TGS 2006

Man, time keeps flying and I haven't been keeping this updated very well... to my reader... I apologize. So, I didn't really follow the TGS very well this year but from what I gather Sony did an ok job, they reduced the price of their base PS3 (in Japan only) and uped the features of it for everyone. This base model seems to just be made to make the 360 look like a chump, and with 20 gigs it does highlight the fact that the 360 base model doesn't have a hard drive... so if you were a game developer would you make a 360 game that requires the hard drive knowing that less of the market has it? nope....

The Wii of course continues to look pretty decent, and certainly awesome for the price. I don't think I'll buy one on launch day, bit too nervous about problems with untested hardware, though Nintendo has a far better track record than the others.

In other news I took some pics of some sweet box art... there will be an article soon on this... should be fun for my reader. =)

Wii

Details were announced today, release date of Nov. 19 for North America and $250 US with a pack in game.... very curious to see how it sells compared to the other systems.

PS3

From the Magic Box today.....

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- Sony has pushed back the Euro launch date of PlayStation 3 from November 2006 to March 2007, while the US and Japan launch dates remain unchanged. The reason is due to a bottleneck in the production of the Blu-ray drives and the extra time to prepare for the multilingual European versions.

- Sony will ship 400,000 units of PlayStation 3 to US at launch on November 17, and 100,000 units in Japan. 1.2 million units will be available in Japan by the end of 2006.

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WOW..... seems Sony is having trouble with getting the units made, I wonder what will happen if they miss holiday season all together?? This season should give the Wii and 360 a nice chance at gaining a very strong foothold in the market as well as taking some steam out of the PS3.

When the 360 was launched the units immediately hit eBay and were selling for twice the price in stores, probably more at times....Is it possible that Sony's very high launch price is designed based on this? They know that there will be limited consoles as well as a limited number of people that wil pay the high price, so why not milk it? In spring or summer they can claim that the manufacturing costs have been greatly reduced and they will pass the savings onto the consumer, basically just skimming the fat off the top of the market to maximize their profits and trying to avoid taking too much of a loss on every unit sold... but could all this backfire for Sony?

The market will be very different this year than any other, the Wii is going with low price and innovation out of the box and the 360 will be a traditional competitor at a lower price.... to me, Sony seems too cocky.

a little perspective....

Also from Magic Box... I assume that the numbers in brackets are for the year so far or something. So 160,000 for DS in a week and 30,000 for PSP?? and 12 for X-Box?? =)

Here are the latest Japanese console hardware sales for the week of Aug 21 - 27:

1. DS Lite - 163,274 [3,967,887] units
2. PSP - 29,945 [1,228,844] units
3. Playstation 2- 21,829 [957,440] units
4. GBA SP - 2,719 [189,191] units
5. GB Micro - 1,819 [117,560] units
6. Xbox 360 - 1,197 [68,677] units
7. GameCube - 837 [63,116] units
8. Nintendo DS - 410 [952,959] units
9. GBA - 14 [3,013] units
10. Xbox - 12 [1,649] units

DS RULES

This really surprises me... the Magic Box (awesome site, link on your right) usually reports the sales numbers for game software in Japan.... well it seems that for the first time I can recall it is all about one system.

Here are the latest Japanese console software sales for the week of Aug 21 - 27:

1. Final Fantasy III (NDS, Square Enix) - 503,051 units
2. New Super Mario Bros. (NDS, Nintendo) - 65,556 [2,901,264] units
3. Rune Factory: Shin Bokujou Monogatari (NDS, Marvelous) - 42,210 units
4. Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu: Motto Nouo Kitaeru Otona DS Training (NDS, Nintendo) - 41,784 [3,073,195] units
5. Shaberu! DS Oryouri Navi (NDS, Nintendo) - 37,326 [384,045] units
6. Tamagotchi no Puchi Puchi Omisecchi Gohi-Kini (NDS, Namco Bandai) - 30,504 [430,934] units
7. Mario Basket 3-on-3 (NDS, Nintendo) - 30,355 [233,762] units
8. Oide yo Doubutsu no Mori [Animal Crossing: Wild World] (NDS, Nintendo) - 30,023 [3,149,130] units
9. Kawashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu: Nouwo Kitaeru Otona no DS Training (NDS, Nintendo) - 22,866 [2,736,150 ] units
10. Eigoga Nigatena Otona no DS Training: Eigo Duke (NDS, Nintendo) - 17,465 [1,401,669] units

Behold the lock Nintendo has on Japan.. the home of the majority of good games...

To me this assures a few things will happen... first of all Sony will revamp it's PSP into something smaller and cooler (rumours of 8gigs built in and smaller are everywhere) and that we are going to get a PILE of new DS games in 6 months to a year as every game maker will look at these numbers along with how relatively cheap it is to make a DS game and sign up. Gonna be a great year for the DS!! Momentum like this is hard to loose.... though Nintendo messed it up before... time will tell.