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Bye Bye Miis?


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#21 Gruff

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Posted 11 January 2012 - 09:47 AM

I want mii's to stay but with more options, costumes etc

This exactly ^

I want Mii's to stay exactly the same, as in terms of how they look. The only thing that I would want to change is to give us more customization options. For instance, instead of just a colored shirt, we could have the option to put on maybe Link's costume or just something as simple as a sweater. I would also like to see accessories, such as a hat or earings. Mii's have a great amount of potential without getting all super detailed with them.

Villager.jpgBleh eh eh.


#22 Caius Casshern Sins

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Posted 11 January 2012 - 10:00 AM

Just like everybody I would love the Mii to have a greater amount of Customization. I would even like costumes based on Game characters (however they should be free are obtainable through some means without paying actual money.)
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#23 Rubix87

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Posted 11 January 2012 - 10:25 AM

Ponkotsu are you sure you're not an article writer? Your piece was brilliant! It was logical and full of reason, thank you for posting it. Anyway I love the miis and I think they should stay. There's no reason to get rid of them.

#24 Ponkotsu

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Posted 13 January 2012 - 02:15 PM

I'm an aspiring professional writer, actually, so I try to maintain a certain standard of quality for everything I write, even on message boards. Already have one unpublished novel under my belt, working on a second now, and gradually working on making a living as a freelancer.

I've always been frustrated with the extremely low level of discourse you tend to see online in gaming forums, as well as the levels of vitriol and proud ignorance of the state of the industry - typically coupled with some rabid, blind loyalty to either the Sony or Microsoft brand and a frothing hatred for Nintendo. So, in response, I've tried to do my part to be as informed as possible as a gamer and simply do my part to raise the quality of the discourse, while enjoying my hobby as much as possible. :)

#25 Rubix87

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Posted 13 January 2012 - 06:16 PM

Ponkotsu I could tell from your prose that you look at the overall picture not just the hysterics, which is excellent. Reality is so much more important than perception, and that is why I've tried to find objective stance. Bravo!

#26 Kris Adams

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Posted 22 January 2012 - 11:35 AM

well they were wii u tech demo, so I see the miis staying, but i agree with everyone, they need a redesign
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#27 Gadvac

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Posted 22 January 2012 - 12:07 PM

Considering how beloved the Miis are, they should definitely stick around, but all the more improvements they can make to them, the better. They should be central in our online identity - just as we have a Mii set as our personal identity on the 3DS too - and they should definitely make sure that they retain the kind of charm they have now and the same level of creativity in design.
...
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The new generation is, in many ways, Nintendo's to lose.


... wow. It's been said before, but you're really good! Set up a blog, or link us if you already have. I'd love to hear more from you.


Anyway, I'd love it if we could design our own clothes, Animal Crossing style, or if people could submit accessories, à la Team Fortress 2. Naturally, there'd be palette and polygon limits for the latter, but it'd be really cool (and a nice way of getting new accessories). Clothes, in my idea, be distributed with no quality-check review, in a big user store with ratings for everything, while accessories would go through an approval process (the first stage could be some sort of online user-run voting process). Perhaps users could re-skin accessories (similar to what people do on Roblox) and submit them to the user store.

Naturally, there'd be report buttons, checking for inappropriate art and words, and the like, but overall, it'd be really cool.


As far as keeping Miis goes, I'd say yes. They're a lot of fun, in my opinion. If you don't want to use them, don't.

#28 Nin_Stream

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Posted 24 January 2012 - 02:28 AM

At the very least they could make it so you could dress your Mii up, and make an MMORPG software that goes along with Miis being used as characters.


Like Save Mii on the 3DS?
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#29 Pong

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 01:17 AM

They've already said they're using the Nintendo 3DS Miis.

#30 DPain

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 02:29 AM

we've already seen that Sony hasn't learned anything from their mistakes with the Vita's dire opening, and Microsoft hasn't exactly demonstrated that they have any understanding of how to make money in the industry either, with the Xbox brand a little over a decade old now and still without any actual profit to show for it

Microsoft has been making profits on the Xbox 360 since 2008. They reported $426 million, and have been making loads of money since.

#31 Joshua

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 03:19 AM

I'm an aspiring professional writer, actually, so I try to maintain a certain standard of quality for everything I write, even on message boards. Already have one unpublished novel under my belt, working on a second now, and gradually working on making a living as a freelancer.

I've always been frustrated with the extremely low level of discourse you tend to see online in gaming forums, as well as the levels of vitriol and proud ignorance of the state of the industry - typically coupled with some rabid, blind loyalty to either the Sony or Microsoft brand and a frothing hatred for Nintendo. So, in response, I've tried to do my part to be as informed as possible as a gamer and simply do my part to raise the quality of the discourse, while enjoying my hobby as much as possible. :)


If only we had more people like you in the gaming community....

Edited by Joshua, 26 January 2012 - 03:20 AM.

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#32 Ponkotsu

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 03:38 AM

DPain: When they report that, they're putting corporate spin on it - they're factoring out ALL of the previous losses, and ignoring the massive losses taken on RROD. RROD alone ensured the 360 was never going to see a net profit this generation, they've lost so much on that. Microsoft still hasn't made so much as a cent in a net profit in gaming hardware over the past decade they've been in gaming hardware. Whenever Sony or Microsoft report profits in gaming in their releases this generation, they're very carefully framed in corporate speak to paint particular picture and set a particular narrative. That means selectively factoring out losses by whatever means necessary. Financially speaking, the Xbox line still can't be painted as a success, but you wouldn't know this from the cognitive dissonance and lack of actual investigative journalism in the gaming 'media.' Similarly, if you listened to the gaming media, you'd think things were rosy for Sony, despite multiple recent rating downgrades by credit agencies.

In short: always take their public financial reports with a grain of salt. Neither Sony nor Microsoft has a history of being reliably honest about their financial woes in the video game industry.

Relevant: an article from 2009, well after the claims that they were suddenly making money, detailing both the hefty ongoing Xbox 360 losses Microsoft was still dealing with even then, including over $7 billion in total Xbox line losses - practically the entire value of Nintendo as a corporation lost on a single product line. The Xbox line is in no way making money, and hasn't even come close to making up for the massive losses taken on both the Xbox and Xbox 360. As there's some detailing of in the article, though, Microsoft goes to great lengths to try to hide the overall massive losses they've taken on the Xbox line. Financially, there is no way to frame the Xbox line as successful, and they can only cover the losses for so long before it's inevitably dropped and their gaming strategy shifts to something legitimately profitable in the longer term. The Kin and Zune only lasted so long as failed product lines - the Xbox line has been losing more money for longer than both. But Microsoft really doesn't want the public to know just how badly the Xbox line has actually done, let alone how most games lose money on the 360 - it goes against the popular image that the 360 is a 'hit hardcore console,' when the reality is that it's been very financially toxic for both Microsoft and the gaming industry as a whole.

Joshua: Thanks! :) I try to provide something valuable in the discourse, though I tend to just pop in and out and don't always blog consistently about the industry, or always post completely regularly. I tend to get kinda exhausted if I get embroiled in numbers and narrative arguments with the uninformed or misinformed - typically those convinced that things are much rosier for Sony, Microsoft, and their self-destructively loyal third party support, as well as those who tend to believe in the misinformed narratives about Nintendo you'll casually read on sites like Kotaku, where the company can do no right and the whole 'casuals versus hardcore' narrative is lifted from a brand fanatic's fantasy, rather than holding any kind of roots in the reality of sales trends or the financial bottom line in today's largely unhealthy, unstable industry.

Edited by Ponkotsu, 26 January 2012 - 03:46 AM.


#33 Rubix87

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 05:34 AM

Anytime I see a Ponkotsu post I read it. It's informative and very well researched. I agree with the others that you (Ponkotsu) should start a gaming blog. Getting back to the subject; wouldn't it be interesting if the Tokyo street demo were contrived in such a way that it was the hub for the gaming channels? Not exactly Tokyo the city itself, but a made up metropolis where the player would have to use 360 rotation to see all aspects of the channel. Perhaps even leaving parts of the channel locked until certain features were available. This would be awesome in the effect of seeing different miis from different consoles joining different hubs. It would be cool it the wii u pronged the player and let them know a new mii is approaching, all the while the player could use the controller to see what direction the player is coming in: from the north, form the south, from the sky perhaps; there are so many possibilities. The controller too could give the player vitality stats on the new mii: where the mii is from, what games they like to play, maybe even showcase their 3ds friend code. I would love to see a distinguishable difference in hub and channel presentation, but that's just me what do any of you think of the idea?

#34 DPain

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 12:14 PM

In reply to Ponkotsu:
By now, I am almost sure Microsoft has made a profit. They sell the most games, Xbox Live subscriptions, and Kinect which made a profit in its first month or two.I think Microsoft is doing fine, and are a great competition to Nintendo.

#35 Ponkotsu

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 01:23 PM

DPain: They haven't - check out the article I linked and many of the news stories it cites: Microsoft has gone to considerable lengths to paint the picture of the Xbox 360 as a successful, profitable platform, but they haven't made anything resembling a net profit on the system - much like its predecessor - and the media has a distinct history of avoiding reporting on this.

The Xbox line has seen a net loss in billions - not millions, but billions - as the linked article even outright cites. Any money made on Live subscriptions has been thrown into a huge hole of overall net losses that they don't factor in when they report 'profiting.' They're not about to dampen their own celebrations by noting that they've lost far more money overall on the brand than they've ever made on any part of it. They spent half a billion marketing the Kinect at launch alone, and Kinect sales have slowed significantly - while most Kinect games actually sit on shelves and sell very poorly - since its initial launch rush. On top of that, it isn't remotely true that Microsoft sells the most games - despite what you might hear on many sites online, it's well documented that between the Wii and DS, Nintendo's sold the vast majority of software this generation, dwarfing both the Playstation and Xbox brands by a huge margin.

Xbox games get the largest and most visible push, but Nintendo's platforms have sold consistently more software overall, and have benefited from an evergreen market situation that neither Sony nor Microsoft have cultivated, where many DS and Wii titles have sold extremely well over long periods of time. On the whole, PS3 and 360 games are incredibly visibly front-loaded - they sell the vast majority of copies that they're going to in their first one to three weeks, then see significant drop-offs and rarely return to the charts. Likewise, the sales thresholds for the average HD game this generation to make money are - around 1.5 million copies on average - so high that the vast majority of games on either system have not made money. We've seen this reflected in the increasing financial decrepitude of third parties on the whole over the course of this generation, who bet their cards on Sony and Microsoft and against Nintendo, and in the past year, largely ceased their practice of bankrolling HD flops with money made on lower budget, lower-effort Wii games that made money.

That said, as you're obviously a Microsoft fan and customer - you registered solely to comment on this and argue - I do understand that you, as you put it in your last sentence, 'think Microsoft is doing fine, and are a great competition to Nintendo.' And it's perfectly fine to own and enjoy whatever brands and platforms you like - I'm not coming down on you for that here, so don't worry about that - but this is a matter of being informed. I'm speaking to you as a Sega fan here, who grew up enjoying their games just as much as Nintendo's, and was quite sad to see what became of them financially after the Genesis, when the Sega CD backfired, and then the 32X, and the Saturn never took off outside of Japan, and then the wonderful Dreamcast never had a prayer when the PS2 bulldozed through it. But the fact of the matter is, whether you like Microsoft and think they're doing fine, personally, or not, the reality of the situation is that they aren't - it's well-documented that the Xbox is a troubled brand within Microsoft, that they've taken massive financial losses on it for a solid decade now and aren't really in much position to expect a third Xbox to suddenly break the trend and turn things around for them.

The Xbox was a catastrophic stumble into the industry for them, losing an incredible amount of money where even Nintendo made more money on the Gamecube than Sony did on PS2 hardware sales, despite just barely coming in last place last generation. The average Xbox 360 game doesn't make money, Japanese games don't sell on it in any region, and only a scattering of major western titles - increasingly a seemingly endless parade of sequels in the same franchises year after year - within a very narrow selection of genres actually manage to make money on the platform or come along and turn into hits. A telling example is last year's Bulletstorm - as popular as Gears of War is, everyone expected the Epic brandname to turn that into a smash hit. Instead, it stumbled its way to 1.5 million in sales across both the Xbox 360 and PS3 and barely broke even, but it didn't make money. Another example is LA Noire, which despite its initial critical acclaim and solid sales, bombed so hard that it put its developer, Team Bondi, out of business entirely. And these were high profile 2011 titles with big budgets.

At this point, the competition Microsoft serves as to Nintendo could hardly be called 'great,' so much as extremely narrow, and beloved by a small, passionate audience that has very specific tastes in games that Microsoft and some third parties successfully cater to, but don't actually buy that many games in the long run. This generation's narrative of Microsoft (And Sony, for that matter), being the 'hardcore' company falls apart when little sells on the Xbox 360 outside of a scattering of FPS franchises - and Microsoft only has perhaps two major first party franchises that can be counted on to sell in Halo and Gears of War, though if I'm forgetting another, someone feel free to chime in - and the occasional major western RPG from Bethesda or Bioware, though those aren't guaranteed big sellers either, considering some of the stumbles Bioware's seen this generation too. Japanese games do not sell at all, and unless you're releasing a hyped up new iteration of a very popular franchise, you can't actually count on profitability on the 360.

As for Kinect, while it certainly successfully creamed the Move - which more or less died on arrival, as Sony's Vita now seems to be doing in Japan - in large part thanks to Microsoft giving it the biggest marketing budget in gaming industry history, it in no way turned into a rival for the Wii. It had one holiday season as a hot item back in 2010, but by this past holiday season, it was no longer a major gift item, nor moving much software to speak of. Game support for it dwindled significantly over the course of 2011. Last fall, when the game finally got a more violent title, we saw online and televised marketing for it basically begging people to buy the game - "The hardcore Kinect game you've been waiting for is finally here!" - and predictably, it was a huge bomb. Every multiplatform dance game released on it has sold better on the Wii and mostly gone ignored on Kinect - same with fitness releases. The family oriented kids' games have consistently tanked. And where the accessory largely remained a laughingstock among the 'core' gamers that never wanted it, it has long since faded from mainstream attention as anything more than a novelty, particularly compared to the Wii. It's interesting to look at the Wii narrative, where you'll see many on blogs insisting the system sold only as a 'Wii Sports and Wii Fit machine' to children and the elderly, where in reality the average Wii owner is documented to own more games than the average PS2 owner did. By contrast, Kinect seems to have largely sold as a Kinect Adventures machine, but little else has seen notable numbers on the platform. And with very few games revealed for Kinect in recent months and titles like the embarrassing Star Wars game from last E3 showing that Kinect possesses little more potential as a gaming device than Sony's very limited Eyetoy did on the PS2, coupled with Microsoft's less-than-serious efforts to push it as a mainstream platform, we've seen software support for the Kinect largely dry up, with little of note for it on the horizon. This also makes it kind of funny to see people suggesting that Microsoft will be banking heavily on another version of Kinect in their next Xbox - should they indeed ultimately release a third one - considering that it would be putting it gently to say they've struggled to sustain meaningful interest or develop a bountiful audience for the Kinect.

By contrast, the Wii sells a much larger variety of all sorts of games - both from Japanese and western developers - at a much lower cost, and it's been one of the industry's greatest failings this generation that they refused to take the market-dominating mass market console seriously.

In reality, the 'competition' Microsoft is to Nintendo is minor at best. They've put out two consoles that have lost them billions in net losses that they haven't even begun to make back in that division in the long term, and they've failed to gain any kind of mass market audience. They have a smaller, very vocal audience of fans - and it sounds like you're cut from that cloth, which is fine, as what matters most is that you're having fun with whatever game systems you own - that enjoys and supports a small number of major western titles that the 360 receives each year, but they're not a mass market audience. They don't have broad tastes. And they don't buy more games than the Wii audience. The financial difference between Nintendo and Microsoft in gaming this generation has been as stark as stark gets - Nintendo grew to their largest and most successful in the company's history, outgrowing the entirety of Sony (Which has been shrinking and seen multiple credit downgrades in the past couple of months alone.), while Microsoft has dealt with a lot of internal troubles, seen many employees and directors fired, and experienced a major financial fiasco due to the poor quality manufacturing of the Xbox 360, with the Red Ring of Doom upending that division of the company while they sold the console at a loss for most of the generation. That they lost merely as many billions as Nintendo made is staggering, and there's no way to spin that positively.

They aren't successfully competing - Kinect went rather expectedly from being marketed as a 'Wii killer' to turning into the Eyetoy 2 and failed to capture a broad audience or attract meaningful support. Microsoft itself took even larger losses on the 360 than the original Xbox, between both the massive leap forward they took with the technology - driving costs for both hardware manufacturing and game development through the ceiling, a problem that devastated Sony this generation too, considering that the PS3 is the biggest financial catastrophe in video game industry history - and a combination of cutting costs and poor hardware design leading to the RROD problem (Which they're still paying for repairs over to this day.), Microsoft dug a massive financial hole for themselves with the Xbox 360 this generation that the system could never hope to fill back in. Whenever they report 'profits,' they're always factoring out their losses - classic corporate spin and nothing more. Something Microsoft's been doing for longer than many of us have been alive. And when the vast majority of Xbox 360 games have failed to turn a profit thanks to the very narrow tastes of the system's userbase and the incredibly high cost of development - something Nintendo's been working on dealing with with the Wii U, to make it a less hostile environment to smaller developers - it's very difficult to paint Microsoft as 'great' competition to Nintendo.

You may not want to believe this - it's not a fun thing to accept as a fan of any platform, and believe me, as a Sega fan of old, I do understand - but this is the reality of the industry as things are now. Where the Wii broke records and reached new audiences formerly thought untouchable this generation, like the PS3, the Xbox 360 was a financial catastrophe for its parent company. Microsoft is financially solid enough outside of the Xbox division and extremely savvy when it comes to market and investor relations - especially when compared to the increasingly clunky, disjointed, and all-around poorly managed Sony - to make every effort to cover up how poorly the Xbox line has done and has continued to do for them. And people have lost their jobs over coming out and discussing the reality of the situation there, as mentioned in the article I previously linked. The fact of the matter is, after all these billions in losses over a decade, crossing two generations, it isn't a safe bet that the Xbox line will continue for too much longer. They're in a very difficult position with a third console, especially with the Wii U notably aggressively encroaching on territory thought to be Microsoft's this generation, and if they try to pull off another extremely powerful platform that ends up being a massive leap forward from the Xbox 360, they'll find themselves in another position where they're taking billions in losses on hardware for years again, while game development costs only get even worse than they are now. They're also under pressure over Xbox Live, with the competition offering free alternatives, and Nintendo known to be stepping up their online significantly this year to compete more directly on that level.

Considering how quickly the Kin and Zune were both axed as product lines after both led to hefty losses, with all that Microsoft has lost in the long term on the Xbox brand, its future is anything but guaranteed. I don't doubt that Microsoft will stick around in gaming if the Xbox line goes, though - they were producing PC games and releasing their own titles on Nintendo platforms as a third party before the original Xbox, much as Sony was. And I can easily see them channeling their vocal following in a new direction whenever the Xbox line does eventually come to a close, still keeping Xbox Live alive, but perhaps turning it into a direct Steam competitor on the PC and running their own games on it - as well as offering third parties incentives to use it too - as a third party service for some games on future Nintendo platforms, much like EA's Origin, Ubisoft's U-Play, the aforementioned Steam, and so on. Likewise, while Kinect has already shown its distinct limitations as a gaming platform, it's a very versatile piece of technology in terms of non-gaming applications, as many who've developed their own separate non-Xbox applications for it have already shown, so it certainly has a future as hardware goes. It's a bitter pill to swallow, and you really do have my sympathy - watching the slow burn of Sega's demise in hardware over the better part of a decade wasn't fun - but there's no saying you can't continue to enjoy the Xbox systems and the games they offer that you like while also being informed and accepting the actual reality of the financial state of the brand, which is anything but rosy. Sony is outright visibly falling apart over hefty losses across the whole company, and the PS3 nearly bankrupted them a few years back - they're nowhere near as well run, nor do they have the kind of massive financial reserves that Microsoft does. They can't cover up where they are in gaming like Microsoft can, and has deftly made every effort to do - but as Microsoft is also a better run company than Sony, they aren't going to keep throwing billions of dollars into a bottomless pit, like they have been with the Xbox line for the past decade. It would take something entirely unprecedented for an Xbox 720 to completely turn things around for Microsoft and make them the kind of money it would take to erase the losses they'll undoubtedly be taking on the hardware when it launches, let alone the entirety of the Xbox and Xbox 360 billions in losses. More likely than not, shareholders are going to pull the plug at some point, and we're going to see the Xbox brand and Live evolve into something else entirely - Microsoft will maintain some presence in gaming, there's no question of that, but when they can't compete and make money for themselves or third parties on their own consoles and are still billions in the hole in gaming ten years later, it's not even remotely wise for them to continue their current business model in gaming. And there are paths forward for Microsoft that would be and likely will be much more successful and profitable for them in gaming in the future. But financially speaking, they're clearly completely in over their heads in gaming hardware, and like Sony, don't know how to compete against a much smaller, numbler, and ultimately more adaptable company like Nintendo, where they completely understand what kinds of products they're making and selling, and know how to sell to wide audiences without it being something as cynical as Move and Kinect were.

At any rate, whether or not you choose to accept where Microsoft actually is in terms of finances and profits in gaming makes no difference either way, and it certainly shouldn't affect your enjoyment of their systems. What matters most to individual gamers is that you enjoy whatever you're playing, be it something as big as the PS2 or Wii or failed as the Dreamcast or Game Gear. But there's nothing to be gained from remaining willfully ignorang or uninformed about the financial realities of the industry today - if anything, it will help prepare you for the shocks of the major changes we're going to be seeing in gaming in the coming years. Sony's era is long over at this point. Microsoft hasn't proven themselves financially viable in gaming hardware a decade later. And Nintendo has come roaring back to the top and changed things significantly with the Wii and DS, and they're moving into another disruptive era with the 3DS and Wii U. Five, ten years from now, the industry will not look like what it looks like today - more likely than not, we won't see the Playstation or Xbox brands continuing on in console form. We may not even see another manufacturer step up and start pitting new home consoles against Nintendo unless a company like Apple or Google takes the plunge. But as we've been seeing for years now, with things like smartphones, iPhones, and iPads, what constitutes a video game platform is becoming more and more abstract and nebulous a concept. And the industry as we know it is only going to get foggier as the traditional console and handheld models have to compete with completely new and different circumstances and games being played on all sorts of additional home and personal devices.

The video game industry as we know it now, and as we've known it for decades is only going to continue to change into something radically different. These past two generations have shown that the market will not sustain three competing home consoles, and that hit the industry - which made the poor call of betting against Nintendo - incredibly hard this generation. Things are only going to get stranger, more exciting, and even more difficult to predict as the industry model as we know it continues to crumble under the spread of games to so many other devices and the problem of the rising costs of development wrecking developer bottom lines and shrinking the whole of the industry in a dangerous manner. It's evident that neither Sony nor Microsoft has what it takes to continue competing in the traditional console and portable models, where Nintendo is industry and market savvy enough to keep that up much longer than either of them. But that said, even Nintendo will have to adapt to the changing times and we may see them build their own gaming-focal smart devices in the future, adapting and mutating as necessary to survive while still producing dedicated gaming platforms. In Sony's case, dropping gaming hardware is a visible necessity as the company increasingly desperately needs some major reorganization and refocus in order to stay in business before their creditors call in their massive debts and we see them fold. In Microsoft's case, the Xbox brand's future is pretty much a matter of how much longer shareholders are willing to continue to see the company lose billions of dollars in gaming consoles that can't compete with Nintendo's mass market appeal and following. It's not so much a matter of if, but when - just as we Sega fans had to face when the Dreamcast came out. It was fun while it lasted, but it couldn't last.

#36 DPain

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 02:16 PM

I think you are unicorn tongueting. Yes I do like Xbox more than m wii, but that's because I think it's better. Xbox games not selling? Go look at Halo 3 sales compared to any wii game. It sold much more. MW3 on Xbox sold more than on wii. I don't think you know what you're talking about dude. Those articles you linked are from 2009. Xbox has made billions since then, and you said there defecit was in the billions. You're living in the past dude. One article says they didn't make one, while every other one says they did. They sold the most in 2011. They're fine.

#37 Ponkotsu

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 02:34 PM

Well, you've made it clear that you're not paying attention, and that's alright. It doesn't change or affect anything, but we've established that you're uninformed have literally no idea what Microsoft's financial situation is.

That said, I'm not really sure what you hope to accomplish by registering on a Wii U forum by registering, as an Xbox fan, just to establish this. All that really remains to be said is that you've dramatically overestimated how much Microsoft makes per unit, and just as dramatically underestimated the depth of their losses. But hey, listening to their PR has that effect.

And, what the hey - for fun, I dug up some more concrete numbers and came across some gold on both Microsoft internal and the problem of Microsoft gaming division profit obfuscation. In fiscal year 2010, we have Microsoft's gaming division losses only shrinking, but the losses still happening - the Xbox 360 division wasn't even making a per-unit profit in 2010. Over on Gamasutra, the analysis in the comments is the important part here - it's a direct breakdown of the obfuscation that Microsoft actively practices in order to cover up how poorly their gaming division is actually doing. Their only profit on the Xbox 360 division in fiscal year 2011 was in terms of $52 million - they tried to hide that within billions in profit with other unrelated divisions within Microsoft making profit in order to give off the appearance that the Xbox 360 was bringing in big money that it wasn't. When in their most recent fiscal year they weren't even making $100 million on the Xbox 360, when both Xboxes together have resulted in a net loss of numerous billions - $4 billion on the original Xbox alone, and over $7 billion on the Xbox 360 - they aren't even coming close to making back the money they've lost on the Xbox and 360 with what little profit the Xbox 360 actually does bring in. Like I've been saying in long form here, they're throwing money down a financial hole.

Meanwhile, the Xbox board of directors is, in fact, worried about the next Xbox taking an even bigger loss than the billions they've already lost on the Xbox 360. And as the article notes, the Xbox division is still down by a net loss in billions even now. So again, you may like Microsoft and the Xbox 360, but it doesn't mean they're doign well or competing with Nintendo - they are, in fact, still down by net billions in losses a decade later, with not an actual cent in net profit made on the Xbox or Xbox 360. As I've been writing far too many numerous posts detailing here. Every point I've made stands.

That all said, this thread should probably get back on track to Mii discussion at some point.

Edited by Ponkotsu, 26 January 2012 - 02:53 PM.


#38 DPain

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 03:03 PM

I don't think we can really get to an agreement with this whole xbox profits thing, since there really is no solid proof. Simply looking at the sales of a multi-platform easily shows Xbox games sell more. I don't think a multi-console game on any console has ever sold more than an Xbox one does. Xbox games make more profits than wii, and I can't see how you can argue that. I didnt make this account just to post Xbox fanboy comments. I use this forum to keep me up to date for wii u. Not sure if I am going to buy one, and am keeping a close look. Right now, my plans are to only by a new Xbox, but that could change. If I need a question answered, I will ask it in a related topic. This wasn't just a troll account, or I would have named it something silly.

#39 Ponkotsu

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 03:35 PM

We can't, because you're uninformed - I actually linked more than a few pieces of evidence there. It takes some rooting specifically because Microsoft obfuscates their numbers, but it is a solidly proven fact that the Xbox 360 has not made a net profit, and that they haven't in any way erased the billions in losses that it and the Xbox have taken.

Xbox 360 versions of multiplatform games it shares with the PS3 sell more, yes, but it's a small number of titles, and their sales are frontloaded. The vast majority of Xbox 360 games do not sell sell outside of a scattering of major yearly titles, due to the dramatic costs of development on the platform. And there are numerous cases of multi-console releases on the Wii actually outselling Xbox 360 releases. To name a few, virtually every LEGO series entry this generation - that franchise dosen't sell on non-Nintendo platforms - Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing, Sonic Unleashed, de Blob 2, pretty much every multi-platform release exercise and dance game (Including all the Just Dance games and Michael Jackson: The Experience), every Guitar Hero game this generation, all of the Rock Band games save for the first two, GoldenEye 007, Skylanders, and Rockstar Table Tennis.

Basically, saying that you didn't think a multi-console game on any console had ever sold more than an Xbox multi-console release revealed again that you haven't paid attention to software sales at all - the Wii has numerous games, both multiplatform and exclusive, that outsell the average Xbox 360 game every year. And the system's biggest sellers leave everything on the PS3 and 360 this generation in the dust, the Xbox 360's best seller being Kinect Adventures at 18 million, while Wii Sports is nearing 80 million. And Mario Kart Wii, which has crossed 30 million sold in the past year, is the best selling racer and online game in the history of the industry.

You're also uninformed if you think Xbox 360 games make more profits than the Wii - the average Xbox 360 game costs millions of dollars to develop and requires at least 1.5 million copies sold to break even, let alone turn a profit. I even provided examples in a previous post - in both Bulletstorm and LA Noire - of major games last year that failed to turn a profit despite coming from a major developer and receiving a huge marketing campaign, and in the latter case, put their developer out of business. Wii development, on the other hand, costs little more than PS2 and Gamecube era development on the whole - Wii games can easily be made for under a billion dollars, and most can break even and even make good money at less than 200,000 copies sold. The average Xbox 360 game does not come close to 1.5 million copies sold. You do realize that Halo and Call of Duty's sales are not every Xbox 360 game's sales, right? Please tell me you understand this simple concept. A few major franchises that sell very well are not all game franchises. Most Wii games, due to the low cost of development, easily and comfortably meet the sales requirements to at least break even, if not make a strong profit.

In fact, check out the Wikipedia article I linked - by December 2009, the Xbox 360 had sold 353.8 million games. By March last year, the Wii sold 716.09 million games. The Wii surpassed the 360 in total million-plus sellers in just this past year, too - and all WIi million sellers have reaped a massive profit, where many Xbox 360 million sellers have still lost a ton of money - on top of selling dramatically more games in total to a much larger userbase.

Good to hear you're not here to troll, anyway. But honestly, you could stand to pay more attention to actual numbers and sales trends. You've been blinded by a lot of PR and spin, and like I've said - I've got nothing against you being an Xbox fan or anything like that, but facts are facts. It's not hard to dig up actual evidence to everything I've been saying. The Xbox 360 gets more big name blockbuster titles in the west, but only a scattering of them are big overall titles every year - the vast majority of the Xbox's library does not break even or make a profit. The Wii has a much larger audience both in North America, Europe, Japan, and globally as a whole than the Xbox 360 does, and the Wii attach rate is on par with the 360's, most Wii owners owning plenty of games - more than even the average PS2 owner did. The Wii moves far more games every year than the PS3 and 360, and even the two combined. This is not something that hasn't been known, or that we haven't had numbers backing for years. Most Wii games don't make the charts because most Wii games released are smaller name titles with literally zero advertising, but in stark contrast to the average Xbox 360 game, the average Wii game has no problem turning a profit, even if it only sells 200,000 copies or less, where it's problematic financially in a huge way for the industry when the average PS3 and 360 game can't break even with even a million copies sold. The Xbox 360 has not been a wash of major industry profits - it's been very good to a very small number of huge franchises from major western companies in very few select genres. It's been entirely toxic to the rest of the industry, and the PS3's been even worse. There's a reason the industry spent most of this generation funding PS3 and 360 flops with money made on lower effort Wii games. This is a strategy that's been outright discussed before.

I'm about done with this, having dropped all the evidence I have. Am I wasting my time here, guys? I probably am, aren't I? If someone can't be convinced with facts, they can't be convinced. It's too tiring.

#40 Andy

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Posted 26 January 2012 - 04:40 PM

Dang it! I ran out of likes. :P
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