Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Wii would like to kick Sony's ass

Well, excuse me if I can't wipe this smile off of my face today, but it seems that SONY will finally be lowering prices on its PS3.

Why? Well, in a word... NINTENDO. While SONY was standing on the shoulders of giants, namely the Playstation and Playstation 2, Nintendo went back to the drawing board, designed a new slingshot, and fired its killing blow.

They decided that they would focus on non-gamers, and young children. Two demographics that don't focus on graphics and processing horsepower. It seems now, however, they are pulling in everyone in between.

Now it is no surprise that I loath SONY. But it hasn't always been that way. Back when they were *just* and electronics company, SONY was focused on making the best products possible, with features that their consumers wanted and demanded. And they thrived.

Unfortunately SONY's turn to the Dark Side™, once they got into the music and movie business. Talk about selling your soul to two devils! You see, unfortunately, the features desired most by consumers are not in the best interests of the music and movie industry. Portability of the content is what we want, Digital Rights Management (rights of the movie companies, not yours) are what we get. Blu-ray is SONY's master plan incarnate, or "inplastic" as the case would be. I'm surprised Blu-ray disk players don't count how many people are in the room, and start shooting people if there are too many.

Anyhow, back to Nintendo. The following are my reasons why the Nintendo Wii has made the PS3 its bitch, ordered from most important to least.

  1. Wireless, motion sensing controllers

    By now you know that the Wii's controllers can detect where you're pointing it and where you move it, and how fast you move it. The curiosity on how this functions is enough to drive sales.

    People, this is not simply "thinking outside the box", this is thinking outside of Euclidean geometry.

    Now normally, I am against wireless remotes because I hate dealing with batteries in things that don't need them. Normal controllers don't need batteries because you're not usually going to play them more than 10 feet away from the console. In this situation, wireless it the only way to go, otherwise you'd be yanking the console onto the floor every 5 seconds.

  2. Low price

    The PS3 costs $600 US, the Xbox 360 is $400 US, the Wii is $250 US. Which one are parents going to buy for young children? Which one will entice non-gamers to try something new?

    It seems that SONY is now realizing that "This generation has shown that consumers are far more price sensitive than previously thought". Noooooo... I was so looking forward to selling my car to buy one of these. Maybe if I stop eating meat I can afford a game.

    Now SONY is contemplating a $100 price cut.

  3. Real-life, yet comical, mayhem and destruction

    SONY has to deal with "My kid beat up a hooker after playing Grand Theft Auto". Nintendo has to deal with "I smashed a window on that home run when the controller slipped out of my hand". You can't even read that without smirking. There's a whole website dedicated to Wii Controller Mishaps. You can actually buy a shield to protect your TV now.

  4. Only one version, at one price, for everyone

    There is only one Wii. Not the expensive Wii with all the features, and the cheap Wii, with minimal features. This isn't Goldilocks and the three bears here. No one wants to be burdened with the stigma of having to own the crappy version. The Wii was designed for inclusiveness and team play, not dividing people between rich/poor boundary lines.

    I think SONY just launched the 20 GiB PS3 just to convince themselves that everyone WANTS to give them all their money and justify the expensive price. They conveniently leave out the fact that the 20 GiB PS3 has almost none of the features of the expensive one.

  5. Never take a hit on anything

    It is well known that Nintendo does not have other divisions to allow it to lose money on its hardware. Despite the $600 price tag, SONY loses money on each PS3 that it sells. The Wii was designed to profit from every sale, despite its low price, from the beginning. You gotta respect that.


Just to end on a high note, here's a video with a song ridiculing the PS3. I like it, despite the fact that it seems to be pro-XBox. The music is really great.



So, until next time, buy a Wii, and keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

great post! but a $100.00 price drop won't be enough to bring sales up. There's so much more crap to purchase than a damn PS3!

SONY is JUST A FRIGGIN NAME and that's all you're paying for nowadays..the honour of have 'SONY' displayed in your family room!

F-YOU SONY 110%!!!

EC said...

You list 4 items explaining the reasons for the Wii's surge, but only one is necessary: PRICE! $700 (PS3) to $300 (Wii), (for a full system) is HUGE.

I DON'T have to respect Nintendo for making each Wii unit profitable. They have a license to print money because the best selling video game system of all time, and CURRENT champion as well, is their Game Boy system. Nintendo does one thing well, and that is make games for hyper kids. They know that and run with it. After their disasters with N64, they learned to do what they know, not hope for a port of GTA to thier system.

The PS3 is NOT a game machine! It is meant to be the hub of a digital lifestyle, and that is over-reaching and cost SONY dearly. MICROSOFT got the shit-kicking they deserved when trying to make XBOX the all-in-one solution, repeated the mistake with XBOX 360, and have yet to realize you need more than HALO to make someone like me a believer in your product. (ALTHOUGH, HALO is fucking great.)

Point is, don't get crazy over SONY trying to get their grubby fingers in your pie. All the companies do it, and when they reach too far they have those fingers broken by a new competitor that gives me what I want - the power to do my own stuff with my own stuff.

(FUCK the ZUNE.)

Number one game system of all time, in terms of wow-factor, ease of use, price, and of course, software, is the PS2. They are STILL making games for it, and doing high celiber releases like GOD OF WAR 2, because you can't turn your back on an installed user base of MILLIONS, with hardware that still pumps out good work and the "next-gen" machines that STILL look like video games! If I'm going to upgrade, I want to be playing fully rendered sprites that look like fucking FILM!! Why should I spend cash for an XBOX so I can play an online version of PRINCE OF PERSIA from 1989 for an extra $11?

(As an aside, all of SONY's stuff is made by SAMSUNG, so it is still top notch and there is a premium to pay for quality.)

Soundwave said...

Yes, Mr. Sal, you are totally correct. $100 means nothing when the system is still over $400.

The worst part for them is, that the only real way to drop the price into the realm of affordability is to de-power the system which they won't do since it will be taking a major step backwards, a sure sign of weakness.

Soundwave said...

G,

The price is the core of the success of the Wii, but without the hype that the motion sensitive controllers delivered, the price point would not have made any difference. The fact that the controllers are actually living up to the hype just adds more fuel to the fire.

Remember, Game Cube was cheaper than the PS2 and XBox as well, but it was just another system, so it tanked.

The balance of the points in the article just keep the ball rolling somewhat.

You're right about the N64, it did suck. If it were not for Ocarina of Time, the system would have been an embarrassment. But Nintendo made money on every system sold. The hardware was not subsidized.

The PS3 is not a game machine, but it looks like one, and is promoted like one. Remember what I said about the entertainment divisions controlling the hardware divisions.

PS3 will only be a hub to a collection of fully licensed content. Which translates into "you have to spend more money to get all the features". If you could really hook the PS3 up to your network and stream your pirated copy of Sopranos to your TV, consumers would love it, but SONY's movie division would have a coronary!

And on your final point, maybe Samsung makes all of SONY's stuff, but have you done a side by side comparison in price? I'll bet a SONY TV is priced higher than the Samsung. Does a "SONY" sticker really cost that much?

SONY has squandered their good faith. I don't trust them, I don't like them. I will never buy SONY products again.

EC said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
EC said...

Sorry, that last comment didn't go as planned. Had to chuck it and start over.

You WILL buy SONY at some point. After they take their bitch-slapping and make good products again.

The PS3 as hub and spending lots to take advantage is not SONY's fault. We are conditioned, as consumers, to expect every new piece of equipment to be the "Swiss Army Knife" of gadgets and have it do everything well. Well, that comes with the cost of additions, upgrades, time, and lessened specialization of the product to really shine.

Case in point - iPod. That fucking click wheel is the COOLEST navigation device on any gadget, ever. No built in Radio, no Voice Recording, just the most simple and elegant music player out in the market and it keeps raping the competition. (I will exclude that it cannot be used as a basic portable hard drive and music doesn't come OFF with out tinkering and the sync feature is troublesome.) The iPod does one thing and does it EXTREMELY well.

If I want to take advantage of the PS3 I need a new TV, new cables, new speakers, new house, new neighbours, and a new job to pay for all of it. You are exactly right on when you say if the PS3 did everything on the cheap SONY's movie division would throw a fit. You don't spend MILLIONS of dollars developing the highly recognizable FONT, (A fucking FONT!), for Spiderman 3, and plaster it on the PS3, without making the movie tie into the game tie into the console tie into BLU-RAY tie into the movie.

And yes, SONY stickers have a SUPER high premium. Same as the COKE logo makes 12 cents of raw materials into a $1.69 bottle of brown sugar water with bubbles. Marketing lets you get away with robbery, and have people pay for the privlege!

Have I mentioned yet I love my PS2? I will.