The biggest competition for a third-party developer on Wii is, obviously, Nintendo. But, that doesn't mean it's hopeless. Ubisoft is just one of the third-party developers that have found success on the console. How? Through strategic and careful planning.
"We saw that at the end of this year, there were not so many Nintendo products, and we thought there was a window of opportunity," said Ubisoft CFO Alain Martinez at the UBS Global Media Conference this week. "I believe to date, Nintendo is about 30-35 percent market share. So that means if you are aggressive, and if you come up with the right products, you can gain market share there." Because of this, the company expects Shaun White Snowboarding and Raving Rabbids TV Party to sell 1 million and 1.5 million units each, respectively.
It's not like Nintendo is making it so that third parties need to wait for the stars and planets to align, however. "Nintendo is surely not making it impossible for people to make good games [on its systems]," Martinez added. "They've been helping us make games. So it's up to us."
Of course, this isn't to say that Ubisoft has had nothing but luck with the Wii. They've tried to pile some stinkers on us in the past. But, monkey see, monkey do. The more successful third-party developers are on Wii, the more it attracts others to reach for their own slice of that pie.
Well now, who could've expected this? Surely not us! We're not being sarcastic at all. Walmart promotes a healthy supply of Wii stock and, sure enough, the retail giant has sold a lot of consoles. Tens of thousands by Monday afternoon, in fact.
Spokesperson Ravi Jariwala said the company saw a "very strong response to the additional inventory" that Walmart sold online and that they blew through stock ranging in the "tens of thousands" by "early Monday afternoon." What's surprising, though, is that despite selling all of those consoles, they're still in stock on the retailer's site. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, then hit up this linkage. Or, you know, just bash Walmart in the comments.
Update: Looks like the consoles are out of stock now. Bummer.
Behold what the Wii can do when it's actually available to shoppers. During last year's Thanksgiving holiday week, the console shifted 350,000 units in the U.S., even though shortages were pretty major at the time. With more Wiis in stores this year, that number jumped to 800,000. In a single freakin' week. To put that in perspective, Nintendo sold 803,000 Wiis in the whole of October. Italics. Yikes.
Satoru Iwata broke the happy news in an interview with Reuters, adding that "When the economy is strong, people tend to buy three things from the top of their wishlist. But when things are bad, people often buy only the first thing on their list. Fortunately for us a lot of shoppers put our products at the top of their list." That's a pretty sizeable "nyah!" to the competition.
Like the crows say in Dumbo, ‘I dun seen about everything’ , is how I felt after reading this article by Forbes.com. It’s the usual ‘Why The Wii Is Successful’ piece, but one interesting statistic popped out.
Nintendo is not only selling the most consoles of the big three (Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony), they’re making money off those consoles as well. This is a rather amazing statistic because generally speaking console makers lose money on hardware. Traditionally, the lost money on hardware is made up through accessory sales and software. Nintendo doesn’t have to worry about that route as they’re making $6 a unit for the Nintendo Wii.
So, let’s do some numbers. $6 x 35 million units sold = $210 million. While these are just analyst numbers, they are more than likely accurate. Because all you really have to do is figure how much the hardware components for putting together a Nintendo Wii cost.
It’s not hard to see how Nintendo is able to accomplish this feat. While Microsoft and Sony completely bank on technological behemoth hardware specs, Nintendo has tried a different approach. Lessen the specs, power wise, and make their console more readily usable to a larger group. Needless to say its paid off, as $210 million is quite a bit of money. That’s not even tallying up software, and accessory sales which have even a better margin than their hardware.
Bet you wished you would have invested in Nintendo stock during the Gamecube era? I know I do, I was just too poor then.
I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. My jeans might not fit today, but all the turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing I engulfed was well worth the pounds. Of course, the big story in the world of video games isn’t about Thanksgiving but the day after.
All kinds of retail stores had insane electronics sales for the day known as ‘Black Friday’. The deals being exceptionally good this year because of items being overstocked. Mostly due to our tough economic times. This of course leads to massive crowds, and people creating herds running through stores (I like to think of the Wildabeast scene from Lion King), trying to be the first to grab that special item they’ve been salivating over.
This year the idea of Black Friday craziness was taken to a whole new level. One Wal-Mart worker was killed after being trampled by a mob of shoppers looking to get into the retail store when it opened. There was a shooting that occured at a Toys-R-Us, though according to reports it wasn’t over anything consumer related. But still, does that even matter?
My Black Friday favorite this year comes in video form though. This video is taken of shoppers trying to grab at the Guitar Hero/Xbox 360 bundle. Something about actually being able to see it, takes it to a whole new level. I like the guy towards the end with the hat on, running towards the camera looking like he will forearm anyone that gets in his way.
So, did anyone go out and join in on the Black Friday craziness this year? If so, please share any and all stories. Even if you were the one doing the pushing and shoving.
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The biggest competition for a third-party developer on Wii is, obviously, Nintendo. But, that doesn't mean it's hopeless. Ubisoft is just one of the third-party developers that have found success on the console. How? Through strategic and careful planning.
