Topic: Square Enix's CEO Expects New Wii by 2011

[Jonnyboy117]

Yeah, in 2011 Nintendo will finally see the folly of their profitable ways and copy notes from those who fail to make money...

PS2 didn't lose money... not even close. I can see Nintendo putting out a new Wii in 2011, not to lose money but because they can sell it at profit (just like they did with Wii) and make even more money. And since Wii is the market leader, third-parties can continue to release games for the older platform just as they did for PS2 years after PS3 launched.

Anyone who thinks Nintendo doesn't want to sell new hardware should look at their portable strategy.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I thought it was universally agreed upon that the console market =/= portable market.
Therefore strategies from one may not get the same desired results in the other.

[Plugabugz]

If they do it i'm going to be slightly annoyed. Have i maximised value out of my Wii? No. Absolutely not.

[vudu]

PS2 didn't lose money... not even close.

I don't think anyone claimed the PS2 lost money.  However, I'm pretty sure Sony started losing money once they released the PS3.

Bigger, better and faster doesn't necessarily translate to more money in the manufacturer's pocket.

[BlackNMild2k1]

If they do it i'm going to be slightly annoyed. Have i maximised value out of my Wii? No. Absolutely not.

No one is forcing you to upgrade 2 years from now. So why don't you take your time and think about it for a while.... you can upgrade when you're ready.

[Plugabugz]

If they do it i'm going to be slightly annoyed. Have i maximised value out of my Wii? No. Absolutely not.

No one is forcing you to upgrade 2 years from now. So why don't you take your time and think about it for a while.... you can upgrade when you're ready.

Nobody is forcing me to, yes i know, but nobody is forcing them to either. I'm sure Ian and GP would agree that more games wouldn't mean more value, but more games that fill my (i'm allowed to be a selfish consumer) palate.

[broodwars]

Many analysts I've seen (including Michael Pacter) are pointing to an HD Wii coming at the end of 2010/early 2011, so this would be just around the expected time.

Michael Pachter is an idiot.  He's basically gotten everything wrong THIS generation, why should anybody trust him for the next?  So he's predicting a new Nintendo system with a Graphics card that will be able to output 1080p or so?  DURRRR  I can get one of those for $60.  Of course Nintendo will have one in 201X.  What a prediction.

You know, Pachter took a lot of flak over his decision to throw in his lot with Sony at the beginning of this generation, but in all fairness was there any reason to believe Nintendo would be where it is now?  At the time, HD TVs and High-Speed Internet Connections were only rising in market penetration, Sony was coming off of the phenomenally successful PS2, Nintendo was coming off a distant 3rd place GameCube, and suddenly Nintendo had decided to throw its lot in with people who don't care about games with bathroom scales and a waggling remote control (all without a single notable 3rd party game, mind you).  No one knew if Nintendo would pull it off, as it had failed twice before from a market share standpoint.

Analysts aren't fortune tellers: they make their predictions based on current market conditions and trends so they can properly advise their investors, and all trends pointed away from Nintendo at the time.  Of course, that's not what happened and it's easy now to look at things with 20/20 hindsight, but all that means is that the unexpected can occur despite all odds.

[GoldenPhoenix]

Many analysts I've seen (including Michael Pacter) are pointing to an HD Wii coming at the end of 2010/early 2011, so this would be just around the expected time.

Michael Pachter is an idiot.  He's basically gotten everything wrong THIS generation, why should anybody trust him for the next?  So he's predicting a new Nintendo system with a Graphics card that will be able to output 1080p or so?  DURRRR  I can get one of those for $60.  Of course Nintendo will have one in 201X.  What a prediction.

You know, Pachter took a lot of flak over his decision to throw in his lot with Sony at the beginning of this generation, but in all fairness was there any reason to believe Nintendo would be where it is now?  At the time, HD TVs and High-Speed Internet Connections were only rising in market penetration, Sony was coming off of the phenomenally successful PS2, Nintendo was coming off a distant 3rd place GameCube, and suddenly Nintendo had decided to throw its lot in with people who don't care about games with bathroom scales and a waggling remote control (all without a single notable 3rd party game, mind you).  No one knew if Nintendo would pull it off, as it had failed twice before from a market share standpoint.

Analysts aren't fortune tellers: they make their predictions based on current market conditions and trends so they can properly advise their investors, and all trends pointed away from Nintendo at the time.  Of course, that's not what happened and it's easy now to look at things with 20/20 hindsight, but all that means is that the unexpected can occur despite all odds.

Pachter's problem is he is extremely anti-Wii and most of his predictions and comments are slanted against Wii. He has been proclaiming Wii's doom far longer then his predictions pre-launch.

[broodwars]

Many analysts I've seen (including Michael Pacter) are pointing to an HD Wii coming at the end of 2010/early 2011, so this would be just around the expected time.

Michael Pachter is an idiot.  He's basically gotten everything wrong THIS generation, why should anybody trust him for the next?  So he's predicting a new Nintendo system with a Graphics card that will be able to output 1080p or so?  DURRRR  I can get one of those for $60.  Of course Nintendo will have one in 201X.  What a prediction.

You know, Pachter took a lot of flak over his decision to throw in his lot with Sony at the beginning of this generation, but in all fairness was there any reason to believe Nintendo would be where it is now?  At the time, HD TVs and High-Speed Internet Connections were only rising in market penetration, Sony was coming off of the phenomenally successful PS2, Nintendo was coming off a distant 3rd place GameCube, and suddenly Nintendo had decided to throw its lot in with people who don't care about games with bathroom scales and a waggling remote control (all without a single notable 3rd party game, mind you).  No one knew if Nintendo would pull it off, as it had failed twice before from a market share standpoint.

Analysts aren't fortune tellers: they make their predictions based on current market conditions and trends so they can properly advise their investors, and all trends pointed away from Nintendo at the time.  Of course, that's not what happened and it's easy now to look at things with 20/20 hindsight, but all that means is that the unexpected can occur despite all odds.

Pachter's problem is he is extremely anti-Wii and most of his predictions and comments are slanted against Wii. He has been proclaiming Wii's doom far longer then his predictions pre-launch.

That surprises me.  It's certainly not the impression I've gotten of him from his numerous appearances on Gametrailers' Bonus Round video panel discussions.

[vudu]

Analysts aren't fortune tellers: they make their predictions based on current market conditions and trends so they can properly advise their investors, and all trends pointed away from Nintendo at the time.  Of course, that's not what happened and it's easy now to look at things with 20/20 hindsight, but all that means is that the unexpected can occur despite all odds.

Analysts may not be fortune tellers, but they are expected to perform some amount of analysis/research/thought before making predictions.  Nintendo didn't have any information that wasn't readily available to Michael Pachter (or any other analyst for that matter) at the start of this generation.  So why was Nintendo so right while most analysts were so wrong?

It seems to me that a lot of analysts predicted that Sony would be the market leader based on the sheer fact that PS and PS2 were the market leaders of their respective generations.  They didn't look at the market conditions, consumer wants or what each console manufacturer's offering so see how they lined up.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

"Analysts aren't fortune tellers: they make their predictions based on current market conditions"

And that's the fundamental foul-up; making an assessment based on such a short trend, ignoring history (when did these rock star media blogger-analysts start appearing?  After Grand Theft Auto 3 came out?), and totally missing the mark on who your customers can be and how important they are.  I don't think Pachter's tune changed even after Wii's literally shocking response at E3 2006 (people didn't run because a boulder with "$599" painted on it was rolling after them to kill them).  How did he factor an industry even like that into his assessment?

He didn't, cuz analyzing means he'd have to do good-faith-reasonable-effort work; he hates Nintendo and Wii cuz it's making him do SOME work

[broodwars]

Analysts may not be fortune tellers, but they are expected to perform some amount of analysis/research/thought before making predictions.  Nintendo didn't have any information that wasn't readily available to Michael Pachter (or any other analyst for that matter) at the start of this generation.  So why was Nintendo so right while most analysts were so wrong?

My guess is that it's because the people who bought the Wii in droves wouldn't normally show up in standard market analysis: the elderly and previously-uninterested.  You have to remember when the Wii came out it created a whole new market with a whole new audience.  I'm going to assume that general market research on the gaming industry tends to skew towards the enthusiast consumer like us (the people who tend to buy the most games and drive the market) rather than...say...the audience of Reader's Digest.  By all accounts, gaming consumers before the Wii's launch were likely more interested in Sony and Microsoft, and I'll bet if that same audience were studied today that would still be the case.  Is it a serious flaw that the analysts didn't look outside the established gaming market when performing their research?  Hell yes, but I get the feeling this is not an uncommon practice with any market.

[Deguello]

You have to remember when the Wii came out it created a whole new market with a whole new audience.

This doesn't explain the 35 million or so Wii owners who DON'T own Wii Fit.  "Entirely new market" isn't the whole story, but it is the one analysts will use to explain why they got things wrong, because it removes the locus of control from them and onto random chance.

Of course, this is a catch-22, because if they aren't wrong because everything was random, then their jobs are useless because who can "analyze" random chance?

Face it, Pachter is a moron.  All of his analyses have been wrong since 2004, yeah he continues to speak as if his words have any impact.

[Ian Sane]

What puzzles me is why third parties care about the future of a platform that they never make their best games for.

Third parties seem to regard the Wii as something different and thus they give it different games than what the other consoles get.  But they might not like it to be that way.  In Square Enix's case they've invested a lot of time and money in Final Fantasy XIII and they're going to release it on the PS3 and Xbox 360.  But that effectively limits FF13's potential sales.  Ideally they would want to release it on all three platforms for maximum potential sales.  But they can't release it on the Wii without investing even more money into downgrading the visuals to work on Wii hardware.  And even if they did that they might fear that the downgraded visuals and the stigma of being a scaled down port may hurt the game's marketability with its target market.

The Wii quite clearly has a technical hurdle in that it's severly underpowered compared to the other two consoles.  When Capcom released Dead Rising on the Wii I think they legitimately wanted to just port the game over but found out that they couldn't.

If the Wii was an Xbox 360 with the remote as the controller I really doubt it be missing out on all these games that both of the other consoles get.  Why wouldn't they release these games on all three consoles if they could and thus make their game available to the widest potential customer base?  Now they probably could or just should make the Wii their target platform but they're not and that's a different topic.

If the Wii 2 was comparable to the other consoles in hardware then third parties could release anything they wanted to on it.  All their casual focused shovelware could still be on there, too.  It provides them with no restrictions.  They want all three consoles to be as similar as possible so that they can make whatever game they want on whatever console they want.

As for Nintendo, well this is all about third party support and that directly affects customer satisfaction and product image.  It should be in Nintendo's own interests that videogame customers of all tastes be satisfied with their console's library and for their console to be associated with quality games (ie: associating the Wii, and thus Nintendo, with shovelware trash is not good).  But they very much live in the present and since this is not causing them any obvious problems now I don't expect them to feel it's any priority until it becomes so.  So they probably SHOULD release a new Wii by 2011 but they probably won't until they're forced to.  In other words it's only after they start losing market share to the competition that they'll get off their butts.  But they almost certainly have some sort of next-gen console in the design phases so it's not likely they would be completely caught with their dick in their hands.

[Guitar Smasher]

You know, Pachter took a lot of flak over his decision to throw in his lot with Sony at the beginning of this generation, but in all fairness was there any reason to believe Nintendo would be where it is now?

Was there any reason to believe a $600 console would be the sales leader?  This was the widespread prediction by almost all "analysts".  Strong start for 360, but PS3 would eventually steal the lead and Nintendo wouldn't even make a dent.

My guess is that it's because the people who bought the Wii in droves wouldn't normally show up in standard market analysis: the elderly and previously-uninterested.  You have to remember when the Wii came out it created a whole new market with a whole new audience.  I'm going to assume that general market research on the gaming industry tends to skew towards the enthusiast consumer like us (the people who tend to buy the most games and drive the market) rather than...say...the audience of Reader's Digest.  By all accounts, gaming consumers before the Wii's launch were likely more interested in Sony and Microsoft, and I'll bet if that same audience were studied today that would still be the case.  Is it a serious flaw that the analysts didn't look outside the established gaming market when performing their research?  Hell yes, but I get the feeling this is not an uncommon practice with any market.

For a second, forget the expanded audience.  They might skew the percentage of sales, but it's understandable that the analysts missed this market.  They look at past trends, from which they generate their analysis.  What I find noteworthy is how they overestimated the HD console unit sales (mostly PS3).  Even with the expanded audience, PS3 should have performed much better.  Again, this was widespread.  Of course there was one company who, a few years ago, predicted something like this would happen in the market...

Now when will Nintendo give us Wii2?  When WiiFit/Mario Kart Wii stop selling (semi-serious).  Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to see it in Fall 2011, but not earlier.

[broodwars]

You know, Pachter took a lot of flak over his decision to throw in his lot with Sony at the beginning of this generation, but in all fairness was there any reason to believe Nintendo would be where it is now?

Was there any reason to believe a $600 console would be the sales leader?  This was the widespread prediction by almost all "analysts".  Strong start for 360, but PS3 would eventually steal the lead and Nintendo wouldn't even make a dent.

My guess is that it's because the people who bought the Wii in droves wouldn't normally show up in standard market analysis: the elderly and previously-uninterested.  You have to remember when the Wii came out it created a whole new market with a whole new audience.  I'm going to assume that general market research on the gaming industry tends to skew towards the enthusiast consumer like us (the people who tend to buy the most games and drive the market) rather than...say...the audience of Reader's Digest.  By all accounts, gaming consumers before the Wii's launch were likely more interested in Sony and Microsoft, and I'll bet if that same audience were studied today that would still be the case.  Is it a serious flaw that the analysts didn't look outside the established gaming market when performing their research?  Hell yes, but I get the feeling this is not an uncommon practice with any market.

For a second, forget the expanded audience.  They might skew the percentage of sales, but it's understandable that the analysts missed this market.  They look at past trends, from which they generate their analysis.  What I find noteworthy is how they overestimated the HD console unit sales (mostly PS3).  Even with the expanded audience, PS3 should have performed much better.

The PS3's poor sales are the result of a perfect storm of screw-ups, from Sony's constant mismanagement and utter PR arrogance to the falling economy.  I think we're seeing now the kind of sales the PS3 might have had at launch provided Sony hadn't gone the route they did, particularly with the price point.

[TJ Spyke]

Huh? In Japan the PS3 went right back to its piss-poor sales after a 1 week boost from the PS3 slim. Who knows if it will be the same in North America/Europe, but so far the new model and price drop did nothing more than a brief increase (which is the same effect big games like Metal Gear Solid 4 do). I don't think the new price point will make a big difference since there isn't really an incentive for Xbox 360 owners  to get a PS3 and casual gamers would probably be more likely to get a Xbox 360 Arcade before they would choose a PlayStation 3.

[broodwars]

Huh? In Japan the PS3 went right back to its piss-poor sales after a 1 week boost from the PS3 slim. Who knows if it will be the same in North America/Europe, but so far the new model and price drop did nothing more than a brief increase (which is the same effect big games like Metal Gear Solid 4 do). I don't think the new price point will make a big difference since there isn't really an incentive for Xbox 360 owners  to get a PS3 and casual gamers would probably be more likely to get a Xbox 360 Arcade before they would choose a PlayStation 3.

Well, we'll see what the NPD numbers show over the next few months.  So far, it's been looking good for the PS3 but we'll see.

EDIT: By the way, Ian: I think you meant "Dead Rising" (which was made by Capcom), not "Dead Space" (which was made by EA).

[King of Twitch]

Well since Wii came out in 2006 and Nintendo systems usually come out in 5 or 6 year cycles that can make sense in terms of how Nintendo traditionally rolled out consoles. I think Wii will have a slightly longer life cycle than that even if Nintendo launches a brand new console in 2011 or 2012.

Totally. When I read this I was like woa, they're gonna release a new conosle on the same 5-year cycle that's been playing out for 20 years?

My pillars of reality have been pushed away.

[Deguello]

As for Nintendo, well this is all about third party support and that directly affects customer satisfaction and product image.  It should be in Nintendo's own interests that videogame customers of all tastes be satisfied with their console's library and for their console to be associated with quality games (ie: associating the Wii, and thus Nintendo, with shovelware trash is not good).

But Nintendo can't force third parties to make good games.  They tried that with the NES and everybody called them Tyrant Nintendo for daring to control quality and micromanage third parties.

Another perplexing development this generation is that apparently, when left to their own devices, third parties will make really bad games by default.

[broodwars]

As for Nintendo, well this is all about third party support and that directly affects customer satisfaction and product image.  It should be in Nintendo's own interests that videogame customers of all tastes be satisfied with their console's library and for their console to be associated with quality games (ie: associating the Wii, and thus Nintendo, with shovelware trash is not good).

But Nintendo can't force third parties to make good games.  They tried that with the NES and everybody called them Tyrant Nintendo for daring to control quality and micromanage third parties.

Another perplexing development this generation is that apparently, when left to their own devices, third parties will make really bad games by default.

You can certainly make that case for the 3rd party support on the Wii, but that is not the case for the market in general.  The other two consoles have enjoyed fine 3rd party support with quality games.  Just because they don't see fit to waste their time trying to shoehorn them into something the Wii can handle, that doesn't mean they don't exist.

[Deguello]

You can certainly make that case for the 3rd party support on the Wii, but that is not the case for the market in general.

It's not like the Wii's a bit player here.  Wii is the market leader, period.  For some segments, like Japan, Wii IS the "market in general." 

When making games for this market, 3rd parties either take the time to expertly create a press release saying how their horrible game "fits the Wii demographic," with zero followup when the game fails, or they take an opportunity to troll the Wii and its owners with some of the worst games they have EVER MADE, like Konami's Target Terror, an armpit of an arcade game that they purchased from Midway's corpse.  What they've told the majority of gamers this generation is "We think you are a bunch of morons that will buy anything we put out."  And when the surprisingly savvy Wii audience balks at buying Monkey Mischief: Party Time, they have the sand to blame Wii owners for being "Nintendo fanboys."

Is it any wonder Wii owners are pretty much loyal to Nintendo only after getting that sort of treatment for 3 years?  Is it any wonder that most are pretty suspicious of any Non-Nintendo game on the Wii, and some have developed hostility towards third parties?

[KDR_11k]

S-E may not be able to port FF13 now but they could have canceled it for the HD systems years ago and made it for the Wii instead. You know, like Capcom did with Monster Hunter 3. Nothing forces S-E to remain focused on the HD systems for that long

[Peachylala]

S-E may not be able to port FF13 now but they could have canceled it for the HD systems years ago and made it for the Wii instead. You know, like Capcom did with Monster Hunter 3. Nothing forces S-E to remain focused on the HD systems for that long

I personally don't think any of Sqeenix's HD games set the charts ablaze, and some of their PSP titles as well. FFXIII will sell, despite the fact I think it looks almost on the same levels of stupid as FFVIII, but FF fanboys/girls will buy anything FF related.

The only third party supporter getting praise is Sega. Hell, we've gotten the first 3-D Sonic game thats GOOD.

[Ian Sane]

But Nintendo can't force third parties to make good games.  They tried that with the NES and everybody called them Tyrant Nintendo for daring to control quality and micromanage third parties.

No they can't force third parties to do anything but it is still in their best interest to have good third party support.  I think releasing a new console at the normal five year interval with comparable specs to the competition will naturally improve the quality of third party releases because at they very least they'll make their big releases on the other consoles multiplatform.

I'm hoping by 2011 we'll see a Wii 2 with specs comparable to the PS3 (hardware that is now affordable to mass produce) and the PS3 and Xbox 360 will remain as is but with the extra motion controller BS that Sony and MS are each working on.  I'm sure one of the three will do something stupid (Sony upping the hardware again when the PS3 only just finally became affordable) but that's probably what each of them should do.