Why did PS2/Wii sell so well?

[James_AJ]

I mean, 120/70 million unit each... I remember literally 1 out of every 2 house owning these babes while now, not as many people even care about PS4/XB1. From the way PS4 is selling right now, I don't think it's ever gonna reach 120 million (maybe in like 15 years) but why was PS2/Wii so more immensely successful than PS4/XB1?

[Izaya Orihara]

They were revoultionary. They were cheap. 

[Freaky_spider]

because making your pc was alot more unknow then now. Also the PS2 was more powerfull then the evarage PC (or that was the PS3 cant remember now) so its was a great deal back then.

Also the wii was something different that excualy worked and was relativily cheap

[dragosudeki]

PS2 is a great console (PS1 is still my favourite) as it can play the older PS1 games (WTF happened to that feature?) and was more revolutionary.
Wii is the best console to play locally with friends in my opinion. The unreliable sensor is very fun to do in FPS which made them a bit more enjoyable to play >.< The consoles nowadays now only feature online as a way of playing with people or they only have single player campaigns.

[chicksoup]

really revolutionary, cheap and easy to use, way easier than building or buying a PC and the hardware was good enough too, the PS4 won't sell so well, because the hardware isn't revolutionary and building a PC is easier now

[Whiskers]

PS4 has sold more than 6 million consoles globally in the space of 5 months or so. It's had a more successful launch than the PlayStation 2, technically.

[James_AJ]

PS4 has sold more than 6 million consoles globally in the space of 5 months or so. It's had a more successful launch than the PlayStation 2, technically.

I am aware of it. But I really do not think PS4/XB1 will have enduring sales figures over the years like PS2 and Wii did/do.

[Puddleuk]

Numbers are a little off. PS2 has sold 155M lifetime and Wii has sold 100M.

 

Also I think the recent launches have been very successful since both companies are boasting of "record" launches.

[NInety]

They were cheap.

[FizzyFantom]

I mean, 120/70 million unit each... I remember literally 1 out of every 2 house owning these babes while now, not as many people even care about PS4/XB1. From the way PS4 is selling right now, I don't think it's ever gonna reach 120 million (maybe in like 15 years) but why was PS2/Wii so more immensely successful than PS4/XB1?

The PS2 was an incredible console. It had great titles and at a good price. It survived for 12 years (2 console life cycles) and made the most sales of any console to date. As for the Wii, it was a great concept and really pulled in families and casual gamers. The PS4 and XB1 are really similar to the consoles that came before them, not to mention competition from PC and mobile gaming now.

[juretrn]

1. Give people what they want.

2. People buy what they want. 

3. ????

4. Profit!

[flibberdipper]

The PS2 was really impressive for the time.

[James_AJ]

The PS2 was really impressive for the time.

oh yeah, can't deny the DmC (the original) graphics in 2001..

[Whiskers]

I am aware of it. But I really do not think PS4/XB1 will have enduring sales figures over the years like PS2 and Wii did/do.

 

Only time will tell. For the moment they're showing promise though.

 

I think the main problem with new generations of consoles is our expectations. With the PS2, we were tolerant of its standard-definition graphics even when 1080p televisions were quickly becoming standard. Yet when Xbox 360 hit we criticised it for failing to render much of anything at higher than 720p, and likewise there are people complaining that the PS4 and Xbox One don't games at higher than 1080p.

 

The gaming community has grown to be a lot more pessimistic and needy, if I'm to be brutally honest. As a result of that developers have to work a lot harder, striving to meet our requirements - more graphics, more content, more scale, more features, more players, more physics, more more more more! As a result of this, the hardware platforms themselves simply won't be able to keep up as well as they used to when our standards were lower.

 

Let me put it this way. When new PS2 games were being launched, people's requirements were typically just 'make it more betterer'. They didn't care about resolution or framerate, they didn't care about model and texture quality so long as it wasn't noticeably awful in comparison to other games. As a result of that, the games were satisfactory for much longer.

 

Tl;dr: The PS2 and Nintendo Wii were so successful because we were less demanding of them.

[MeesterJackson]

Only time will tell. For the moment they're showing promise though.

 

I think the main problem with new generations of consoles is our expectations. With the PS2, we were tolerant of its standard-definition graphics even when 1080p televisions were quickly becoming standard. Yet when Xbox 360 hit we criticised it for failing to render much of anything at higher than 720p, and likewise there are people complaining that the PS4 and Xbox One don't games at higher than 1080p.

 

The gaming community has grown to be a lot more pessimistic and needy, if I'm to be brutally honest. As a result of that developers have to work a lot harder, striving to meet our requirements - more graphics, more content, more scale, more features, more players, more physics, more more more more! As a result of this, the hardware platforms themselves simply won't be able to keep up as well as they used to when our standards were lower.

 

Let me put it this way. When new PS2 games were being launched, people's requirements were typically just 'make it more betterer'. They didn't care about resolution or framerate, they didn't care about model and texture quality so long as it wasn't noticeably awful in comparison to other games. As a result of that, the games were satisfactory for much longer.

 

Tl;dr: The PS2 and Nintendo Wii were so successful because we were less demanding of them.

I personally disagree a little here. The topic is asking "Why did they sell so well?" For the PS2 it's kinda obvious, it was the first to come before the Xbox and Gamecube, and simply put, had GREAT games. When the PS2 was out and HD started coming in, HD TV's were EXPENSIVE as hell. Not only that, Plasma screen TV's were the thing at the time, and they were kinda bad at the time if you think about it as if I remember correctly, the energy source needed to be replaced from time to time. Standard TV's were dropping in price, therefore people saw the cheaper TV's as a good deal and bought them. (As a matter of fact, the same thing is ironically slowly happening to current HD TV's as smart TV's/4K is coming out, regular HD TV's prices are dropping dramatically). As for the Wii, in a sense the original Wii was a failure and a success. The original Wii had GREAT PR, it had awesome commercials, really showed off what it could do, showed that families as a whole would enjoy the console, etc. It also showed off it's main focus a lot that caught everyone's attention which was the motion controls...however the reason the Wii generally sold well is because everyone hopped on it because of it's great PR and it's general first line up of games that came out/were announced for the first 2 years roughly....but again, however, people started to realize that Wii games were slowly becoming degrading in quality and not only that, there weren't a ton of first party games coming out (ironically again, the Wii U's problem is that there's barely any first party and even third party support). People started to sell their Wii's back, let them collect dust, and etc. The Wii pretty much sold like mad in the first two/three years giving it a GIANT head-start, not only that, it wasn't that expensive, it was 250 dollars, 50 dollars more than the original PS2. Then when it got it's first price drop of roughly 50 dollars off, it again, sold like mad. It's head-start is what pretty much gave it it's sells numbers at least in my opinion...though that's probably a fact too. Later though, during it's final years the Wii became like what? 100 dollars to purchase? It also finally got a good amount of games out for it, so people still bought it from time to time, thus still steadily increasing sales.

[Whiskers]

-Snip-

 

I don't want to be mean, but please try to use paragraphs. It's a little tricky to keep track of an entire post when it's sort of all in one big block.

 

Yeah you're kind of right, but a lot of what I said still holds true. We were, at the time, more accepting of a platform's fixed capabilities. We didn't demand unrealistic things from them and didn't constantly demand games to be more and more ridiculously complicated. As soon as the consoles reached the HD era all of that changed, and a lot of developers died off quite fast because the struggle of adapting to the new platforms with the new expectations levied at them. It's a large reason why Japanese game studios are so rarely heard from nowadays whereas with the PS1 and PS2 they were the dominating force in gaming.

[MeesterJackson]

I don't want to be mean, but please try to use paragraphs. It's a little tricky to keep track of an entire post when it's sort of all in one big block.

 

Yeah you're kind of right, but a lot of what I said still holds true. We were, at the time, more accepting of a platform's fixed capabilities. We didn't demand unrealistic things from them and didn't constantly demand games to be more and more ridiculously complicated. As soon as the consoles reached the HD era all of that changed, and a lot of developers died off quite fast because the struggle of adapting to the new platforms with the new expectations levied at them. It's a large reason why Japanese game studios are so rarely heard from nowadays whereas with the PS1 and PS2 they were the dominating force in gaming.

I usually do. I got lazy it was like 2AM. 

 

Anyways, Eh I don't remember the 360 and PS3 getting graphical complaints, especially since now everyone praises them in for the fact their technology lasted so long and still looks respectively good for consoles. 

[Whiskers]

I usually do. I got lazy it was like 2AM. 

 

Anyways, Eh I don't remember the 360 and PS3 getting graphical complaints, especially since now everyone praises them in for the fact their technology lasted so long and still looks respectively good for consoles.

It's all I see anyone talking about 99% of the time, really. Even when Gran Turismo 6 succeeds in being a Damn-near 1080p 60fps game with an incredible level of graphical fidelity people still complained that some of the track textures don't look as good as the likes of Project Cars etc. Again, completely unrealistic and unfair expectations.