Nintendo shouldn't rush to release the Wii 2
According to analyst Colin Sebastian at Lazard Capital Markets, the next generation of video game consoles could start around 2012. But in an attempt to jump-start the next-gen and add some functionality that it's already lacking, Sebastian believes a Wii follow-up could be first to the market.
"One possible exception to console timing may be Nintendo, which could opt to upgrade the Wii with faster processing power, DVD capability and/or greater storage," Sebastian said.
Granted, that upgrade sounds more like a Wii 1.5 than a Wii 2.0, but it still highlights an important point: should Nintendo be the first to enter the next-gen fray or the last? Ostensibly, this analyst thinks it should be first.
I think it should be last.
In the video game business, it doesn't necessarily pay to be first. Some think that getting in early means capturing customers that are ready to move on to the next-generation and also allows the first company out of the gate to capture market share and customer wallets before any other organization.
But being first is not always so great. Microsoft was first to this generation because it had to be. The company was woefully behind Sony during the last generation and it figured that if it could solidify its brand before any other company, it would be able to gain more market share and compete more effectively.
Generally speaking, that's the mantra the trailing companies promote. "Well, we're really far behind this generation, so why don't we hurry up and get to the next one and try our luck there."
But Nintendo doesn't have that predicament. The Wii is the winner of this generation and easily eclipses its competition in hardware sales each month. Why should it want to move to the next generation first just to add DVD capability? That's not hurting the company now and the last thing it needs is to look like it's abandoning the first console the company has experienced such success with in years.
And why would Nintendo want to tip its hand so soon and let its competitors see what it has in store for the Wii 2? As the leader, it should be more than willing to wait and see what its competitors are offering before it jumps into the fray.
So what will we see in the Wii 2? There's no telling. But rest assured that it will undoubtedly feature Nintendo's motion-control and probably include DVD (not Blu-ray) compatibility. Nintendo is inexorably tied to its motion capabilities and its desire to make its console affordable to the mass-market--something Blu-ray capability may not necessarily provide. Worse, it doesn't want to pay off its competitor to do it.
All this is not to say that Nintendo won't update its product line over the next few years--it likes to do that quite often to extend the life of its hardware--but to say that a Wii 2 should be the first console release in the next generation simply doesn't make sense from a business or technological standpoint.
With such a huge lead over its competitors, the onus in the next generation isn't on Nintendo, it's on Microsoft and Sony. Realizing that, one of those companies needs to get to the market sooner and try to fend off Nintendo. Not the other way around.
Check out Don's Digital Home podcast, Twitter feed, and FriendFeed.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
So peevish...
Did your mom denied to buy you a new console? Or you are simply grounded for two weeks?
Do not worry, you would grow up eventually.
This is the problem of gaming market. Thanks to Internet, it's flooded with vocal kids who have no money and depend on parents to buy them consoles and games; depend on game reviews because they can't try console games before. Consequently, whatever parents bought them becomes "cool." Because kids treat whatever they own "cool" and "better" than that of the rest. Problem is that the kids have essentially no freedom of choice and have whatever they end-up having.
Personally to me, all consoles are deficient. Console games tend to look more and more like dramatic TV show with poor directing and your role in the show is to mash buttons. Thinking isn't involved - game developers prescribed scenario and force you to follow it to the point.
PC gaming thankfully still has number of outstanding RTS, RPG and FPS games which simply are impossible to have on consoles. Because consoles have very limited controls (mostly suited for button meshing) and usual audience consists of ~12yo kids.
In that respect Wii was first (and remains only) adult game console with WiiSport pioneering whole new genre of games. No wonder kids despise it - it's too adult for them to grok.
This makes me think about how many other posters are actually kids. It just happened that you slipped and revealed this fact.
Frankly, the last console to really advance gaming was the original PlayStation. Ever since then games have just been a case of "more of the same".
The Wii is next generation like Saddam is Mother Theresa.
Heck, I have seen plenty of orginal XBOX games that have better graphocs, batter game play, and are more bleeding edge than the Wii's shovelware games taht usually end in "CATZ" or "DOGZ" or something equally ridiculous. Sure the Wii has the "waggle", but then that has been around on PC games for years. Both Motus and Gyration have had motion control devices for years, long before the Wii..
As a matter of fact, Nintendo had to license the technology of the "Wiimote" from Gyration.
Oh and i've lost 10 lbs since gettign wii fit
Bitter, are we? Seriously, the cheapy XBOX 360 Arcade has been at or near the Wii Price for a long time, and parents/gamers didn't jump on that. Price isn't what draws people. Gaming is what is drawing people. Wii is exciting, and new. Nothing quite like being able to interact with your games. Why does next-gen need to be framed as having better processing power?
You can continue to mock the wii, or you can recognize it as a game changer (literally and figuratively). Sony and Microsoft going motion... XBOX 360 Mii like avatars... crazy when a "gimmick" becomes a way of life.
1900's gimmicks - Cars, lightbulbs, toilets, bathtubs, running water, canned food, TOILET PAPER.
Hope you have taken those gimmicks seriously...
I preordered the Wii at the Nintendo World Store, waiting many hours on line to get it at launch, and played a few great games that came out, and I'm still waiting for a few games we were promised months before its release (Project H.A.M.M.E.R. springs to mind...), but 6 months after I got the Wii, I bought a 360 and have played all kinds of fun, enjoyable games as well as my more hardcore games.
That's what the Wii needs, in my opinion, an upgrade to graphics, a better online offering, and something to win back the hardcore gamers. Of course, they're winning this generation without them, but a boy can dream.
How anyone in his right mind, can even compare the Wii to the lightbuld is beyond me. That's simply nuts.
Before you go any further overboard, I might remind you that the biggest gaming paltfor BY FAR on the planet is the Windows PC. Over 70 million Windows PC's are sold every single quarter on the planet. That makes the Wii's total sales of just 30 million in 2 years, look like a joke.
There are over 1 Billion Wiondow PC's in active use by consumers out there, and close to all of them are used to play one kind of video game or another at some time. By far mosrt people play more games on Windows PC's than on any other platform. Window RULES casual games as well.. If you want to talk about game changer, its the Windows PC, not the Wii.
1. Existing technology. Can start production immediately.
2. A lot of storage for games 15G single layer or 30G double layer
3. Nobody except Toshiba has it and I don't think they want it anymore - so it's cheap
4. Upgrade of DVD factory to produce HDDVD is cheaper than Blu-ray
5. Better control of piracy - Control of HDDVD tecnology and blank discs
2) Again - it's an economy of scale issue. You can certainly put a lot of data on 1 disc but producing HD DVDs in 2012 is going to cost more than Blu-Rays (perfect example is trying to get OEM parts for your 5 year old Honda, WAY more expensive than an in production model) and more storage is only useful if you have the hardware to be able to handle it
3) Nobody wants it because the HD format war is over - why doesn't the Wii try BetaMax? That's gotta be crazy cheap!
4) Every factory worth it's salt will already BluRay manufacturing so using existing production capability vs paying to change something it's financially viable
5) Blu-ray won partly because of it's superior ability to control piracy (as the CEO of Lionsgate pointed out) so I don't really get that argument.
Burry it so that you DENY it from consumers and pirates have no HDDVD users to push their wares on.
Wii 2 would be going DVD or BluRay. I don't see them going BluRay unless they adopt the high-end and performance strategies of their competitors.
- A super compact system that didn't use a spinning disk at all - use a CF system that would keep 1 GB free just to store your game on, and the rest would be read-only memory for the actual game.
- A system would literally mount on the side of your TV (because it was so small and so lightweight), that it would change the way we think about gaming systems, as the entire front face would be the motion sensor.
-And just for kicks, add another 240 GB of SSD memory to store downloaded games and videos.
-For backward compatibilty, an external, plug-in disk unit (that could play DVDs as well) could be purchased (say around $125), or your old system could be plugged via ethernet.
That would be my design for the Wii2, and I would wait until prices for flash memory made it so cheap to essentially keep the same price point for the current Wii. That would kill MS and Sony. Am I asking too much?
The plug in capability could be achieved if the cable-card standard ever reaches the market, but Nintendo does not go after the smaller high-end segment of the market and tries to reach mass market at the lowest common denominator. That would seem to preclude them from making a cable-card style console.
I've noticed a rather interesting culture among Wii fans that professing processing power doesn't equal and so forth, a strange mantra for a technology driven culture. While the actual capacity to render polygons doesn't equate directly to increased perceivable fun, it does give developers more leeway to explore the technology. The Wii honestly is vastly under powered as the console's controls would lend itself to games based off advanced Physics engines but sadly these sort of advanced modeling can't be explored, nor is the controller capable of some of the level of detection that developers would like with 1:1 movement. Notable the Wii Controller itself is receiving an upgrade, adding the functionality it should have had. Nintendo gets credit, where credit is due. They tried something different.
Now that its been established, it'll mature. I agree with CNET, Nintendo should ride the wave of the Wii long as possible.
Someone didn't read the wiibrew page properly. The disc reader in the current Wii model is not suited to playing DVDs. Yes it CAN do it, but there's a difference between CAN and SHOULD. The thing with the reader in the Wii is that it's not designed for continuously reading discs in a straight line. If you watch any DVDs or play CDs on it, it reads continuously from the disc and slowly damages the laser and the reader, eventually requiring a replacement and don't think that your warranty can help you with this.
As Nintendo have said on multiple occasions, there is little need for a DVD player in the Wii since most households have at least 1 these days (hell I have 2 DVD players that aren't even in use in addition to the ones I use regularly!). However, since everyone wants it, Nintendo may want to try and deliver this time (and finally start giving money to the DVD forum).
A bigger internal memory is seriously required this time, especially due to all these WiiWare titles coming out (I had to delete half of my VC titles to download the first Strong Bad episode).
Allowing people to download and run VC/WiiWare titles off their SD card would be nice instead of having to transfer them over/re-download them each time you want to play them.
Or, instead of making a new version of the Wii (which there's little point in doing), make a new console with all the usual (graphics, cpu, memory, HD space, etc) improvements but be sure to include backwards compatibility with the Wii because of the popularity (don't do a Microsoft or a Sony and fail at backwards compatibility).
Think about it, Flash memory is CHEAP now. You could integrate whatever you needed for a Wii level game system into something the size of a thumb drive. Make a proprietary cartridge port and design it to fit them flush, so it looks cool (no flash cartriges sticking out at odd angles). Maybe a glowing blue power/eject button? One button to control everything. Push briefly, reset, push twice quickly, eject game, push and hold, power off. So a long, thin system with the IR reciever built in and one button, using flash cartridges that sit flush and are ejected with the button. It would look cool and work well. You could even be really cool and have a wireless TV connector and a pwer connector that hiches inline with your TV plug, so you would have a system that looks completely wireless. It would be so small, you could just set it on top of your TV.
I submit that there's no more or less reason for them to put a DVD in the next Wii than there was for them to put one in the first Wii (or Gamecube for that matter).
The Arcade was sold at $300 for a good 22 months, to the Wii's $250. Even after the price cut last year, the Aracde still sold at $280 to the Wii's $250. At no time has the 360 Aracde ever been sold at the same price as the Wii.
Not to mention, the 360 Pro is by far the top selling version of the 360, and that sold for $400 for the first 22 months, still a $100 higher than the original XBOX sold at launch, and a good $150 higher than the Wii.
For the most part, the Wii is being bought by geriatric old women in retirement homes for Wii Play and Wii Sports, and to some extent by soccer moms, who dont lnow any better, for their little kiddies. These people don't even buy NCAA rMadden football. You only have to look at July's NPD numbers where the 360 version of NCAA 09 was at # 1, and the Wii version didn't even make the top 10. I hear thw Wii version of NCAA 09 old less than 50,000 units. Pathetic.
And yes, NCAA 09 on the Wii sucks but that's not because of the Wii, that's because EA tried to make it a kids game rather than make it the NCAA version of the Madden that they do with everything else. Madden on Wii is actually quite enjoyable...
Ummm..the very same thing happened with Madden 08 last year.
While the 360 version of Madden 08 was the # 1 selling game in NPD August 2008, the Wii version didn't even make the top 10 at all. In fact, even the original XBOX version of Madden 08 sold more than the Wii version did in August 08.
The retirement home geriatric old women who buy the Wii simply don't have any desire to play Madden football, which is a game that suits the 360 demographic of young men in their primes, just fine.
, bathtubs, running water, canned food, TOILET PAPER"
How anyone in his right mind, can even compare the Wii to the lightbuld is beyond me. That's simply nuts.
Before you go any further overboard, I might remind you that the biggest gaming paltfor BY FAR on the planet is the Windows PC. Over 70 million Windows PC's are sold every single quarter on the planet. That makes the Wii's total sales of just 30 million in 2 years, look like a joke.
There are over 1 Billion Wiondow PC's in active use by consumers out there, and close to all of them are used to play one kind of video game or another at some time. By far mosrt people play more games on Windows PC's than on any other platform. Window RULES casual games as well.. If you want to talk about game changer, its the Windows PC, not the Wii.
pogerpetey was not comparing the Wii to a lightbulb. He was stating that the lightbulb was also a fad during the 19th century, but look at how ubiquitous it is now.
- by Dragon_Myr August 27, 2008 6:40 AM PDT
- Nintendo's next system should do exactly what the Wii did: focus on entertainment and simplicity. One of the big faults with this generation of consoles is all the different models, hardware changes, and higher prices of both consoles and games. Nintendo got it right by not joining the 360 and PS3 at the higher prices, having a single unit instead of a bunch of models, and crafting games that are fun to play with a bunch of people therefore infecting more people with the Wii-disease. The Wii doesn't have as many good games as it should, but it sure is fun.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (68 Comments)Nintendo should ride the Wii out and see where it takes them. It's perfectly positioned to take advantage of accessories and now 'core' games in which Nintendo says may show up next year. Sony and Microsoft should also be riding out their systems because I don't think people will be ready to replace them as soon as they have in previous generations due to costs and the arrival of good downloadable content. I would hate to see Nintendo add blu-ray since that's separated PS3 from the rest of this generation, particularly in cost. I'm perfectly happy with DVD's and downloads. I'm wondering why we even should want blu-ray to begin with when downloadable HD movies are becoming available. I know the specs, but those aren't important because I want to play games with consoles. Maybe I'll watch a movie, but that's not a selling feature of a console to me, especially when the movie is 8 to 10 times more expensive than going to the movie theatre.