23 August 2005
Nintendogs vs. the XBox 360
This is the first in a series of conjectural rants that I'll probably be totally wrong about.
It's not like Nintendo has been trying to keep its newest puppy simulator under wraps or anything but I'm ready to call it the "big thing" of the 2005 holiday season. Yes, there's some other new system coming out but to be honest Microsoft's "next big thing" doesn't to me represent as compelling of a story. It's more, bigger, faster, etc. and it will probably be pretty successful [I'll reserve my comments on the price point and 2-SKU strategy for another time] but if you look at this winter's games it's kind of a rundown of what we saw on the Xbox. Lots of shooters, a DOA game, Project Gotham, a few EA ports and a Rare platformer which if you'd asked me 4 years ago I'd say was the next big thing but again that's another issue. What we have then is a lineup that, while it will probably look great really doesn't represent anything we haven't seen before.
On the other hand we have puppies. Adorable, well animated puppies that you can talk to and play tug of war with. They never get old, they don't run away and, well, they're going to rule Christmas 2005. It's obvious from looking at the 2 different websites that these two products are targeted towards different markets. The difference is in what in music is called "crossover appeal". Simply put, not a whole lot of 12-year-old girls are going to plunk down $300-500 for an XBox 360. On the other hand a lot of the coveted 16-35 male with disposable income demographic has been starving for DS games all year. A lot of people didn't get it when Nintendo started talking about going after "non-gamers". Well, this is it and the first time you hear that woman with all the stuffed animals in her cubicle at work talking about Nintendogs with your sysadmin at the coffee machine you'll understand why.
So yeah, I'm calling it. Nintendogs will sell better than the XBox 360 will this holiday season.
It's not like Nintendo has been trying to keep its newest puppy simulator under wraps or anything but I'm ready to call it the "big thing" of the 2005 holiday season. Yes, there's some other new system coming out but to be honest Microsoft's "next big thing" doesn't to me represent as compelling of a story. It's more, bigger, faster, etc. and it will probably be pretty successful [I'll reserve my comments on the price point and 2-SKU strategy for another time] but if you look at this winter's games it's kind of a rundown of what we saw on the Xbox. Lots of shooters, a DOA game, Project Gotham, a few EA ports and a Rare platformer which if you'd asked me 4 years ago I'd say was the next big thing but again that's another issue. What we have then is a lineup that, while it will probably look great really doesn't represent anything we haven't seen before.
On the other hand we have puppies. Adorable, well animated puppies that you can talk to and play tug of war with. They never get old, they don't run away and, well, they're going to rule Christmas 2005. It's obvious from looking at the 2 different websites that these two products are targeted towards different markets. The difference is in what in music is called "crossover appeal". Simply put, not a whole lot of 12-year-old girls are going to plunk down $300-500 for an XBox 360. On the other hand a lot of the coveted 16-35 male with disposable income demographic has been starving for DS games all year. A lot of people didn't get it when Nintendo started talking about going after "non-gamers". Well, this is it and the first time you hear that woman with all the stuffed animals in her cubicle at work talking about Nintendogs with your sysadmin at the coffee machine you'll understand why.
So yeah, I'm calling it. Nintendogs will sell better than the XBox 360 will this holiday season.
21 August 2005
Up and running
This isn't going to say much for a bit as I tweak the template and such. I'm trying to figure out a good home for image hosting long term.
So who the hell am I? No one special.
Why should you listen to me? You probably shouldn't.
Why do I bother? Because I'm an opinionated jerk who's decided that ranting on the internet about design, marketing, technology and games isn't as harmful to my sex life as talking about these things with people in the real world.
So who the hell am I? No one special.
Why should you listen to me? You probably shouldn't.
Why do I bother? Because I'm an opinionated jerk who's decided that ranting on the internet about design, marketing, technology and games isn't as harmful to my sex life as talking about these things with people in the real world.
