This comment from an article about Why the Wii U will be the next Dreamcast makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. "The reason why Sega failed and became a 3rd party publisher is for many reasons. Sega Game Gear – 11 million Sega Nomad – 1 million Sega CD – 6 million Sega 32X – less than 1 million Sega Saturn – 9.5 million Sega Dreamcast – 10 million All of those console sold VERY poorly. The only console Sega ever sold that crack the 20 million barrier was the Sega Genesis (40 million.) That was their most successful console. As big of a name that Sega was, the never really hit a home run with any of the hardware. The Genesis was the best shot and was probably when Sega was at it’s finest. Adding in the numbers of the Sega Genesis and Sega Master System you have approximately 92 million consoles sold to date from Sega. However after the 16-Bit era came to an end Sega’s decline stared rapidly. Now let’s look at Nintendo’s console history. Nintendo Color TV Game – 3 million (Winner of 1st Gen) Nintendo Entertainment System – 61 million (Winner of 3rd gen) Super Nintendo Entertainment System – 49 million (Winner of 4th Gen) Nintendo 64 – 32 million Nintendo Gamecube -21 million Nintendo Wii – 100 million (Winner of 7th Gen) Nintendo Wii U – 3.08 million in 45 days GameBoy -118 million (Winner of 3rd and 4th Gen) GameBoy Advance – 81 million (Winner of 5th gen) Nintendo DS 153 million (Winner of 6th and 7th Gen and best-selling console ever) Nintendo 3DS – 30 million (outselling the PSVita with a 4-to-1 ratio and selling at a faster pace than the original DS did.) So, to date, Nintendo has sold approximately 650 million consoles worldwide in 40 years. That’s more than all the consoles sold by Sony, Sega, and Microsoft COMBINED. I’ll give you a moment to let this sink in because it is a lot of information, but it is necessary to prove my point. ..okay. The final nail in the coffin of Sega in terms of making hardware had nothing to do with the horsepower of the Dreamcast, or the lack of DVD functionality. What killed the Dreamcast is one simple thing. Piracy. The Dreamcast was probably the easiest console in history to pirate. Hackers had a field day with it, and so did consumers. Why pay $50 dollars for NBA2k or Shenmue when I can download a boot disc and at worst pay $10 dollars from a ‘psst, over here’ guy? Or even just download the ROMs and use a disc-burning software to burn the games. Thousands of people started doing that and software sales tanked. Traditionally companies take major losses on hardware sales and make up the difference in software sales until the console starts to turn a profit. That is one reason why 3rd party support is so coveted. However if you console sells as a profit, you don’t need 3rd party support to make up the difference. That is one of the reasons why the Nintendo Wii was so successful and lucrative for Nintendo. Despite not having as much 3rd party support as Microsoft or Sony, the Wii made a profit of $40 from day one. So any revenue coming from 3rd parties was just icing on the cake for Nintendo. Basically, the wrap the whole Sega issue up I’ll say this. There is NO COMPARISON between Sega and Nintendo. To even fix your mouth do do so SCREAMS either a lack of intelligence, purposeful bias, or laziness to look up the facts. Now. As far as the Wii U being ‘underpowered’ or not ‘true next-gen.’ First of all, what does ‘underpowered’ mean? Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines it as Un-der-pow-ered 1- driven by an engine of insufficient power 2 – having or supplied with insufficient power Okay. So let’s go with that definition. Does the Wii U lack sufficient power? Well lets see. Several demos were shown last year to show off what was supposed to be “next-gen” graphics. Games such as Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, Star Wars 1313, Watch Dogs, etc. We were also led to believe that the Star Wars 1313 game was made using the Unreal Engine 4(an engine the Wii U ‘supposedly’ can’t run.) It was later revealed that not only were thee games slated to be on the PS3 and 360, not only were a couple confirmed to be footage from PC builds rather than console builds, but the Star Wars 1313 demo was running on Unreal Engine 3. Not 4, 3. Now, I’ll take you back to E3 2011. Nintendo unveils the Wii U for the first time. The show off two demos that give a glimpse of what the Wii U can do graphically. The first we see is what has come to be known as the Japanese Garden Demo. An absolutely gorgeous scene with breathtaking visuals all real-time and PLAYABLE to the people at the show. Then we saw the Zelda HD demo which was done in the Twilight Princess art-style. Again, gorgeous graphics far beyond anything the Wii ever had and right there with anything that has been deemed “next-gen graphics.” These demos were confirmed to be for powerful that they could not run on the PS3 and 360. Keep in mind that this footage was done in only 3 weeks time and with alpha kits. The final dev kits that developers have now are substantially more powerful. VP of Epic Games Mark Rein has stated that he was impressed with the demos and that they could do even more with them using Unreal Engine 3 yet. That is an interesting comment considering that the Star Wars 1313 demo that everyone claimed as “next-gen graphics” was also done using UE3. He also stated that while no game is in development for the Wii U that uses UE4, the Wii U can use UE4. The CEO of CryTek has come out to say that not only does the Wii U run CryEngine 3, not only does it run it “beautifully,” but there is a game in development from a well-known developer using CryEngine 3. Just recent Criterion Games let it be known in a recent interview that Need For Speed: Most Wanted for the Wii U will be using the same assets as the PC version because of the power and memory the system has. This is important for a number of reasons. For one, it shows that there is NO EXCUSE for the lackluster multiplat ports from various developers that are currently on store shelves for the Wii U. They have the same dev kits Criterion Games have. Yes, getting used to a console in which the GPU does the bulk of the workload rather than the CPU which is the way the 360 and PS3 are constructed can be a challenge. Yes, finding out how to unleash the power of the Wii U with all the embedded RAM in the GPU is also a challenge. However, Criterion Games has proven that the problem is not a lack of horsepower in the console, but rather a lack of horsepower in the motivation of the programmers. Let’s be honest. We are lazy. People would rather just copy-and-paste a game (*cough Call of Duty *cough-cough*) rather than build something from scratch. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of hard work. I understand that. All I say to that is be honest and say THAT rather than making excuses for laziness by saying that the console is ‘underpowered’ or not true “next-gen.” The Wii U runs a custom 1.2 GHz Tri-core PowerPC 750 CPU built to function like a Power7. It does not do all the things a Power7 can do, but it does some of them and behaves in the same way. The Wii U has 2GB of RAM, and the GPU is a custom ATI Radeon E6760. This set up annihilates the spec of the 360 and PS3. How anyone could suggest that hardware 8-9 years old could be more powerful than this should simply close their mouths and never open them again. If the Wii U underpowered? No. It is less powerful than the PS4? You betcha. Will it also be less powerful than the XBOX 720? I wouldn’t doubt it. Will it matter? Probably not. Here is why. Every console war from the 1st gen until now has been won by a weaker console or the weakest console. Nintendo Color TV Game Atari 2600 NES SNES PS1 PS2 Wii GameBoy GameBoy Advance Nintendo DS Every last one of those system had at least one or more console more powerful than they were and in the case of the GameBoy and Wii they were the LEAST powerful and won. The most powerful systems ALWAYS FAIL. Odyssey Atari 5200 Atari 7800″ NEO-GEO N64 XBOX PS3 Game Gear Nomad PSP The last 40 years have proven that there is no financial advantage to gorge a console with raw horsepower. What wins a console war is when a company is successful in convincing casual gamers and non-gamers alike a reason for having your console in the house. That’s it. It really is that simple. The ‘core’ gamers are going to buy a system regardless, but that is a very small percentage despite what the general consensus thinks. The average person has neither the money, nor the interest to rush out and buy the latest console just because it’s there. So to wrap this whole thing up I’ll finish with a few more numbers. The Wii U sold 3 million consoles worldwide in 45 days. It sold more in it’s first month than the PS2, PS3, 360, and Wii did. It sold more in it’s first December than the PS2, PS3, 360, and Wii did. As a matter of fact, it sold more December worldwide than the PS3 and 360 did COMBINED their first December. 3.08 million Wii U’s in 45 where it took the PS2, PS2, 360, and Wii 5 MONTHS to reach that status. All this with a shaky launch library of poorly-ported retread multiplats, a TERRIBLE marketing campaign by Nintendo, and two solid months with no 1st party material. Yes, Nintendo had a terrible January. There is no reason to buy a Wii U right now if you haven’t already. However, if the Wii U can sell as much as it has under the aforementioned circumstances, what do you think is gonna happen when games like Super Mario Galaxy 3, Mario Kart 8, Yoshi’s Yarn, Wii Fit U, Wii Sports U, Pikmin 3, Bayonetta 2, Xenosaga, Windwaker HD, Smash Bros, Retro Studios game, and Miyamoto’s new IP hits store shelves? And that is just what we KNOW is coming. Undoubtedly, Nintendo has a lot more surprises to show at E3. The bottom line is, Nintendo is fine. They had 10 billion dollars CASH in the bank. They cannot sell another things and LOSE 250 million dollars a year and not go bankrupt until 2052. With their assets worth they could ride even until 2075 before complete collapse. So what they lost money. What company isn’t nowadays? Sony is selling off assets left and right to pay off debt. They are hemorrhaging money from ALL their divisions. They just unveiled a console that is going to lose TONS of money per-sale because of the hardware. Yet, people seem to think Sony is fine and Nintendo is going 3rd party. Ridiculous. Nintendo is going no place. They’ve been here for 40 year ad Lord willing they’ll be here 40 more. The Wii U may or may not win the next-gen, but it won’t be the loser.” ~ D2K
Posted on: Sat, 01 Jun 2013 19:05:30 +0000
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