Aaron

My god, can you call Nintendo anything but the big comeback story this year? Poor Sony just went #1 in the industry to a distant #3rd... Hate to say it, but I think Sony's glory days are officially over. At least for this generation.

Congrats Nintendo. You did what was once thought impossible.

"Except that the PSP has outsold the Gamecube and XBOX at this respective stage in their lives, and has outsold ALL other non-Nintendo handhelds ever produced, combines, worldwide. So... Yeah. I don't think so."

Not exactly. You're forgetting that Sony ONLY reports the number of units shipped. No one knows exactly how many PSPs have been sold, but as far as I can tell, the thing is the biggest dud in the handheld arena this side of the Lynx. The few people I know who do actually own one have told me they regret purchasing it and are now trying to hauk it off on eBay. Sorry, but the PSP is a dud. I seriously doubt the PSP will survive past 2007. And I say this as someone who has been a fan of Sony's products in the past.

The last PSP commercial I saw was pushing the memory stick crap. "Hey look, you can listen to MP3s and watch videos on your PSP!" Yeah, but what about games Sony? *sigh*

I did a search on YouTube and found a bunch of gameplay footage. Looks pretty intense. I'm definitely going to download it.

http://youtube.com/results?search_query=super+star+soldier

TurboGrafx was such an underrated console..

I agree that the 16-bit era was the golden age of video games. I first got myself an SNES and a little bit later, a Sega Genesis. I had such a blast playing Mario AND Sonic. Those were the days...

History has kind of been re-written to distort this fact, but the PS1 actually had MORE kids games than the N64 did. No, not because the Sony was targeting kids with their console, but rather because the system was the market leader, was cheap and easy to develop for and thus had A LOT more games on it than the N64 did.

The situtation is much the same with the DS vs PSP. Nintendo is the market leader here and their system is cheap and easy to develop for, thus it has a larger library of games which equals more kids games. Not to mention it's backwards compatible with Game Boy games, giving it the largest catalog in the history of portable gaming systems. Hell, maybe the largest catalog in the history of video game systems period.

Sony is once again focusing on the 18 to 35 year old demographic and that's why their market share is rapidly shrinking. Nintendo is trying to expand gaming to many different demographics whether it be kids 10 and under, the 18-35 "hardcore" gamers or people 40 and over who have typically shied away from video games.

Sony is basically digging themselves into a hole with their never ending fixation on 18-35 year old gamers. That strategy worked well in the mid to late 1990s, but I don't think it's going to work for them any longer.

Yep, it's looking more and more like the Wii is going to be the mainstream console of choice. I think Sony's days in the throne are coming to an end real soon here.

"I can see where they are coming from but really now, the 360 and the PS3 are quite a close comparison capability-wise (disregarding the silly format war, etc). Do we really want a 3rd console vying for graphical supremacy. At a certain point, isn't it just a bad idea to compete in a category that two companies already have covered."

Probably the most rationale argument posted to this thread. You really hit the nail on the head. Fanboys seem to conveniently forget that Nintendo competed on hardware specs in the last 2 generations and failed both times. HELLO!

N64 vs PSX: Nintendo had the more powerful system. They LOST the battle.

GC vs PS2: Yet again Nintendo had the more powerful hardware. And yet again, they LOST the battle.

Why the hell should Nintendo compete in this manner again? They would have just come in 3rd place again. It was obviously time for Nintendo to take a different approach. Honestly, I think Sony fanboys wanted Nintendo to compete on specs because they KNOW that would have likely resulted in Nintendo pulling a Sega this generation. 3 strikes and you're out, if you will... I GUARANDAMNTEE if Nintendo had managed to develop a system that was more powerful than the PS3 and 360 COMBINED, the same fanboys here saying Nintendo's system is "weak" and a "Gamecube 1.5" would find some other way to trash Nintendo. They'd probably say something to the effect of "It's an amazingly powerful system, but it will have nothing but kiddy games! SONYZ FOARVEEZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" *sigh*

"I have a 52in HDTV if the Wii games do no look better than current Xbox games on that TV then I have no use for a Wii."

It doesn't matter. You're precisely the kind of tech-geek Sony is aiming for, but you're also nothing but a niche market at this point in time. Whether anyone here wants to admit it not, HDTV penetration is still extremely small, at roughly 10% right now. It's growing and of course HDTV will EVENTUALLY replace SDTV, but it's going to take years for it to happen. This is not like say, going from VHS to DVD. It's more akin to the black & white to color transition. This current generation of systems will likely be near the end of their life cycle before even 50% of the population owns an HD set. Sorry, but it's true and you know it. Nintendo knew it and capatilized on it. It's not their fault that their competitors failed to realize this and are chasing after a small niche market of tech-geeks/hardcore gamers.

So go ahead and get yourself a PS3 or 360. There's 100 million other potential customers who only own SDTVs in the United States alone. I think Nintendo will do just fine without ya.

"People seem to have given WiiCube the next gen. crown already ..based, on what? Hype? PR? Because DS has sold well?"

Ironic, since that's what happened with the PS2. It was given the crown before it even launched based on Sony's hype machine, PR and because the first Playstation wold well.

And it worked. So there's no reason it couldn't also work for Nintendo this generation.

Waiting to dump it on HD-DVD/Blu-ray wouldn't be a smart move at this time. See link:

http://www.homemediaretailing.com/news/html/breaking_article.cfm?article_id=9287

The studios are greedy and wanna strike gold all over again, but fact is, they can't force people to switch to these formats. The consumer decides in the end.

Also, while it's true that Season 4 of Boy Meets World is likely never coming out on DVD(sad, but true.. :), this stuff about Airwolf is merely assumption without any fact behind it. Universal has NEVER come out and said Season Two was not being released. It's unknown at this time what they're planning to do. The Season One set actually sold fairly well considering it was a cheaply made set with no bonus materials that was poorly marketed. Most fans of the show still snatched it up because it's higher quality than any bootleg DVDs out there. It's rumored that Universal is waiting until the Holidays to release Season Two... There's also a petition with over 10 thousand signatures and counting to get the remaining seasons of Airwolf on DVD. I urge all of you guys to please help out and sign it.

http://www.petitiononline.com/nm54910c/petition.html