Are the poor performances of the Vita and Wii U a sign of things to come?

[Dodece]

@Metallicube

I would like to congratulate you on a fairly articulate well thought out post. That said I disagree with your argument. The reason being that your examples both have platform specific issues that could be driving down adoption. There isn't a justification for extrapolating out a trend based upon their performance. When more mundane answers are by far much more likely and much simpler. The answer that requires the fewest assumptions, and requires fewer leaps is usually the right answer.

Which means that the problem is probably to do with the platforms themselves, and not the entirety of the market. In the case of the Vita the most common belief is that the products price point is perceived to be in severe excess of the value in the eyes of consumers. Even if people had more disposable cash. That wouldn't lead them to abandon their own notions of fair value. That isn't to say that there isn't a market, but that the product is priced outside of the normal range of prices in that market.

The Wii U might suffer in the sales department, because it has to win back a audience that was soured on the brand by its immediate predecessor. Nintendo neglected one audience in favor of a new audience. The new audience in turn actually abandoned the platform. Meaning that Nintendo has to court a old audience that they actually treated poorly. Meaning it is probably going to be a harder sell at least for awhile. The original core audience may have left for good, may actually hold a grudge, or may be overly cautious having just been burned.

The market is actually quite healthy, and is behaving in the way that a healthy market behaves. Crashes are the result of terrible excesses. This market is dynamic enough that it can whether down turns in one segment or another. For instance even if block buster games suddenly tanked. The market would just shrug that off, because all of the eggs weren't just in that basket. We aren't anywhere close to a scenario where everybody is just going to go bust. That isn't to say that there isn't a correction taking place, but a lot of markets are in the midst of a correction.