Nintendo DS and the new Nintendo Wii are the most affordable consoles on the market; they graphics aren’t “Next-Gen” or they games being specially developed by a team of 900 developers by six years, and yet, they are selling more consoles in short time than any of their competitors; it’s the end of the Next-Gen consoles?

Currently, the big boss is the Nintendo DS with 508,000 sales only in america; and the Nintendo Wii is on third place with almost 260,000 consoles sold in March 2007. The Nintendo DS, a system with a poor 3D capability (let’s face it, isn’t the greatest 3D you will see in your life) and a full 2D engine with 2 screens, one of them touch sensitive has replaced Playstation 2 leaving it at second place with 280,000 sales that month. In economy, numbers are the king, they tell economists and business owners what is happening and predict what is going to happen; there is no “sure” prediction of course, but you can get a fair idea of what is going to happen in the next two years.

Everyone less the Electronic Arts Boss who recentyle decraled at the gamesindustry.biz online magazine the following:

Look at the price in two years’ time, and then you can say whether it’s too high”

said Gerhard Florin. He also said “I wouldn’t make any judgements within the next two years” (I’m sure he won’t!) .

Next Generaton Games are being developed in every Game Studio across the world; some people will try to burn me for what I’m going to say, but I think next-gen games aren’t about how many poligons a console can handle, or how big the textures can be, gosh! it isn’t even about the lights or physics you can add to it; it’s about the gameplay. But let’s go back to the facts and see how well the Wii is going, and why is going that well.

Portability

The Nintendo DS can fit in the palm of your hand (if you have the lite version); that has made it’s portability something really fun; you can take it anywhere you want, to the school, to your work, to the bathroom, to a family meeting, at the church, at a bauptism, at first child birth; anywhere; it’s there on your pocke and it doesn’t weight a lot.

For the other hand, the Wii is a little bit more bigger than the DS, and it was to expect, because it’s a desk console, not portable. Even then, it’s fairly more easy to be carried in a bag or inside a backpack that makes things a little more easy for portability. It can also fit in the palm of your hand, as long as you have an abnormally big hand; in that case, you should see a doctor.

The PS3 has some problems with this. It’s the biggest console ever made, you could say it’s bigger than a PC in some cases, it has to be handle with care if you are going to be carring it with you. If it falls into your feets, you can be seriously injured or even incapacitated for a long period of time. Let’s see a comparsion between the Nintendo Wii and the PS3:

See what I’m talking about? put a couple of wires on that thing and you have a car. Don’t take me wrong, I don’t have anything against it; it must be an excellent console and the games must be very very fun (I love my copy of Fight Night Round 3 for the Playstation 2); but it’s not only the size, it’s the price. You can’t sell something so big for less than $300 USD, and we now see how the big boss at Electronic Art agrees with us; in two years from now, if you buy a PS3 today, it won’t hurt too much. So in order to enjoy today you need to close your eyes, go to the store and pay without even thinking; after two years you will look back and laugh about that incident. I’m sure the big guy at Electronics Arts wanted to defend his games, but we all know they are great anyway so there is no need for that; we all enjoy EA games and we expect they keep growing; keep it up!

It’s too Big, and too expensive

The only game I would like to play on the PS3 would be Megal Gear Solid 4; after that you can use it as a garage or washing room. MGS Hideo Kojima was the ONLY person I record to say something negative about the PS3, and I recall:

“I just don’t understand why the heck they took away the vibration feature… It won’t be the same, players will miss it too much… anyway…”

that’s a gamer desapointed right there; like we all are. I was expecting, like many other people, to be able to buy the PS3, but when it came out was a suprise… not only in cost, but also in weight and dimension. I would have to move to a new appartment only to pass it through the door; it’s a shame; they could have delivered an excellent product in a more portable format at a more realistic price.

Even so, the Wii and the Nintendo DS are still leading the console sales this quarter: here’s the full data from NPD Group, the company that is in charge of getting the records of the USA territory for the game software and consoles sales:

1. 1. Nintendo DS - 508,000
2. 2. PlayStation 2 - 280,000
3. 3. Wii - 259,000
4. 4. Xbox 360 - 199,000
5. 5. PlayStation Portable - 180,000
6. 6. Game Boy Advance - 148,000
7. 7. PlayStation 3 - 130,000
8. 8. GameCube - 22,000

Let’s expect the next time they do something more portable, more affordable!