3rd January 2007, 6:54 AM
A Black Falcon Wrote:This is called "spin written in hindsight made in order to prove a point". Look back at now from five years from now and things will probably seem just as "obvious" about what would happen...
... yes, the PS2 did seem to have things won quite quickly, but still. The PS2 was even more successful than the PS1 was, remember! By a good margin too...
Nah, Sega was experiencing success but it was painfully obvious third parties were waiting on the fence. Sega was pumping out great and numerous 1st party titles, but it wasn't enough. They had ruined themselves from their Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn. I was quite surprise they had as much support as they did.
Nintendo's strict quality standards were part of the entire 64 era. Many developers had already jumped over to the Sony side of things (see Squaresoft) because it had the CD (a cheaper format compared to the 64 cartridge), and it was easier to program for, and because it had already been out like 17 months before the 64. You had to have read some of the articles pre-Gamecube, even from Nintendo themselves, how they were going to turn things around. On that same token, you had to have read articles about Sony's unrivaled success and their achieving of being the best selling console to history (making games cool, so to speak). It was written on the wall, some people just turned a blind eye to it.
Xbox...back in 2000 this was still just its project name. Why on earth would developers throw their weight behind an unknown competitor in the console space?
No, it was obvious developers would stick with Sony on round 2. This generation, however, everything is different thanks to Sony. It is obvious something is going to get shaken up due to Sony's new course of direction. No longer are they creating consoles for the masses (obvious with their hardware pricepoints well above average), but rather they are making high-end products Joe Schmo can't afford. It's like they forgot that the Joe's got them where they are, that big casual "cool" fanbase has been forgone for a different crowd that wants an all-in-one box for a premium price. Meanwhile, Microsoft seems to have Kutaragi's Playstation 2 handbook and is following it to the page (but also adding more: Live), and trying to pick up Joe Schmo that Sony left behind.
The people ignoring the fact that developers are in fact giving more support to the 360 than Playstation are the same people who refused to believe that developers were shying away from Nintendo at one point. It was easy to see why (as I pointed out before).
Right now, Microsoft has a ~10 million userbase, the largest of the three; they have friendly development tools (even PS3 developers confessed that Microsoft has better tools); they have Live (which kicks everything else in the pants); they have a good price-point (that's fixing to drop here in several months); and they have the third party support (there are more announced games for 360 in 2007 than there are for PS3). All the pieces in play are obvious.
Right now, Sony has less than a million PS3's sold, the smallest userbase; they have an architecture that is different and more costly than 360 or Wii; many developers have gone true multi-platform with simultaeous releases of big games on the cheaper 360 (see Resident Evil 5, Grand Theft Auto 4, Assassin's Creed, et al); Sony has very obviously priced themselves out of the market as you can walk in to most any store and buy one (a very different story than the PS2, Xbox 360, or Wii launches where they were hard to come by for months after launch)...in essence, Sony of today is NOT the same company of the past 10 years. There will be a different outcome, one that isn't as successful as either previous console.
Nintendo is hard to gauge. They've broken away from the traditional route that Microsoft and Sony are taking of adding more horsepower. It's not obvious as to whether third parties will jump on the Nintendo band-wagon or not. Right now, there are only about 50 games announced for the Wii in 2007 (compared to ~200 for the 360, and ~170 for the PS3). Seeing as how Nintendo is breaking new ground, bring in a new kind of gamer, it's hard to tell what all this means.
In any case, as I said, the playing field is very obviously different as long as you're not turning a blind eye to any part of it.
Jak 3 : Jet Set Radio Future : Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee : Final Fantasy XII : Shadow of the Colossus : more to come...
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