PS3 to See Best Growth in January as Wii Suffers

According to Arvind Bhatia, a game industry analyst for Sterne Agee, Nintendo's little white console has been experiencing a "meaningful" In january, whereas the PS3 has been picking up momentum. Although January's NPD numbers aren't published until around February 12th, Bhatia believes the PS3 "will have the best year-over-year growth in January among all consoles."
Bhatia also attributes the Wii's decline in January due to the lack of hardware availability.

[Nathan Drake2]

another 50$ free card from microsoft.the only way...

[spektical]

haha i guess selling 200k wii consoles in a month is horrible for nintendo XD. honestly who doesnt have the wii already? I have it, collecting dust in my ps3 box. lol, i'll wip it out to play smash or mario kart though :)

[mistajeff]

Well, Mr. Bhatia, you should be a little more grateful considering the strings I had to pull to get the Alliance to release your wife's remains.

ANYONE??? ANYONE?!??

[DaTruth]

-

[colossi16]

shepard?

[WLPowell]

by 360/ps3 standards and it's failing, but the PS3 is selling bad by wii standards and it's selling great? Just take solace that noone plays their wii after they buy it. And spektical, I don't...

[TOO PAWNED]

hes talking about YOY % something you kids don't get, can't blame you. So .... and naive.

[Gr81]

Whatta slant on the title. Here's the thing

1)Wii is still selling more than either competitor by a sizeable margin.

2)Wii is doing this while experiencing shortages

3)PS3 numbers last year around this time were so weak that PS3 could be selling 360 like numbers and be up massively yoy.

I love how they don't mention the why Wii is "suffering" its due to shortages you know the kind where you sell damn near 4m units the month prior and have less stocked for the following month?

Gotta love N4G.

[ZoidsRaven]

Basically this is that "bubble bursting" articles about the Wii?
Remember what people said back then about:
"the Wii fad being over"
"victim of it's own success"
"the Wii's bubble finally being burst"

And look what happened......... Look what happened. 7_7
I figured you analysts would learn by now.

Point? It's not over til it's over. The same logic applies to the other consoles.

[fear88]

The industry was looking at it in terms of motion gameplay in traditional games as a fad. But in that regard they are indeed correct because many third party publishers and developers have expressed dissatisfaction over their sales and lack of return of invested time and money.

While Nintendo marketed the Wii for everyone but the hardcore, third party developers were busy making games for the Wii to market to a niche demographic of Wii owners, the hardcore gamers. In that respect Nintendo did nothing but harm any and all sales of games that were by their own merit great games.

Its as if a sushi company started selling burgers while changing their name to reflect their new endeavor. They would still most likely sell sushi, but the average consumer would not know that having just looked at the restaurant sign and read, "burger palace".

[Fierce Musashi]

fear88:
The reason they have expressed dissatisfaction is because they expected their titles to sell even with a lot of their titles having lack great quality and a high majority of them having ill advertising. They undoubtedly didn't really care too much for the Wii as they didn't the other platforms, even from the beginning of it's life. With their lack of those elements, especially proper advertising, they naturally fall short. But whatever. I'm sure you would want to pay full retail for MadWorld (4-5 hour near easy game with extremely low replay value), DS: Extraction (lazy rail shooter there only to test/lab rat the market), RE: DC (another lazy rail shooter), etc. They've treated the Wii as second banana from the start. It's only up until recently that they have even tried to rival Nintendo quality on the Wii.

Nintendo wanted the Wii to be everyone's gaming console, including the hardcore. They didn't give us Brawl, MKWii, SMG, NSMBWii, Prime 3, Prime Trilogy, Zelda TP, etc. for nothing.

[fear88]

You claim that 3rd parties have been lazy yet you seem to exclude a few great third party games. Like Okami, RE:4 Wii, and No More Heroes. And you go on to list some games that were great by Nintendo but yet some of them were on the gamecube and had better iterations on the gamecube.

Twilight Princess was an overall identical experience between the 'cube and the Wii.

Brawl wasn't as great as Melee and infact reflected overall laziness to make something that could have been better.

NSMBWii was a good game but only a small step-up from the DS iteration and lacked some creativity in terms of gameplay modes.

Metroid Prime 3 is included in Metroid Prime Trilogy, there was no reason to inflate the list when it was obvious (even though I agree its a great game, probably the best Wii game to date IMO)

[Fierce Musashi]

fear88:
Another point in my post was advertising. If a title is released such as No More Heroes, or whatever, they fail to advertise it properly. I wasn't talking about just quality.

Lol Look at you, trying to down play quality titles. The point of my listing those titles were to prove that they are still making quality titles for the hardcore gamer.

"NSMBWii was a good game but only a small step-up from the DS iteration and lacked some creativity in terms of gameplay modes."

Four player co-op, new power up, competitive four modes. What

"Brawl wasn't as great as Melee and infact reflected overall laziness to make something that could have been better."

Your opinion. Brawl is way better than Melee on many level.

[fear88]

You do talk about advertising, but to whom?

Where was the advertising for Metroid Prime Trilogy or 3? Where was it for Twilight Princess?

It was not within the same frequency and variety of channels as NSMBWii, Mario Kart Wii, and to a lesser degree, Brawl. Which reflects a certain shift in advertising demographics and a difference in overall sales.

Would you advertise a Resident Evil Game at the Mon-Thur 7:30am timeslots on Disney Channel? What about No More Heroes with its sexual context?

I am pretty sure that those would otherwise work for Mario Kart and NSMB, however.

"Four player co-op, new power up, competitive four modes. What"

The four-player co-op was the only feature added on top of NSMBWii. Competitive modes were there from the DS iteration and you would be foolish to buy the same game with a few other powerups.

"Your opinion. Brawl is way better than Melee on many level."

The online itself was broken at launch and was never remedied. It stayed the same otherwise except for the characters. The multitude of modes were also greater in Melee. If you take things out and make it stale and half-baked is that not an attribute of laziness? I think so.

And I fail to see where any of your points redeem any value at face or contextual.

[Fierce Musashi]

You see, that's the thing. Look at the pattern in all of those titles there. What do they have in common? For one, they are first party Nintendo titles and they are well known franchise titles. So, naturally they will sell based on so little. Also, I was constantly seeing ads for Brawl during morning children's program hours and WWE wrestling (which apprently gets a lot of views), same thing with Carnival Games.

Third parties generally need to advertise when making titles that aren't in well known franchises as well as new IP. If it's in a franchise that has been know for like as long Nintendo titles are and has a famous mascot then they would most likely sell based on little because the word will get around quick that such a title it to arrive. Halo, anyone? Another thing I'd like to to point out is that the casual market has always been bigger than the 'hardcore' market. Which explain why a lot of these 'hardcore' titles bomb or sell weak. If third parties are sending out good quality then they poorly advertising their title (vice versa or do neither of the sort). Nevertheless, if they want their title to sell they should spport it as if it were an HD title. It's not that hard to fix their "dissatifaction", plus they would profit better since it's not an HD title.

-NSMBWii
The overall game is different from the DS. Different levels, powers ups, four player campaign mode, four player competitive modes (Free-for-All & Coin Battle). You talk about it like it's a straight up port, when it's not. Just because it's has a similar name to an already existing title, doesn't mean it's a port of that title.

-SSB: Brawl
No one can deny Brawl's online sucks. However, it's never always the case. I've been in a lot of matches that have little to almost most no lag. And at the very least, at least Brawl has online period. Hm let's see, easier way to take snap shots than melee, a longer adventure mode that can now be call a campaign, replays, online spectator mode, stage builder (not much but like I said: at least it has it), sharing data, ETC. Teh, let's just agree to disagree. Lol :/