Sony's Phil Harrison: Wii's audience plays hard to get

You, sir, hit the nail on the head. Make high quality third party games like Zack and Wiki and actually advertise them (unlike Capcom), and you're guaranteed at least moderate success.

Then again, coming from the competition this kind of statement isn't surprising.

What's a fuckwin?

it's the explicit version of awesome.

Oh, please, tell me Elizabeth, how exactly does one suck a fuckwin?

I think that's what every sane person is thinking too.


And one other thing. To all those people also saying Nintendo should go third-party: what the fuck will happen then? Do you think suddenly there will be a drop in third party console games across all consoles just because Nintendo is too good? Bullshit. Make a proper game, do some proper advertising.

Even horrible games sell if advertised enough(Carnival Games). But, we don't have to tell them that.

never mind
I'm wrong

Bleh, I need to do research before I post

But it probably IS still a lot more than the number of people that any PS3 game will sell to. Blu-ray player etc.

40% of the Wii population is 8.8 million.
Sony has 10 million.
But if we assume 10% of siny users bought it just for blueray then they are about even.

You think any PS3 game is actually going to sell to 90% of all PS3 users? HAHAHA!

Well, let's take a look...

Need for Speed: Carbon .72 million
Ridge racer 7 .63 million
Need for speed Prostreet 1.02 million
Devil may Cry 4 .72 million
Guitar hero III .85 million
Elder Scrolls Oblivion .68 million
Pro Evo Soccer 2008 1.30 million
Smackdown vs Raw 2008 .71 million
Madden 08 .75 million
Fifa 08 1.14 million
Assassin's Creed 2.25 million
Call of Duty 4 2.36 million

Amazing what a quick check on a website as extremely inaccurate as VGchartz will turn up...

I wouldn't be surprised if he applied for a job at Nintendo in the past, and got rejected. Like, there's gotta be a reason why he's got such abnormal contempt for Nintendo.

You're looking at a very distorted statistic since you're obviously not taking into account the fact that the shorter the length of time a console's been out, the easier it is to reach a larger percentage of its install base.

When you use 140 million as the PS2 base, 25% is a ridiculously high number. Use 20 million as the Wii's base, and 40% doesn't seem so large an audience anymore, no?

If we want to talk about distorted statistics, let's look at your figure - according to the most reliable numbers I can find (on vgchartz.com), the PS2 has only sold 117 million units worldwide.

I was more than a little off with my numbers - the best-selling PS2 game was GTA: San Andreas, which actually sold to only 12.9% of the install base for the console. Along similar lines, the best-selling PS1 game, Gran Turismo, only sold to about 10.6% of the install base. Let's face it - even in the best-case scenario, you're marketing to a niche market on the PlayStation family of systems.

With that in mind, let's look at the Wii. Even pretending that the install base does not grow from this point onward (which is ridiculous, but for the sake of argument we will), selling to the same proportional niche as the PS1 gives you sales of 2.3 million - not bad at all.

Want to get into more fun facts? Third-part games, regardless of the system, always sell more poorly than the first-party games. GTA: San Andreas actually holds the all-time record for the third-party game that sold to the most install base. The second-place finisher to that is the original Street Fighter II.

Meanwhile, looking at the all-time best-sellers regardless of console, it's dominated by first-party published titles. Is it coincidence that the best-selling Crash Bandicoot games came from when Sony was publishing the series themselves? Or that only one XBox game not made by Microsoft could even crack the 10% mark?

Here's the simple truth - third-party titles always have a harder time selling, regardless of platform. Your best hope is to release on the platform with the largest install base. While it might be true that only a small percentage of Wii owners are interested in your third-party game, it's just as true on the other consoles. The difference is, the aggregate total interested in your game is larger on the Wii just because the install base is larger.

He does do something other than talk trash about the competition: he talks out of his arse about his own company's product offering...

http://kotaku.com/gaming/2007-b%27c%27/scee-explains-ps3-bc-backpedalling-307768.php

http://kotaku.com/gaming/ps3/no-regrets-on-missing-rumble-says-harrison-210506.php

http://kotaku.com/gaming/blu_ray/phil-harrison-spins-another-blu+ray-lie-192737.php

UH....SIR.IM GONNA HAVE TO ASK YOU TO TAKE A SEAT OVER THERE...

LOL Nintendo relies on Ebay and Craigslist? Hahaha oh my god, that's the most retarded thing I've read all day.

And also, nearly 2 million Wiis get produced every fucking month, you complete idiot. It's not their fault people are buying all of them.

I wonder, how much does it cost to invest in a new factory, I mean, if they are selling Wii's like hotcakes, they might as well take advantage of the situation...

...and I'm pretty sure they have more than enough money, hey, even Yamauchi is now the 3rd richest man in Japan...

So IMO, I do think that there is something behind this whole "shortage", although I don't really know what could Nintendo get gaining out of it...

@Noshino

I remember when the Wii first came out and was hard to get. I was going to buy one for my little cousin as a christmas present. I couldn't find one for her (got one for myself at launch though). I figured well her birthday is in March so certainly by then the holiday rush will have died down and I can just walk in a local best buy or wal-mart and pick one up. AFRAID NOT! Still over a year later they are impossible to find on a regular basis in my area. And it's funny because my friend works at a local gamestop and he told me that they dont know when they will get them, how many they will get and its first come first serve. He says they usually get 2-5 every week or two. Now, it would appear to me Nintendo is artifically keeping the demand high by controlling the supply. Pretty much what happend to the real estate market over the past few years. 2-3 years ago people would buy houses and then put them right back on the market a week later for $50,000 over what they paid and have multiple full priced and above full priced offers before the property even got re-listed on the MLS. Same sort of thing with Nintendo. They are keeping demand high by only releasing limited quanities of a highly sought after product. And people buy them with no intention of using them in many cases for no other reason except re-sale on e-bay and amazon. I am not saying this is some evil plan by nintendo or that this practice will have a correction period like the housing market (completely different but some similaraities). But it does appear that they are purposely controlling supply to keep the demand high. I think they have warehouses full of wii's and more constantly in production. There is no reason that over a year later Nintendos production has not streamlined and improved. There should be no such thing as a Wii shortage over a year after release.

"I wonder, how much does it cost to invest in a new factory, I mean, if they are selling Wii's like hotcakes, they might as well take advantage of the situation..."

Someone did the math a while ago on a blog. It might have been Kotaku.
But basically, it's not as simple or cheap as you'd think.
To open a new factory, Nintendo would regularly have to be selling about 1 million Wii's a month (or about double what they're usually selling a month), otherwise it would be cost prohibitive.
If you open two factories, you have to be prepared to sell double the volume until, at the very least, that factory is fully paid off. And even then you have to budget for things like taxes and fees every month.

And that's assuming that everything is produced in one 'factory'. That's not the case, either. Pieces and parts come from multiples factories across the world, so you have a coordination issue, too.

They HAVE upped production over all since launch, but there are still sell outs. It's probable that Nintendo feels they couldn't consistently sell 1 million Wii's or so a month over the next several years, which would result in overstuffing the retail channels sooner or later...IE - Nintendo gets stuck with the bill for a bunch of unsold Wii's. That happened with the Gamecube, and I'm sure Nintendo doesn't want it happening again.
Thus it makes more sense, long term financially, to not open extra channels and lines. You can't just say to a factory, "Hey, open up a new manufacturing like for us for the next month". You're talking long term contracts when it comes to this stuff.


There is no doubt that they're sitting on SOME supply, of course. Smash Bros is about to release in the US and Wii Fit is getting ready to drop shortly after...and Mario Kart later on.
But I'd be willing to bet that MS's 360 shortage, if it was indeed real, came about due to them possibly anticipating GTA4, for example.

agreed but Nintendo has always had a stigma attached to them in terms of 3rd party developers. Im not praisinf Sony buy look how insomniac ad the phrye engine are now reaching out to 3d party developers to help them make the best games. You often see Sony advertise 3rd party games (as well as Microsoft) in their advertisements. I can't remember seeing a "wii would like to play" advertisement that wasn't a nintendo exclusive game. Anyway, you are correct Phil came off as a total douche but I think somwhere in there he has a point. Even if he did not correctly convey it.