Competitors fib about Nintendo - Fils-Aime News
Wii DS News by Tom Bramwell
Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has said that competing companies are guilty of misleading people about third-party success on Wii and DS.
Picking up where Nintendo president Satoru Iwata left off in his GDC keynote address, Fils-Aime reeled off a bunch of statistics for VentureBeat.
He reiterated that Wii sales were at 50 million in record time, while DS sales had surpassed 100 million. He added that the DS installed base in the US had reached its current level faster than the PlayStation 2, the previous record-setter.
"Fact: In the US, third-party publishers sold more Wii games than any other home console. In fact, third-party publishers sold more DS games than on any other console," he said.
"What Mr. Iwata was trying to do was to share facts to dispel what some of our competitors like to frame as an inability for others to succeed on Nintendo platforms. The fact is that is just not true."
Interviewer Dean Takahashi then pointed out that sales of third party games may be strong, but the titles in the US top ten month after month were largely the same - a situation we can see reflected in the UK with games like Mario & Sonic and Carnival: Funfair Games.
"I wouldn't quite frame it the same way," Fils-Aime responded. "What I want to see is long-term successful franchises as well as new content coming from third-party publishers. I want them to succeed on our platforms. That's different from saying we want to see different titles in the top ten."
Elsewhere in the interview, Fils-Aime also distanced WiiWare and DSiWare from Apple's iPhone App Store. "We believe this community of 18,000 developers can create much more compelling content than something home-brewed," he said.
Nintendo DSi launches in the UK on Friday, 3rd April, for GBP 149.
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Comments: 1-15 of 15 in total
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Problem for third parties is that this machine is a dust collector and not a games console, and the buyers rarely purchase third party titles.
While the Playstation brand brought grown-up gaming to the mainstream a decade ago, software like Wii Music, Wii Play and Wii Sports has simply reinforced the notion with many that videogames are a toy. Good for a giggle once in a while but not to be taken seriously unless you're under 12. |
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Wastelander
01/04/09 @ 07:48
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Yeah, those lying bastards! Especially that Reggie Fils-Aime that has said Wii games don't even start making money for their publishers until a million copies have been shifted.
...wait a minute |
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Rev. Stuart Campbell
01/04/09 @ 07:59
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"Problem for third parties is that this machine is a dust collector and not a games console, and the buyers rarely purchase third party titles."
Got a source for that? Or is is just, in fact, totally made-up bollocks? |
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Yesterday's article stated that out of the 485 published games only 16 sold over a million. That's a terrible ratio for platform that shifted more hardware than the competition put together. There are probably more cross platform releases hit million copies for PS3/X360.
Wii might be on it's way to break PS2's install base record, but it already broke the shovelware record. |
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kangarootoo
01/04/09 @ 08:20
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@Gaol
I hate to pop a bubble here, but video games ARE toys. You seem to assume that toys are just for kids - I would disagree. I would also say that the Wii is probably the platform "taken seriously" by the mainstream more than any other. The population at large likely dismiss the 360 and PS3 more readily than they do the Wii. |
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Ignatius_Cheese
01/04/09 @ 08:22
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Hehe, nice dig at the App Store, Reggie!
Apps = Homebrew...!? o_O |
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@Wastelander -"Yeah, those lying bastards! Especially that Reggie Fils-Aime that has said Wii games don't even start making money for their publishers until a million copies have been shifted"
He says he was misquoted- "The fact is, there's no single magic number that defines profitability for a game," Fils-Aime said. "It's all based on the level of investment, based on the price point, and so it's unfortunate that I was misquoted in that article." http://blog.wired.com/games/2009/03/nint... |
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Yesterday's article stated that out of the 485 published games only 16 sold over a million. That's a terrible ratio for platform that shifted more hardware than the competition put together. There are probably more cross platform releases hit million copies for PS3/X360.
Those numbers were of course complete bollocks, the writer didn't seem to have a clue. A quick peek at Vgchartz tells us that the 360 seems to have slightly more (61) million sellers than the Wii (47), which is only natural, the 360 having been around longer. And the PS3 has considerably less million sellers (29), which again is no big surprise. There are 603 published 360 games on the Wikipedia page, so that would give us pretty much the same ratio of published games/million sellers. With its 443 games the PS3 seems to be the worst proposition for a game publisher, especially considering the apparently higher development costs. |
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CountFapula
01/04/09 @ 14:55
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And if you think vgchartz is a credible source of information, I have a solar powered torch to sell you.
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Well, I wouldn't look to them for exact numbers or anything like that, but I would assume the numbers are mostly in the correct ballpark, at least when compared to other numbers on the smae site. And like I said in that other thread, the 7 non-Nintendo million sellers can't be right (it must have been a US domestic sales figure or something) since there are way more confirmed million sellers for the Wii out there.
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CountFapula
02/04/09 @ 05:42
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You do know they pretty much just guess right?
VGchartz are notorious for that. |
Comments: 1-15 of 15 in total
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