6th September 2006, 3:54 PM
Quote:Okay here's the thing about the 360. As good as it is doing here, it is floundering in Japan. It seems like Wii may just get the clean sweep in the home land and, using the sheer success of Japan and it's bleedover into translated 3rd party gems here, it could basically be Super Nintendo all over again (and the 360 is the Genesis, and the PS3 is the CD-i).
360 is also underwhelming in Europe too; not doing horribly, but not doing so well that it can be convincingly said that it's going to win... honestly, this really to me just means that the PS2 will continue to hold the market, in Europe at least. Microsoft is trying, but for some reason only America seems to be listening to them... Japan... I'm not sure. Handhelds rule now, but the Wii and PS3 might change that... maybe not, though. Their handheld market is very strong. North America? Hard to say. The 360 is, and will continue to, do best in the US by far. Other than that I really have no idea... right now we're in the pre-release period for the Wii and PS3 and as we have repeatedly learned assumptions of what will happen often end up wrong -- unless people have forgotten that before the GC came out Nintendo thought that it'd do better than N64 and bring back Nintendo as one of the top console manufacturers...
And instead it sold 4 million units in Japan, vs. 5 million for the N64, and 12 million in the US -- vs. 20 million for the N64 -- a failure to improve in Japan, but not as crushing as the US failure that lost it almost half of its marketshare... anyway, the point is, we don't know what is going to happen. I do think that it's unlikely that the PS3 will repeat the PS2's domination, though... there are just too many negative signs. Or at least, if it does happen, it'll take years to develop -- like the SNES which didn't pass the Genesis for years after it came out (in the US). Wii is of course the biggest wildcard though... will they manage to make it a casual-friendly box like the DS is and catch the casual market that currently mostly plays PC and handheld (cellphone/PDA anywhere as well as DS in Japan) games? It's possible, but the hurdle is higher for a TV-based console than one that is portable or games that run on a PC, something that everyone has anyway for work or internet access... they are trying with this new controller, and maybe that'll work, but I just have trouble saying "this will make it succeed like the DS" when some of the most important reasons for the DS's mass-market success are things that are exclusive to the handheld market -- the issue of battery life, the fact that having the newest graphics technology is less important on handhelds, that a lot of the games that have brought it success are designed for play while travelling to work or in your spare time, something that Wii games cannot be designed to do... no, if they want this to succeed they can't just copy their DS policy, they need a new one... and while they seem to have kind of tried to do that so far, it's anyone's guess as to whether it will work. It could be that it doesn't and that it again appeals mainly to gamers (even though it is pretty much certain that to at least some degree nongamers will be drawn in, if they can be gotten to actually try the thing... getting someone who thinks "I don't like games" to actually TRY the game will be the hardest step, I think, among the adult market. Can Nintendo break that barrier in the West?
... oh right, PS3. Ah, they aren't changing strategy, the question is mostly just about perceptions of the high price and the issues of supply and finance... five years to recoup the losses? That could be a serious problem... and supply? 500,000 for launch? Ah, that's not much room for error for if there are any manufacturing problems, particularly given how they haven't even started making the things yet... yeah, Sony really has done a good job of backing themselves up against a wall here. The question is if MS and Nintendo's efforts to capitalize on that will work -- and that's just not a sure thing.