the truth is, the wii's game libary is getting worse and worse.
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At least that's what I get from the article.
