Nintendo's E3 showing--and beyond

[Bront]

I know it's just me, but...

What kind of company undercuts their own product with a cheaper alternative? How can the PS3 not hurt the sales of $1000 Blu Rays?

I understand that console prices are this and that, but looking at the product only as a Blu Ray, it doesn't make any sense. To me at least.

The idea is that if the PS3 flourishes, people will lean towards buying Blue Ray disks, which will give them a leg up on the compeating HD DVD by Toshiba.

The difference is in strorage space (Blue Ray is 100 GB, vs 40 GB for HD DVD), and copy protection (Blue Ray is supposedly a closed standard for movies, preventing copying of any kind, HD DVD is more open. Blue Ray is favored by most of the recording industry, HD DVD is favored more by personal rights actovists). HD DVD is also cheeper to make at the moment (Media and chip), though in the long run (3-5 years), that should become less of an issue.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I was under the impression the capacity of HD-DVD was 30GB vs 50 for Blu-ray?

Edit: From what I'm reading the single layer discs are 15 for HD and 25 for Blu Ray, with DL discs doubling that. The 100-200GB discs are something in development by TDK.

 

[Bront]

I don't remember where I read 40/100, but wouldn't supprise me if I was wrong, of that was projected or old.

 

[John Crichton]

The delay in the PS3 was part of the reason why they were announced so high. It was supposed to provide a baseline for the lower end BR players, but the delay forced them to come to market early with a price.

My guess is that they will drop to withing a few hundred of the PS3 by the time it comes out.

I doubt that they will drop the price $200-300 within 6 months of launch. And if you literally mean few (meaning 3,as opposed to couple meaning 2), than maybe we'll $900 BR players around the holidays. I can possibly see that.

 

[Aesthetic Monk]

IGN's got a nice list of expected Wii launch titles.

To summarize (with publisher/developer info in parentheses):

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo; also a GameCube title)
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Nintendo/Retro Studios)
Wii Sports (Nintendo)
Red Steel (Ubisoft/Ubisoft Paris)
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (Activision/Toys for Bob)
Madden NFL 2007 (EA/EA Canada)
Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirros (Square Enix)
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (SEGA)
Metal Slug Anthology (SNK Playmore)
Trauma Center: Second Opinion (Atlus Games)
Elebits (Konami)
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (Activision/TBA, Raven Software)
Blitz: The League (Midway)
Rayman Raving Rabbids (Ubisoft/Ubisoft Paris)
SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab (THQ/Blitz Games)
Disney/Pixar's Cars (THQ/Rainbow Games, Kobalt)

What looks good to me: If it holds, it's a pretty good line-up. A Wii-exclusive Maio title would obviously have been nice here, but I'd rather have a great game than a rushed one, and LoZ should sell some units even though it's also a GC title. I speak heresy, but MP 3 is of almost no interest to me, though it's a good mature-ish title to have in the lineup, absolutely. Wii Sports will, I hope, be a pack-in--promises to be a good tech demo, if nothing else. A Wii-mote-savvy Madden will be huge if it plays right and, along with Blitz, could go a ways toward ensuring Wii has a more consistent stream of sports titles than the GC (though I couldn't care less, personally). If Ubi tunes up the controls for Red Steel, it should be awesome. Trauma Center (Wii-mote surgery!) is definitely intriguing, and I'm pumped for a new Monkey Ball, even though I'm mediocre at it. Overall, a nice range of genres and pretty good 3rd-party support.

What's missing: Would've loved to have seen Animal Crossing in here--the kind of game perfect for networked play--but I gather from IGN that it's barely begun. Except for Wii Sports, I don't actually see a lot on here that I think will automatically appeal to the nongamer. The forthcoming Wario would've been good, maybe, or (dare I say) even a Mario Party game. In short, I can't see a lot of games that my wife--who was surprisingly interested in getting a Wii--would really want to play, other than Wii Sports and maybe Monkey Ball. There's just not a lot of pick-up-and-play titles in here right now.

 

[CrimsonWineGlass]

(And yeah - that whole over-emphasis on "online" blows... and has been proven to be less than popular, as even the supposedly-lauded Xbox Live can barely get 10% of it's user base online... and those that are on often complain about the poor overall experience - there's a reason why X-Play runs a continuing joke feature called "It Came From XBox Live". What a bunch of freaks who hang out on Live. But whatever. As long as it remains a 'bonus' and isn't integral to the game, I'm fine with it.)

Hey, online can be enjoyable. I have found that sometimes when I can't get a friend over, I go online. I think the only thing I am sad about regarding the Wii though, is the fact that Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is not for it. The first person combat would be wonderful with the Wii's controller. I don't know what I'm going to go for yet when I get it, though I assume it will mostly depend on how much money I have. Its hard to believe how long it was ago when I was coming up with 4 letter names for final fantasy 1 and taking dares to make an entire party of white mages.

 

[Jdvn1]

I'm looking forward to LoZ and Dragon Quest, but I would've liked to see Super Smash Brothers Brawl in there.

... And some games require old controllers? Weird.

 

[Jdvn1]

Its hard to believe how long it was ago when I was coming up with 4 letter names for final fantasy 1 and taking dares to make an entire party of white mages.

Those were the good days. When names didn't need vowels.

 

[Orius]

Part of that is because it's also a Blue-Ray DVD player, which should retail for about $400 by themselves.

Not that I'd pay that much, and I don't care for the copy locking on the Blue-Ray (no more personal backups, at least for the average user)

Yeah, that does make sense. But do gamers really care about Sony's format war with HD-DVD, and will they be willing to shell out all that cash?

I'm also hoping Blu Ray will become the next Beta as well, even if it does have a higher memory capacity.

Edit: Looked on Wikipedia to learn more about Beta because I all I know about it was that it was a joke when I was a kid. I learned a very amusing fact about Beta too: the company that deveolped it:

Home video cassette recorders became available in the early 1970s, though the first system to be successful was Sony's Betamax.

HAR HAR HAR!

I should say that I don't really like sony, and I'd love to see them take a nosedive, so I'm not really all that objective about my view.

 

[Bront]

Don't have a link, but Reciently Nintendo did announce that the Wii would be less than $250 (which could mean $249.99) in the US, and they hope to have something like 4-6 million units for sale.