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Predictions on Discontinuing Sets and their Secondary Market Value
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Do you mean to tell me that you buy a few of something and quickly flip them for a profit? That's unbelievable and quite deplorable behavior I might add...lol ;)
To be fair, though, I'm not particularly thrilled about Sony OR Microsoft's next-gen prospects. I suppose we'll see how E3 goes.
I almost broke down and purchased the Star Wars edition of it, the one that looks like R2-D2, just because it looks so cool, but then thought better of it, that is rather dumb. :)
We own a Wii, have since nearly launch (was hard to find back then). We played it for years, but frankly it hasn't been on for about 2 years now, other than to transfer the old Miis when we purchased the Wii U this Christmas.
Have to say, having played with the Wii U, I think it is Nintendo's last home console, they are going to be pushed out simply because they are no longer competing with Sony/Microsoft, but with Apple/Google for casual gamers.
PC games have been held back for years now because of the "frozen in time" aspect of 360/PS3. Both machines have 512 MB of memory (really 256MB usable), and they both pre-date unified stream processers on graphics cards (the nVidia 8800GT being the card that replaced what both machines were based on (the 7xxx series).
In short, while resolutions and textures on the PC have been higher for awhile, the overall world detail has been limited by those machines.
3 things have me super excited about the new machines:
1. Both have 8 cores. This will FINALLY get game developers to figure out how to program for many core CPUs.
2. Both have 8GB of unified memory. This will FINALLY get game developers to move to 64-bit programming and actually use the memory in our PCs.
3. Both are AMD x64 CPUs. This will make porting games between PC and the consoles amazingly easy. This will save many development dollars and allow those dollars to be spent on the actual games, rather than fighting the system's differences.
These 3 things are actually huge, very nice for everyone, even if you never buy either of them and only play on the PC.
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BTW, if you want an idea of how far out of date the PS3/360 really are... the iPad 4's graphics processor is actually more powerful than the one in the PS3.
Side question based on your user name... Were you aware that the second best live album of all time was recorded at Leeds?
However...
Sales have nearly stopped... How bad? In January Nintendo sold 57,000 units in the US, January 2007 (same 3 months post launch) for Wii? 435,000 units.
In April, Wii U sold just 40,000 units. In April 2007, Wii sold 360,000 units. Wii U is selling 11 consoles for every 100 Wii consoles sold at the same point post-launch.
That is really bad... terribly bad... atrociously bad... and all the spin in the world doesn't change the fact that sales for the Wii U over the past 4 months are down almost 90% from the same 4 month post-launch period of Wii.
---------------
To provide a comparison:
At launch in Nov 2005, XBox 360 sold 326,000 consoles, by April 2006, they sold 295,000 consoles, a drop of just 9.5%. Compare that to the 89% drop in sales Wii U is suffering.
I'm a Nintendo fan, I own a Wii U, LEGO City Undercover is a lot of fun. But so far this system is a disaster from a business point of view. EA had a number of launch titles, but they have already publicly pulled the plug and publicly stated they have nothing further in the works for Wii U.
Will Nintendo survive on Mario and Zelda? Sure, for awhile... But is it enough to stay in the hardware business making only 1st party games?
In fairness, there isn't much to talk about this topic right now, what predictions on retired sets would you like to talk about?
And please don't say Death Star or Fire Brigade! :)
I wasn't very interested in it when it came out, but lately I've been thinking about taking the plunge. I'm not sure what's changed; my subconcscious must have been telling me I've been too sensible lately with not a whole lot on my wishlist!
I have a stack of them on the shelf, I look at them almost every day. Sadly, I feel no real motivation to build one. Personally I think it is 1-2 feet short, it is lacking in bottom half detail, it doesn't seem "epic" enough.
I have 10030 UCS ISD on display, and it is much taller and thicker than SSD is. I suspect that if I put them together, somehow SSD will seem... not so Super...
Of course, now that I say that, I probably have to build one so I can put them together and post pictures. :)
Sigh, it is all your fault you know! :)
Is that really here to stay another 18 months?
I still havnt received my 2 x B-wings from Toys R US yet, I usually receive by now to the UK.
Typical TRU I suppose.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/imperiumdersteine/6134227680/
I have ordered in the past from .com and its got to the UK in 2 weeks. Anyway I'll stop ranting now to avoid the thread going in the wrong direction!
They handle all customer service issues. Email is [email protected]
Additionally, you're using year-over-year for your 360 model (apples to apples) but post-launch versus post-launch on two different consoles (apples to oranges) for your Wii U evidence. The PS3, for example, is sitting at just above 40% versus the PS2 at the end of its lifespan. The 360 is at something like 350% versus the original Xbox. But at the end of the day, these kinds of numbers aren't really that useful.
That said, here's a couple things to keep in mind with Nintendo: With the possible exception of the GameCube, which I have no production information for, they have NEVER sold a console at a loss. Where Sony and Microsoft typically undercut production prices until they balance out three or four years into a console's life, Nintendo is making money on their console sales from day one (due largely to how 'inferior' their tech is) and the profit-per-console obviously grows from there as production costs are slashed.
Along those lines, they have plenty of money from the wild success of the Wii to suffer through a Wii U failure (and I would definitely call it a failure from a sales perspective). The Wii U isn't going to sully the brand so badly that they can't learn from this misstep and bring out a more traditional console that doesn't require developers to make games for a system so disparate from the rest of the pack. Whether they will or not obviously remains to be seen, but five years of pretty terrible GameCube sales didn't kill them, so a similar prospect for the Wii U really shouldn't be able to either... though I say again, E3 NEEDS to be a 'knock it out of the park' show for all three, or the eighth generation is going to have a really rocky start (moreso than typical).
As to LEGO, I thought LEGO City Undercover was pretty bad, but the LEGO games have been very hit-and-miss ever since the first LEGO Batman game, which was the first LEGO game that I felt was truly awful. Indy 2, Star Wars III, both Harry Potters and Batman 2 all followed suit. Hopefully the Marvel game is amazing. Current screenshots certainly make it seem like it ought to be.
I also played the first one through on my iPad, and did enjoy it for what it was.
You also bring up a good point in that I'm coming at this from the perspective of an adult playing games that are more or less for children, so there's certainly merit to the relativity of awful, too. :D
That picture just proves my point, at least to me... The Super isn't so super, it needed to be a foot longer, or perhaps 2 feet longer, to give it enough height and width to be interesting, and it needed bottom detail.
For the largest ship in the movies, it should have been Ultimate! Instead we got average... :(
GameCube wasn't a disaster like Wii U has been, it was bad, it was ignored, it was the red-headed step-child, but it had a few things going for it...
1. It actually was more powerful than the PS2, so in terms of that generations consoles, it was right up there. Wii U is better than PS3, but not by much and it will be blown away by PS4.
2. It came out during a very different time. The Internet wasn't everywhere, you didn't download anything to your console, mobile gaming was very different (and Nintendo owned that market, they no longer do, Apple/Google own that market now). I used 360 numbers from April 2006, 260 launched Nov 2005. I used Wii numbers from April 2007, Wii launched Nov 2006. So the time period matches. I also used numbers from April 2013 for Wii U, which launched Nov 2012.
So the numbers all line up for post launch times, Christmas season, etc. The PS3 didn't outsell the PS2 for awhile, however it didn't drop 89% in sales 6 months after launch either. The PS2 was just selling like crazy and remains the best selling video game console in history, by a comfortable margin. This isn't true, Nintendo has admitted that Wii U is the first console they have sold at a loss. It costs Nintendo more money to make a Wii U than they earn selling it. That is indeed new and it is why they haven't done a price drop. They need to however, get it down to $199/$249 and it will at least pickup in sales a bit. It isn't a money issue. Nintendo has $14 billion in cash in the bank and no debt, they are on solid financial footing.
It is a customer perception issue, they are running the risk of being branded out of date by consumers who may never give them another look. This is not 2001, the world has changed and Nintendo hasn't changed with it.
They have survived worse, they can survive, this, but they probably need new management to do it. Fire the current leadership and move people up with fresh ideas and move on.
----------------
BTW, during the NES/SNES/N64 days, Nintendo developed a reputation for being very hard to work with from 3rd party developers. In those days, Nintendo's 1st party titles were enough to make the system popular enough that companies like EA had no choice but to develop for them.
During the Genesis/SNES era, almost all popular games came out for both systems, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Madden, etc.
It was during N64 that Nintendo lost their way, staying with cartridges when PlayStation and Saturn went to CDs meant that games developed for those consoles couldn't easily be put on N64. Momentum and fans kept N64 alive, but if you want to see hubris, just look at the launch of N64 in the US, only 2 games were available at launch, today that would be laughed at.
Then GameCube had the funny small DVDs that didn't hold enough data to just port games between PS2 and GC, and it didn't play DVDs like PS2 did. Stupid.
Would someone explain to me why a $350 game console in 2013 that has a Blu-Ray drive in it... doesn't play Blu-Ray movies? Wii U has the mechanics of a Blu-Ray drive, without the licencing to play the movies. Two things:
1. GC didn't have to compete with everything else out in 2013 that wasn't out in 2001. Yes, I know that iPads and Android tablets aren't consoles for TVs, however they are competing for the same casual gamer than Nintendo is now competing for.
2. Nintendo has already announced that they won't have a "big E3 presense". Translation... they don't have Mario and Zelda far enough along... If XBox One and PS4 launch with 10+ AAA titles and Nintendo still doesn't have a new Mario and Zelda out, that will be very bad. Star Wars The Complete Saga remains the peak of awsume for LEGO games for me. I didn't care for Star Wars III either, but my son loves it, so what do I know? :) He also loves LEGO City Undercover, it was made for him, not me, so that is fine.
I bought a Wii U for that, and I bought Wii for Wii Sports, we have a few other games for both consoles, but it is quite possible that I'll never buy another game, other than perhaps the new Mario, for the Wii U.
Frankly, my son spends about as much time playing on his iPad as he does playing all his consoles combined (PS3/Wii U/3DS).
That, more than anything else, should make all the game companies pay attention.
There are also rumors about the new XBox and not being able to sell the games and also needing to have an internet connection to play your games, but I think those are just rumors right now.
---
I miss the Dreamcast. Great games and graphics (at least at the time) the problem was Sony's agreement with EA and that the console cost more to build than sell and they just could not keep up with MS and Sony.
Mercifully I kept mine along with my family's original Pong machine, Atari 2600, Colecovision, NES and PS2. (and my current system, the XBox 360)
But I have a simple solution for those who do not want to pay 650 dollars for a new console. Be patient. They almost always drop in price after release, you may have to wait for a year, but really I do not understand why people MUST buy something like this at its initial release, you are 12 and have no concept of patience and thinking ahead, they are handling out gold bars with the first 500 sold, or you are happen to find one if they are impossibly hard to find and are going to sell for twice the retail price on eBay.
Back to topic:
Aside from DS and FB, What are the thoughts of GE retiring at the end of this year as well? I have seen the rumors, but if GE goes too, I think GE will actually go for more than FB
It won't be always-on, but it will have to be on to activate new games. The disks are used for install only, everything goes to the hard drive and locked to your account, so you shouldn't need the disks to play, which is nice for those of us with kids. Yes, it was great for games, but they were a year early and didn't include a DVD drive like PS2 did, that was a mistake.
It was also too early in that it killed off Saturn before its time. Sega had just about pissed off everyone in the business, between 32X, Sega CD, then Saturn. Too many consoles, too fast, developers lost interest, fans got tired of buying hardware for just a few games.
Dreamcast lasted 2 years before being killed, and that was that. Had they waited another year, put a DVD drive in, it might have had a better chance. If Microsoft/Sony have any brains at all, they won't do that. They should have learned from the PS3 launch price that you just can't go over consumer's expectations.
Nintendo recently learned that with 3DS, the $250 launch price was WAY too high, once they lowered it below $200 it took off.
Wii U needs to be dropped to $199/$249 for the Basic/Deluxe consoles, and it needs it yesterday. Yes, Nintendo is already losing money on every one sold, use some of that $14 billion in cash to buy some marketshare and get a foothold before this fall. 250 pages in and we still have a topic? :)
Yes, if GE went this year it would do well, but I've seen multiple lists from sources that I trust that both GE and PS will retire end of 2014, TH end of 2015.
Anything can change however, nothing is set in stone, but that is what I expect to happen.
PS is a great set, but I much rather get those at a discount. I know the price per part is comparable to other mods, but it just seems smaller.
That being said, PS feels more detailed than GE does, I personally like PS much more, it has more going on.
FB remains my favorite. Part of that might be it was my first, part of it might be that I'm just a big kid inside and I like fire stations. Part of it might be the fire truck (which is just cute beyond words).
PS is my second, having just built TH, I have to say now that I don't really have a third. It would have been GG, but meh, it just didn't do it for me, and I think CC was blah. TH was boring and GE is just too repetitive.
Cynical I have become... no longer wowed, am I...
The mods have been getting better I think, at least until PC with the stickers.
I do like the PS and agree it has a lot more 'action' in it and you can always split up the buildings too.
I kinda hope they do another mod like this coming up.. maybe a small hardware store and another townhouse or apartment above a store or something.
Yes, $750 shipped is a decent deal for DS. Would I personally take it? No, not now, since I have a pile of them, but if I didn't have any and wanted one to build and one to hold for future sale, that is as good a deal as any right now.
I usually buy every system at some point and Nintendo is my favorite IMO, although I do play mostly on the Xbox due to more games being released for it. Microsoft and Sony owe Nintendo for creating console gaming. They would love it if Nintendo stopped making consoles and had to start making games for them. I don't think that will happen, the fans of Nintendo are really the ones that keep it alive and they have a lot of fans. Well deserved too with all the original games and characters Nintendo has. I could never say Microsoft or Sony has an equivalent for characters like Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Star Fox or the others. Sure, you can say there are characters like Master Chief that are hugely similar, but I can't really put FPS characters in the same category.
Nintendo takes much different routes than Microsoft and Sony that may make companies like EA upset. This is only business related. EA has mega business goals. They put out a lot of games, have a ton of licenses and make a lot of money. However, they also spit in their customers faces a lot by not fixing bugs, trying to sell too many microtransactions and by not listening to any of the gamers complaints about their games. They've been named worst company for two years in a row now by an internet gaming poll.
Microsoft and Sony go down this road as well. Produce FPS after FPS after FPS. How many Call of Dutys are there now, 14? It's really about money and it gets boring after a while which is why an innovative company like Nintendo is so important. Oh, Nintendo is selling a hugely popular motion controlled system? Looks like Microsoft and Sony will have to steal ideas and technology, sue each other and then produce stuff like the Kinnect to better compete.
You can also see how "smart" Nintendo is when you look at their hardware. Yes, it is somewhat inferior to computers and computer like consoles that Microsoft puts out, but they always make well made consoles. I have over 8 broken xbox 360s I've gathered from friends over the years. I've also had 3-4 break on me which I would keep sending to them to "fix" for $100 a pop only so I could get the same crappy refurbished hardware back that I sent them. Thanks guys, I'm sure the 30+ games I've bought mostly at MSRP means a lot to you. It's also a slap in the face to gamers considering the failed hardware comes from Microsoft using cheap screws and bad heat sink design.
Microsoft has also fought it's own battle against pirating. It's simple to mod an xbox. I modded mine about 5 years ago (so I could back my games up of course). They used to put out new safety measures every 6 months on their discs and when they updated the Xbox home screen, but they would be bypassed in a matter of days. I don't pirate games because I really respect developers, but it is super simple for the people with the know how. Nintendo would never have this problem, anyone that tries to hack the Wii usually ends up with a un-updatable bricked piece of hardware. I assume this is half the reason for Microsofts allegedly new stance on used games and the license to one console idea.
Don't even get me started on Microsoft ruining game franchises and companies like Rare.
BTW, I want to buy Lego City Undercover and the only reason I haven't is because I can't justify the spend right now with all the other Wii U titles I have but haven't played. This comment makes my whole post relatable to this forum. Thanks
To the piracy and 'console-lock' option that's getting attributed to Microsoft... there are two things that would surprise me.
First, it seems unlikely that Microsoft pushed for this, but rather, your big developers like EA or Activision (the folks that lose huge chunks of money to used game sales). Microsoft themselves would have little to gain from forcing every game to be locked to their console... and also little in the way of means of forcing publishers to require it (without shooting themselves in the foot, of course). When the people at Microsoft say, 'We haven't finalized this yet,' I don't think it's because they're trying to save face (indeed, all the muddled information is hurting them more than anything), but because it wasn't completely their idea to begin with and they're still ironing things out behind-the-scenes.
Secondly, I'll be shocked if the PS4 doesn't have a similar (or identical) feature. It seems likely that EA dropped their 'online pass' system because, with Wii U support not an issue, they knew they recover 'lost used game revenue' from the activation fees for playing a game second hand. There's no way in my mind that EA would leave all that money on the table if they weren't aware of something similar that's going to hamper used game sales on the PS4 as well.
That said, I have no real problem with crushing GameStop underfoot, but they need to address the bigger concern (for me) of not being able to lend a buddy a game or not being able to play it on two different systems in the same house. I care way more about that than I do about any inconvenience this poses to the second-hand market.
@LFT - I'm not quoting you here because your post was giant, but, though we differ in our ideas of what numbers are critical to look at, it seems our prescription for Nintendo to get back on track is pretty similar. I do think if their next console isn't more 'traditional,' they're going to be in pretty bad shape, but I don't think we're to the point of 'too little, too late' yet. At this point in time, I would say it is not. It's a better deal to just get them from [email protected] at the moment, for all the reasons @Pitfall69 outlined... plus, I would be pretty surprised if they don't show up for SOME kind of similar (or better) discount between now and Christmas.
They can make it, but they need to adapt to the 21st century, the old ways of doing business no longer work. It isn't just what is out today, but what will be out in 5 years.
Have any of you seen the Google Glass video yet?
http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-it-feels/
Ok, it is a demo video and the technology isn't quite there yet. But it will be... what does this have in store for games, computers, and everything 5-10 years from now?
One would be wise to remember something Walt Disney said a long time ago:
"Keep Moving Forward" Don't they all owe Atari? :)
BTW, you may own them all, but it is telling that you play on XBox more than anything else. That should concern Nintendo. At the height of their power with NES and SNES, their systems had all the games and all the play time. Now they don't.
This is not a good thing. (for Nintendo) Yep, and Call of Duty has made how many billions and billions of dollars? They must be doing something right, at least for now. :) Kinect is the future, not handheld controllers. The first version isn't very good, but it never is. It can track 2 people at VGA resolution. The new one can track 6 people in larger and smaller rooms at 1080P resolution. Once the accuracy arrives (which it doesn't have now), ditching the controller makes sense. I'm sure Microsoft learned their lesson, it only cost them like $4 billion dollars. That has a way of getting a company's attention. :)
You're right however, Nintendo does build their hardware to last. For what it is worth, my PS3 works like a champ, 7 years later, used almost every day.
Sony is no slouch either when it comes to consumer electronics. Yep, of course! :) But as I said, after 250 pages... Topic? What topic? :)
LEGO City Undercover is indeed pretty cool, for kids anyway, my 7 year old loves it.
Being able to lend games to a friend, and being able to rent them, are the primary issues of concern.
I've already built up a vast collection of games on Steam on the PC (thanks amazing sales and deals!), and I can't sell any of them, but for the price paid, I don't mind so much.
If I paid full price for most of them, then I'd care. If you remove the resale market, then perhaps lowering the price would make sense.
BTW, the thing that drives me nuts is when a game is in the store on a disc for $60, then the online download price is $60. That is nuts... The game in the store cost physical money to make, to ship, the store gets a cut, etc. The download is just a bunch of 1s and 0s. The price should not be the same.
Of course I have the same problem with digital movies, many times it is $15-20 for the HD digital copy and $7-10 for the physical Blu-Ray copy. Stupid and dumb is what that is. All fair points... Let me just say this... Find me a console that 6 months post launch has sales 89% lower than the prior generation was selling 6 months post launch, any company, any console, any generation.
The primary problem is that once launched, the complete lack of interest once the early buyers have their consoles. Is it recoverable? Maybe... but the clock is ticking. If sales don't pickup and hold before this fall when the new systems come out, I think it will be over.
But I could be completely wrong. :)
I think they need to get some 1st party games out, and they need them out this summer, then they need to drop the price to $200/250 and they need to do that today. Since this would piss off the early buyers, they need to repeat the 3DS thing and give away a dozen games in the eShop to make up for it. Give people things to tide them over, like Super Mario World and an older Zelda game.
November seems to be the month that the blockbuster games come out.
Regardless, I'm probably buying the new Xbox and I'm going to chrome it ;)
After all, Apple made an iPad 20 years ago, it was called the Newton. But it was missing a number of things, it wasn't ready for prime time.
Capaticive touch screens, NAND flash memory, color LCD screens, wi-fi, the Internet, lithium ion batteries, CPU power, etc. all of that had to be developed over the past 20 years, then the vision of Newton could come to life.
Google Glass as a wearable appliance will not become wide spread. However imagine the Glass screen built into a digital contact lens that you simply wear on your eye. It would just wirelessly draw power from, say a watch or something in your pocket or shoe or whatever, and it would free you from having to wear anything.
The longer term vision is that it will just be a chip embedded into your brain and superimposed into your vision directly, nothing actually has to be on or in front of your eye, since your eyes simply send data to your brain. An overlay can be inserted int that data feed.
Far out? Yes, of course, but this is the start. A lot of technologies have to be invented first, but that day will come, I am certain of it.
What will retire first, B-Wing or SSD?
I realize I'm the outlier there in terms of what's available now, but I'd like to imagine that as non-beneficial technology becomes more and more invasive, the pendulum will swing back closer to the center.