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Sony PS3 lead over Wii in Japan and Nintendo’s larger audience

Sony PS3 lead over Wii in Japan and Nintendo’s larger audience

By: Daniel Chubb | December 10, 2008 | 5 Comments

This recent PS3 lead over Wii in Japan may be partly due to saturation of the Japanese market. Almost everyone probably has a Wii already. Another reason is probably inclusion of a blu-ray player in the PS3 and consumers playing catch-up now that the format war is over. Why not get a gaming console along with your new blu-ray player?

However, in the much larger U.S. market, Wii is still trouncing PS3 sales almost 3 to 1! With its blu-ray player, superior processor, 80GB hard drive and built-in wireless Internet connection (can you say Vudu?), PS3 should be the new broadly popular console, not Wii.

Maybe Sony management still dreaming about regaining dominance among traditional gamers. With a superior console and new games arriving in 2009, their dream may come true, but it won’t matter. Nintendo is selling to an audience that is inherently 3 to 4 times larger. Hardcore gamers sit for hours shooting, crashing and bombing everything in sight. The rest of the world has a much wider range of interests and far less spare time, so the idea of combining play with physical movement is key.

At the root of expanded audiences for the Wii console is the fact that Sony and Microsoft have been leapfrogged by a revolution in virtual reality. Computer games have benefited from improvements in graphics, sound, tactile feedback and multi-player functionality. PS3 and Xbox 360 excel in these areas. But having games respond to the movement of your body eclipses recent improvement in these other areas and keeps Nintendo Wii selling out at stores around the world.

Thanks: Mike G

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  • Mornelithe

    lol, fanboy garbage. While the Wii truly is a great gimmicky toy. Yes, it’s a gimmick. Alot of people get tired of it pretty quickly. Myself included. The PS3 and even the 360 will eventually move into the motion sensing world, heck, the PS3 is already capable of much more than the Wii in that dept (Ala PSEye, and the Wireless Sixaxis), even on their worst days, both MS and Sony have more revenue to throw into this than Nintendo. Either way, Product Reviews always interestingly enough on the opposite end of Sony. Take a look at their ‘relevant posts’ listed below. nothing but Ps3 outsold blah to blah in whatever month. I’ll just sit back and enjoy my BR and hi-def TV. Enjoy your poor mans toy.

    Morne

  • Boohoo

    LOL… At the first poster. I agree with you. I’ve got a PS3 and PC for my core needs and my Wii is used when my lady friends are around ;)

  • Serg

    Mornelithe,
    Couldn’t have put it in better words myself, and I still have not seen anything good about the system. Whoever typed this article wasn’t thinking right. PS3 is not a Blue Ray player. It is a video game system that failed in the market. The Blue Ray drive out-puts movies at 60Hz refresh rate, while a real Blue Ray player puts it at 120Hz. So, they call it the Super Computer LOL… that is sad that people fall for that one…

  • cheesehead

    i’m sat here chuckling at the clearly bitter first poster. for a gimmick to still be the hottest latest gen console for 3 years running is quite a feat. why can’t sony come up with a similar gimmick to try and head off evil nintendo? oh, they did, it was called sixaxis and was a panicked response to the wiimote. they also needed something to fit into the slot that the rumble fell out of…..

    suck that lemon some more lolololololololol

  • he

    Defiantly right 1st poster.

    Has anyone ever seen the uk tv sitcom Blackadder? The 4th series is set in WWI period in the trenches. And blackadder an army captain decides to take the easy way out and join the airforce inwhich are nicknamed the ’20 minuters’. This is due to the average life expectancy of a pilot in the air of 20 minutes.
    I name the audience that Nintendo is selling the the Wii to the ’20 minuters’ as thats the only amount of time Wii players put into gaming on the Wii. Its happening all the time, people are just getting bored of the Wii, getting past the gimmick and are losing interest.

    My sister’s boyfriend was hinting to my mom that my sis and him wanted a Wii for xmas. When my mom bought it a few weeks back my sis said to me that she hopes my mom isn’t getting her a Wii as she finds them to be boring. She played her friends Wii before and they all get bored of it.
    I did say to my sis boyfriend that he doesn’t want the Wii as I was telling him that after you get past what seems like loads of family fun, you’ll put it down after a little while and won’t go back to it. To me its like those tv ads where they show the action figure they are selling and it looks ten times better on the ad with its special effect and sound effects, and you have the action figure in the jungle or something doing loads of top stunts. Then when you buy the action figure its nothing like they potray it to be in the ads, just this doll that does nothing. To me that it what the Wii is.
    Anyway he has the Wii and we set it up on boxing day and within an hour we went through about 5 games as we was getting bored of each game that we tried. The thing is that he isn’t what I call a gamer, never bothered with games before but all of a sudden wanted the Wii.
    Its probably a common story with the majority of Wii owners.