This month's subject is about the launches of the Wii and the PS3 (If you are currently having any problems with this website it is because it is under major construction)
The next-gen gaming war has offically begun, with this weeks releases of the PS3 and Wii, which both saw huge sales.
PS3
We'll start with the PS3 which was released on November 17th. Its release date was filled with violence and redicule. With hundreds of thousands lined up around the world there was bound to be something wrong somewhere. On the west coast there were many reports of people being robbed at gun point while waiting in line. In Kentucky there was a report of a BB gun drive by.(WTF??? only in KY) and shots fired in CT which left one man in the hospital with 2 wounds to the chest.(I wonder if he still got his PS3?)
Even with all these acts of violence the PS3 was able to launch successfully by selling around 350,000 systems in the first couple of days. Yet these weren't the numbers that Sony had hoped to produce. but by the end of the year Sony says they will have 1 million systems on the market. but will half these systems go on ebay and be should for 2,500-4,000 dollars like on launch day.
Another problem that came up with the PS3 was the limited supply and the problem with the backwards compatibility which would only allow you to play 200 ps1 and ps2 games, not what they had hoped for again. Then there was a problem with the launch titles, several of the once stated games were pushed back due to the difficulty of making the games. but they still had one great game Resistance: Fall of Man which was made by the people who made Ratchet & Clank. Yet the big problem still stood that it was 500-600 dollars and that games cost 60-70 dollars.
Wii
Unlike the PS3, the Wii had a very successful launch without any reports on violence, and had a surplus of systems ready to launch totaling a million systems. The Wii was launched on November 19th, with hundreds of thousands of fan-boys/girls waiting patiently in line to recieve their next-gen system and Zelda.
With the patients of fans around the U.S and the rest of the world. Nintendo was able to sell 600,000 to 800,000 systems in its first several days of being on store shelves. Yet nintendo took a big gamble by creating a motion controller to use to play the games, but i didnt seem that people really cared about that they ate up the idea of getting up off the couch and moving around to slash enemys in Zelda, play Tennis, Baseball, Bowling, etc. in Wii Sports. Not to mention that the system is only $250 dollars and comes with a copy of Wii Sports.
Again unlike the PS3 the Wii had many good games, sure they may have looked like gamecube games, but Nintendo took a new look at the Wii and said who cares about graphics lets give the people a good gameplay experience by letting them get into the game and control the character directly instead of just hitting buttons. Great games that led to good sales of the Wii were The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (of course), Rayman Raving Rabbids, and Excite Truck. These games were also followed by great games on the Virtual Console which is basicly like Xbox Live Arcade games in which u can by them and store them on the Wii and play them when u want. These games included Super Mario 64, F-Zero, Origional Mario and others but you have to use Wii points to purchase these games which range in price from 500 to 1000 points or 5-10 dollars. A fun fact is that over 454,000 people have bought the game Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess.
Our opnion:
Both systems are great but only if they have really good games, which for right now looks like the Wii, it's not too expensive and has great games for it. The PS3 will be good but in later years when it has several great games and drops on price. So for now if you want something that will give you a new experience, and good games that use the controller perfectly, we'd go with the Wii hands down.
Let the war begin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As of December 29th
Number of Consoles Sold.
Xbox 360: 9,264,991
PS3: 822,864
Wii: 2,064,258
