The Wii now has the lowest user activity since there is no quality titles on the console – which means that even though there is a lot of sold Wiis out there there is still little incentative to develop costly titles for the Wii since no one uses their Wii for long (it can basically be said that people use the until they get fed up of Wii Sports).

At the same time the numbers are turning for Nintendo. They used to sell double as many consoles in Japan as Sony and Microsoft combined. Now things have changed. Japanese people tire easy of technology and the Wii has little, in terms of technology, to offer. Now Sony is outselling Nintendo for the first time… and the tide is rolling! Even Nintendo knows that the Wii is heading towards a bad, bad place!

The selection of titles for the Wii is filled with crappy titles and has less than ten quality titles all together – most of which are first party. No wonder people are leaving their Wii’s to collect dust after finding Wii Sports repetitive. However, Nintendo are readying the followup title on Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, which promises more of the same – but will it deliver new life to the Wii – and more importantly: For how long? At the same time they are releasing Wii MotionPlus, finally delivering the one-to-one motion mapping Nintendo promised many years ago with the Wiimote and Nunchuck, that completely failed to deliver!

While Sony and Microsoft continues to lower the prices of their consoles Nintendo has still to do this for the first time – even though the Wii already had the a solid profit margin at launch.  They have already, like Sony and Microsoft, invested a lot in reduction of production cost on the Wii. This means that Nintendo’s margin is gone up way high, while Microsoft and Sony have been bleading. This begs the question: What will Nintendo do now?

The natural idea now would be a serious price cost to spur sales yet again – perhaps combined with the inclusion of both Wii Sports and the new Wii Sports 2 plus two controllers with Motion Plus for a slightly reduced original price! They need to get a version down below that of the Xbox. There is no way they can justify their price anymore – not without a High Definition mod and more quality titles included (they will quickly see how difficult it is to find more than two quality titles for their console)… However, Nintendo has already claimed that no price cuts are coming!

In my opinion Nintendo needs to do two things – and fast! One: Cut the goddamn price, Nintendo! Between 30 – 35% at LEAST and then make some nice bundles with Wii Sports and Wii Sports 2 and make the Wii Motion Plus standard in the Wiimote. Two: Start delivering quality titles NOW! Not just first party, but also third party… Show that you have the game development teams behind you! Oh, and while you are at it… STOP the junk titles from reaching the market! How do you think your customers feel when they buy another “Wii Sports Wannabe Clone” for good money and find it to be worth less than Summer Games for Amiga in monochrome colors?!

What Nintendo needs to understand is that the Wii is not really a console – it is a toy and should be price like it… The controllers are not gaming controllers, but gimmicks for the toy meant to offer a mild imitation of reality… and the graphics are not much better than that of the Amiga – especially on a HD TV!

So, in short… Nintendo – wake up! Lower the price and start paying money to quality assurance for once!

The series then became better and better over time – both graphically but also gameplay wise…. Then Bungie called it quits and what happened? Microsoft wasn’t about to let this great franchise go into history just yet… No, let’s make a spinoff with Halo 3 : ODST… That’s apparently not enough for Microsoft! Let’s make another spinoff with the genre we know doesn’t work on the console, RTS, and call it Halo Wars! Dear god… help them see the error of their ways?!

So, instead of letting Microsoft’s poor managers run around frustrated about getting the next idea for a Halo spinoff out in time let me help you here and now… How about “Halo Pinball”? Naturally you need the younger audience as well, so why not “Halo Pokemon” and naturally “LEGO Halo”. Of course to let Sega think they have a franchise remember to do “Sony does Halo” . In order to better the chances of a movie adaptation how about “Harry Potter and the Mysterious Rings” then?… And what about a personal trainer program with Master Chief called “Halo Fit”? … For the brutal minded you need a combat game and why not go for something people remember? How about “Mortal Kombat: Halo Vs. Sesame Street”? That way you ensure that you both get the young ones in on it and that the Halo team always wins! The last one for today is that you need a racing game in that little franchise of yours… How about “Project Gotham Racing: Halo Kart”?

Well, that should get you through this week of poor spinoff, Microsoft…. Call me next week when you need more ideas!

The three faces of Sony is their hardware business, Sony Pictures in the movie industry and Sony BMG in the music business. The main problem appears, however, in their software department. While the hardware business is trying to create open, innovative hardware, the two content businesses Sony Pictures and Sony BMG is trying to prevent that hardware from being used in piracy. Here is where the customer gets completely forgotten. We then see failures such as the rootkit fiasco in their CD publishing part and the Walkman relaunched that was supposed to smash the iPod but failed completely because of unusable software as it was too ridden with DRM and copy protection technology making it impossible for customers to use. The Walkman’s price was slashed by more than half, but little did it help. The software was useless and people kept returning their Walkmans as they saw them as broken.

Sony, however, learned nothing from this. They still struggle with technologies that Sony Pictures and Sony BMG wanted to push in order to control their customers. Think of the many failed formats Sony has tried to push: ATRAC, MiniDisc, SACD, MemoryStick and so forth. ATRAC is a perfect example here. When the rest of the market had already accepted MP3 as the standard and Microsoft was pushing WMA Sony kept forcing their poor customers onto ATRAC and nothing else. After several years of being practically the laughing stock of the MP3-player market with a ridiculously small percentage they finally yielded to MP3 and released the Walkman player which could play both formats. However, the software was so riddled with DRM og copy protection technologies that it failed completely. Hardware is only as good as its software. Why didn’t they learn?

Even though music has been distributed over the Internet for nearly fifteen years Sony BMG and the rest of the music industry still hasn’t found a digital strategy. In this field Sony is also showing its many faces. It wants to give its customers as many options as possible, but also to completely control their use. This can be seen clearly in the fact that Sony is one of the companies pushing the hardest for the power to use selectable output – a technology that takes away a lot of the consumers rights without asking. So on one side Sony wants to push HD content in all your equipment – on the other side Sony wants complete control to fully disable all your equipment and remove the ability to display the HD content.

Then came the PlayStation 3 and Sony’s newest push of technologies. Now it wanted its customers onto the Blu-Ray path, so that it could force new copy protection technologies onto its poor customers. Another HD technology riddled with DRM. However, when one focuses too much on technology and marketing and forgets about software, which has always been Sony’s soft spot, one is set up for a major disappointment – especially when one is as arrogant as Sony Entertainment. The PlayStation 3 didn’t quite know what kind of machine it wanted to be. It wanted to be a game console, but also a media center and a Blu-Ray player… but as everyone knows: The Jack of All Trades is a Master of None… And that also happened with the PlayStation 3, who is suffering greatly on the market today.The holiday sales has shown that in this time around Sony is way behind its two competitors…

What Sony failed to do Nintendo did to perfection. They focused their console on a major market and didn’t put everything into the console – only what the market was asking for. The result is remarkable – especially compared to the once master of the market, Sony. Even their newest competitor, Microsoft, understood where they needed to beat Sony. Microsoft didn’t have Sony’s innovation in hardware or even remotely their experience in this field. When it comes to software, however, Microsoft is million miles ahead of Sony. They made the right tools for developing software on their platform and they made a brilliant working network service in Live far ahead of Sony’s PSN, which most of all looked like a small afterthought from Sony in hindsight of Microsoft’s success. Microsoft success came from ensuring a lot more titles than Sony did – especially when it came to exclusives, where Sony was once master. Sony simply forgot that consoles are about games. At the same time Microsoft is cutting prices making it harder for Sony to sell consoles, who are already seen as expensive…

Times has changed. Hardware is no longer everything. These days a console is measured by its software and in that field Sony is having serious problems – not only with its countless delays, but also with the quality of the software, which almost always fails to live up to the hype. A clear example of Sony’s problem with software is that every game studio claims that it is much simpler and thereby cheaper to develop on Microsoft’s Xbox platform compared to Sony’s PlayStation platform – even such former Sony exclusives as Square Enix.What is Sony’s response to this criticism? Well, even more strange… They claim that they have made it difficult to develop on the PlayStation 3 on purpose to make it last the ten years they somehow expect this console to last – even though it is far behind all its competitors in every way… sheeesh!

The strangest thing about this is that Sony doesn’t seem to learn anything. They keep on lying through their teeth and spinning numbers in their marketing. They keep on screwing their customers with DRM and copy protection and the removal of consumer rights, using lobbying. One would think that a company that makes a PR nightmare like the CD rootkit would learn something, but it doesn’t seem to happen. What Sony needs a common sense czar…

Nintendo, however, in spite of their great sales is left with a major problem – attachment rate is extremely poor for the Wii… Only first-party titles sells okay – the rest is rubbish … Apart from one third-party developer, Ubisoft, who is apparently doing it right! Since the Wii is the best selling console one should think that developer studios would focus more on this platform, but this has not been the case – apart from a load of showelware… which doesn’t yield good sales for the publisher or a good console-reputation for Nintendo either!

To sum it up: Another formidable christmas season for Nintendo, though they still need third-party developers in the same class as Ubisoft to earn real money on their console over time. Microsoft is boosting their sales and are doing remarkably well. Sony is still crawling around in their low sales trying to spin a good story out of their poor-performing next-gen “wonder” of a console!

Guess one shouldn’t listen to marketing

For Sony the most important focus became to win the HD war that was raging between the two competing formats: HD DVD and Sony backed Blu-Ray. The inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive in the PlayStation 3 was a brilliant move in this war, but made the PlayStation 3 expensive and difficult to manufacture. Combined with the expensive and likewise difficult to produce Cell processor the price of the PlayStation 3 was way higher than that of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, while also lacking the ability to output enough numbers of SKU’s. However, what Sony forgot in this battle was the games. A few exclusives – especially compared to the Xbox 360, have ensured that a lot of faithful Sony fans shifted sides. Game developers also preferred Microsoft’s wellknown Xbox platform for developing, compared to Sony’s new Cell-processor, that required a completely new way of thinking and heavy investements of time from the game studios. The outcome of this strategy was that games was now developed on Xbox and ported (often poorly) to the PlayStation platform afterwards. Adding to the trouble was the fact that backward compatibility was less than Sony had promised – which was a big problem as the PlayStation and especially the PlayStation 2 had a lot of faithful following. All these factors played their part. Suddenly Sony was no longer the sole leader of the console scene, but is still tracking behind Microsoft and especially Nintendo. In this generation Sony wanted to win the HD war and forgot about the games and especially the developers.

Sony didn’t see Nintendo as a competitor. They only focused on graphics – not on gameplay. That was a big mistake. Games often sell on their graphics, but last on their gameplay – only a good gameplay will ensure a classic among games. Nintendo focused on gameplay and an entirely different audience, not the hardcore gamers that both Sony and Microsoft aimed for – but the casual gamer… and won big time! Now they are suffering on two accounts, however. They didn’t get third party developers behind them – and apart from Nintendo’s own titles, which were of good quality, the games that did hit the Wii was showelware. Bad ports and lausy gameplay with no depth whatsoever. The other problem, which is beginning to haunt the Wii is the lack of good graphics. Developers are abandonning the platform because of its limitations and because only Nintendo sells well on the Wii. When gameplay isn’t good people go for graphics – Nintendo can offer none of those at the moment… Even though the Wii is still selling good Nintendo have lost the gaming audience and have only the casual gamer left – which will hurt them a lot in the next generation. Nintendo was too fast in becoming, like Sony in the last generation, arrogant in their success. I think what Nintendo needs these days is a good “Wii-ality Check”

The third party in the console war, Microsoft, has had a rough start with the RROD-problems and became the difference between Sony and Microsoft. Sony betted on the hardware, but Microsoft betted on the software. Both companies did what they have always done best. Naturally both companies spent entire fortunes on spinning both their hardware, their sotware, their platforms and their sales. Sony wasn’t ready for as serious a challenger as Microsoft had suddenly become. Microsoft on the other hand was first out the tube a full year before Sony and Nintendo and got a good headstart. This would later become highly important as this allowed Microsoft to improve their design, cut down production costs, lower prices faster and especially gather a consumer base, which is what developers look for in a platform. This got the third party developers onboard and a few years into the war it is apparent that Microsoft won the third party war with their HD console and are now cutting the prices because they can afford to. Furthermore their game attachment percentage is way higher than Sony and astronomically higher than Nintendo, which is what gaming consoles are all about.

In terms of network playability Microsoft was lightyears ahead of Sony’s PSN with their Live! services and Nintendo has barely to get their console online yet! This is also important for players – because players recruit more players to a platform and help them form their opinion.

Now the war for value is on – Microsoft already have the developers, the titles and the best online service… All with the lowest price point of the three consoles. All these factors mean that Sony is too far behind ensuring that Microsoft is now outselling Sony 2 to 1  – even though they entered the game a year earlier…

Sony might have made the best Blu-Ray player on the market this generation around, but Microsoft won the gaming platform. What Sony is left with is an all too expensive gaming console with too few titles and a good HD player for a format that is about to die before the next generation anyway. Wrong bet, I suppose!

My guess is that Sony is preparing a price cut. They simply cannot let this continue. Every day Microsoft improve their user base compared to Sony’s the developers get another reason to publish games for that platform. What Sony needs to remember is the effect they themselves created with the PlayStation 2. When your friends got a PlayStation 2 that’s what you want as well!

The great question here is what will Sony do if Microsoft keeps cutting the price of the Xbox 360?…

We all know how you tried to market the PlayStation 3 like a center of HD content and we also know that your PSN doesn’t contain anything of value and absolutely nothing of HD value!

Instead of blocking Microsoft’s excellent attempt at providing what you have failed to do, please start making your own attempt at delivering something of value to your customers.

It is simply a childish act and shows that you can’t be trusted to run both a music, movie and game business at the same time without getting your childish feelings hurt and instead screw your customers. It’s enough just to see how you handled the enormous amount of Sony product-placement in a James Bond film, but this?

Seriously, Sony, grow up – and fast!

UPDATE: … And so they did (for the time being )!

And note to Microsoft: “Please join the digital age soon!” !!!

Elmo described some of the problems with the Wii and especially Nintendo here on his blog – all I can say is that: “Sorry,  Nintendo – My Wii is going Homebrew .. why? Because Monkey Island 1+ 2, Sam’n'Max : Hit the Road, Day of The Tentacle, Quake, etc. is actually quality titles – and I want quality titles on my Wii !”

While Nintendo is starting to face realities its competitors is moving in on it… Microsoft has prepared the XBox360 to be made with 65 nm. in production in both CPU and GPU in its FALCON chipset, improved both cost, stability and noise on their console. Microsoft needs stability in their console because of the massive bad publicity caused by the RROD-problem on the XBox360. The problem for Microsoft is that it will take long for people to forget this problem. Sony is slowly gaining momentum, but occasionally falls back because of some of the funny limitations in the PlayStation 3, like its incapabilities to do advanced AI, which is seen in both Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed, compared to the XBox360.

Both the PlayStation 3 and the XBox360 has been put through price cuts that has given especially the expensive PlayStation 3 a boost that is slowly building up to a momentum… The question now remains: When will the price cut from Nintendo come on the Wii? … They earned money on the Wii and its tons of controllers from day one, unlike Sony and Microsoft, who is still loosing money on each console sold. Now the price of the Wii is too close to that of the XBox360, which has a lot of excellent second-gen titles, whereas the Wii is in a software drought that many owners is starting to lament. The Xbox360 also has two other advantages compared to the Wii: First of all they can produce enough consoles and secondly they have a use for their network capabilities – Nintendo simply isn’t using the network capabilities of the Wii: No online games, no multiplayer games, no real online content… only a couple of old games and a small browser. The Wii has finally passed the XBox360 sales, but in order to keep this momentum they need a price cut on the Wii – and they need HD… if they want to stay the leader in this console war!

For some history on the Wii… Most people saw Nintend’s new console first as something not very different from the Gamecube, which wasn’t really a success, with dated graphics and not much to offer in terms of competition for Sony and Microsoft. Then they introduced their revolutionary controller to go with the Wii, which at that time was called Revolution (A name I still think is far cooler than “Wii”) and with it Wii Sports. People tried out the game and everyone was suddenly thrilled about this little wonder, who suddenly got all the good press. After the Wii was launched it quickly became apparent that it was an instant hit, selling far more than any of the other two competitors. At the same time Nintendo was in a favorable situation who, unlike Sony and Microsoft who was loosing money for every console sold, earned from every console sale from day one.

Now to my experience of the Wii and the discovery of its magic… I bought one in January and installed it – easy as nothing else. I put in Wii Sports and started playing the different sports games and was thrilled. It was really funny and a completely new experience for a hardcore gamer like myself. I had fun. Then my girlfriend tried to play Wii Sports and she had massive fun. Then my friends tried it and they had massive fun. At parties the Wii would be switched on and my guests would have fun automatically playing Wii Sports. It seemed to be a massive hit. Then naturally I had to buy a second controller and a second nunchunk – not that cheap actually… Again Nintendo was earning a lot of money here. Back to Wii Sports and now playing against a human, which was also massive fun. Then I thought that I would have some fun at some other Wii games. I took a look at the market for Wii games, which wasn’t to say the least that impressive, but hey, it had launched only three months earlier. I bought Legend of Zelda and even though it aims for a younger audience it was actually a pretty good game. Despite being an obvious Gamecube conversion it took the new controller scheme into splendid use and did it perfectly. I had fun even though the game wasn’t that cheap to buy. Then I wanted another game to continue my fun, but was suddenly stuck with no real options. There were no interesting games out there. Most of them were for kids and all of them were far too expensive being cheap conversions from the Gamecube or the PlayStation 2. I wanted something more. The Wii’s wireless network access had no uses and Nintendo still haven’t found a real use for it in games at this point – just another lost potential of the console. I then remembered the Wii Shop Channel and went in there to buy a couple of old classics like Sonic, Dr. Robotnik’s and other overpriced old games, that should cost a lot less. It was fun for a while, but not worth the money overall. Of course I had to buy a classic controller to play them, and another one to play two. Not a cheap alternative just because they don’t have a good game catalog for the console. Then I remembered Nintendo’s great sales argument that it would play all the games for the Gamecube. I looked at the selection and realized Nintendo’s big mistake. They thought that the Gamecube games would be available for all eternity. Well, guess again… Most shops have already sold the sad remains of their Gamecube games, and the all that remains here and there are sad left-overs. I then looked and looked for decent game and finally decided to try out Rogue Squadron – Rebel Strike as it was actually a great looking game (better than anything currently on their “next-gen” console, the Wii actually). I got the game and was excited to finally get a good experience with the Wii since Wii Sports, but the experience was short lived. Apparently the old gamecube games cannot use the internal memory of the Wii for some odd reason, indicating a awful oversight on the design of the machine, and I had to go out and find a memory card for the gamecube to install in my Wii. Another expensive buy… Now I had two fairly good games on my Wii and then Wii Sports. The price? The Wii console itself, two classic controllers, a gamecube memory card, a Wiimote and a Nunchuck. Not a cheap console… Then it suddenly became clear to me! Nintendo hasn’t made a revolutionary console – they have made a revolutionary game in Wii Sports and the feel and experience of Wii Sports is what is selling the Wii. That will soon become a big problem for Nintendo as there is nothing preventing their competitors in launching a similar game for their consoles and then equip it with a Wiimote-wannabe controller. My guess is that Nintendo is working overtime to make Wii Sports 2 in order to keep up the hype for a little while longer. The game catalog for the Wii is appalling and the only game I see fit for a mature audience in sight is Metroid Prime 3… Nintendo has successfully made a hype on their console using a really fun game and made everyone believe that the console is every bit as fun as Wii Sports, but the truth is quite different… Wii Sports is the Wii at this point!

Nintendo needs to get quality software into its catalog or they will find that their hype will fade like mist for the sun and fast!