The Shrine

The main reason being a decline in Wii and DS sales, they expected initially to maintain their insane 2008 numbers. This is fairly disappointing, but not exactly the whole doom prophecy that Sony people predicted earlier in the year =P


Reuters

On the otherhand, when this sort of stuff happens, we get things like price drops (Wii moved to $199 recently) and new models. The new DSi will retain its chipset and get a screen increase from 3.2 to 4.2 inches for both screens. This will effectively make it the screen size of the PSP. The price is 20K yen, which means $199 over here.

Wiis are cheap. People who want them have them - a lot of them, anyway. Nintendo's gonna have to do more than coast on brand loyalty to stay on "top" or Microsoft is gonna build steam and challenge them.

They ought to make an XBox Portable and open it to the indie community. That would be fun times.

Replay wrote:Wiis are cheap. People who want them have them - a lot of them, anyway. Nintendo's gonna have to do more than coast on brand loyalty to stay on "top" or Microsoft is gonna build steam and challenge them.

It depends, Microsoft's only huge seller is Halo; and only in quarters where a Halo is released to they turn a profit. I think Microsoft has the PC gamer market firmly in their hands, it makes sense that people who buy "man with gun" type games on Microsoft's Windows platform will prefer Microsoft's console which also has those types of games in abundance.

Still, it is a smaller segment of the market.

A few more stats on DS and Wii as of the end of September according to Nintendo's media address on their corporate website:

Million sellers:
DS has 42 first party, and 60 third party titles for a total of 102.
Wii has 21 first party titles and 42 third party titles for a total of 63.

Overall total of 63 first party titles, and 102 third party titles hitting oveer a million so far this gen (wow, what a coincidence on the numbers =P) for a grand total of 165 titles which have sold in excess of 1 million.

This marks a huge improvement over SNES, Gamecube, and N64 in console, and the entire Gameboy line in handheld.

Total hardware sales are 56 million for Wii, and

Here are the sales trajectories for Wii Fit vs Wii Sports Resort. Keep in mind that while Sports Resort appears to bee winning, Wii Fit's price based on sold units averages at around 122 $USD.



Nintendo also noted in the press release that Wii Fit Plus has been selling fairly well to past users: 80% of sales in Japan are without the board, and 60% in the US are without the board.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box is selling faster in Europe and North America than the first game. Again, it looks like Europe will be the main market for this title.



Nintendo (a good read if you have time since it is very lengthy, I just pulled out some tidbits that might be interesting).

There's just not a lot of advertisements for Professor.

Ph, the whole DS itself is bigger, not just the screen. I guess it would have to be, duh.

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plug ... ds/1368589

I think supersizing the DS is actually a good thing. I know a lot of people who won't play it 'cause it's too small. Feel-wise, it should be basically like a 360 controller with a screen. The PSP does a better job of feeling more comfy and I think Nintendo's recognized that.

It'll be interesting to see how well it does. Due to the extra size, they also fit a larger battery in which allows the DSi XL which allows for 5 extra hours of battery life. As Zeus said, it widens the range of potential purchasers for the DS line.

I like the DS Lite due to the fact that it's easy to just carry it around in your pocket, you can't really do that with the DSi XL. Though there are people who carry bags and such around, that will prefer a larger system, PSP has a screen as large as the DSi XL for example, and there has been a market for it.

Zeus wrote:I think supersizing the DS is actually a good thing. I know a lot of people who won't play it 'cause it's too small. Feel-wise, it should be basically like a 360 controller with a screen. The PSP does a better job of feeling more comfy and I think Nintendo's recognized that.

Funny, Nintendo used to sell millions of these:

SineSwiper wrote:

Zeus wrote:I think supersizing the DS is actually a good thing. I know a lot of people who won't play it 'cause it's too small. Feel-wise, it should be basically like a 360 controller with a screen. The PSP does a better job of feeling more comfy and I think Nintendo's recognized that.

Funny, Nintendo used to sell millions of these:

Yes, and they've sold many more DSs than GBAs. No one ever said there wasn't a market for the regular DS Lite - that and the DSi will still be sold as is - just saying that a larger screen would simply increase the appeal of it to a market that is close to purchasing one but just won't for some reason.

Nintendo is getting to the point in Japan where they for the most part have market saturation with the DS. They've sold what, 26 million units there to a population of 180 million? 1 in 6 living human beings own one, that's before you even adjust for people who can't buy it (ie. under age of 2 or 3) or the sharing of a single unit in a household (not every gamer owns their own, siblings may share as crazy as that sounds). Nintendo can see the end of the line on that train and are trying to see if they can expand the market through a slight variation. It's a smart move that even Sony is attempting with the PSPGo, albiet with far more ulterior motives (ie. the elimnation of a retail/resell market and 100% distribution control)