Analysts: Halo 3 shipping 4.2 million first week; Xbox may finally show profit

if i was a developer i just could not do anything good for the wii, it will be like a step back, i dont think the developers will take the wii before 360 or even ps3, that will never happen bcuz the wii is in another territory, thats for casual gamers with a lot of minigames and 1 or 2 3rd party good games half a year and nintendo games of course, but the point is, the developers want to work with the best out there, the best technology, the lastest, the most powerful consoles, really who would want to make a epic story on a 2001 thecnology when it could be better represented in a xbox 360 or ps3? the developers want to make the best of the best and that could only happen on a 360 or ps3, the wii is for minigames or for games that doesnt need so much power like king story (looks to be an awsome game) or something like that, the only good games from a 3rd party will be zack and wiki and no more heroes, the rest its just nintendo games (super smash bros ist all i need to buy a wii =D ) what i meant to say is, why i would wanna work again with the same technology for another 5 years when is something new out there? and im not talking about graphics.

It's about time Xbox division made some money. Bill Gates has been looking kind a thin lately. Times must be tough. This should add a few crumbs to his table.

Seriously, its about time MS began to make its billions spent on xbox back. Its a business after all. I think the side-effect of xbox in softening the big bad MS image has already been worth the billions but seeing actual direct cash is nice too.

And third party support still sucks for the wii just like it did for the cube.

You know, this is one of the most civil Joystiq discussions I've ever seen on a post, "fanboy" comments aside. Kudos to you all.

I'll throw in my two cents here, though. For one, I see wario's points about the design and simplicity aspect of the Wii's success. However, from my point of view, and I haven't seen this brought up, is that the Wii at this stage is suffering from what I would call "Playstation Lite." Bear with me here. What I mean by that is that like the Playstation 2, the Wii is currently the leader in hardware sales and has been that way for months. Fair enough, that creates a large user base. But on the flip side, the Wii is also like the PS3 in that there are simply not enough games to keep even the "casual" gamer satisfied enough to play with it for long periods of time (and I'm talking over the lifespan of the console), which is why you see people saying "well I have five friends whose Wii is collecting dust." It's certainly an interesting position, and we'll see how much Smash Bros. and new Mario games can counteract that effect. The 360 seems to be chugging along and beating to its own drum, slowly taking in whoever seems interested in it based on hype and word of mouth and eventually enjoying the platform they chose like many Wii owners (headstart aside, the attach rate is still the best out of any of the consoles...so much for RRoD issues).

Further, in my opinion, I would say that Halo 3 is more of a guaranteed system seller than Smash Bros. will be. I'm not saying that to disparage Smash Bros. in any way, or that Smash Bros. won't sell. But I think this is a reasonable assumption to make based on the large influx of "casual" gamers who don't live, breathe, die, or buy consoles based on the selling power of one or two core games LIKE Halo does. I think it is easy to speculate for some, because we are all gamers, but so long as people use the "casual audience" argument, that's a fair point to consider, I'd say.

Good talk, Coach!