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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Alternate history, 7th gen: Clash of the HD dreadnaughts

 

What do you think would've been the outcome?

Nintendo would still have won 1 4.76%
 
PS3 would've won 12 57.14%
 
Xbox 360 would've won 8 38.10%
 
Total:21
HoloDust on 19 August 2019
curl-6 said:
HoloDust said:
If this was just Nintendo HD console instead of Wii in PS360 era, then it would not go so well.

On the other hand, if in this alternate history N64 with CD happened (and everything that leads to/stems from that), which means GC is different as well, then it's different story altogether.

Ah, yeah I should have clarified that; this isn't the same alternate history timeline as N64 using CDs in the other topic, for the purposes of this thread, let's assume Gen 5 and 6 played out as they did IRL. I'll add that to the OP, thanks.

NP, honestly, I was assuming you meant different timeline to start with, but I personally find what happens further in N64-CD timeline much more interesting for speculations (and to be fair, timeline I would much more prefer), since it means fairly different Nintendo and, if not fully absent, than limited MS influence.



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derpysquirtle64 on 19 August 2019

As others have said, I guess it wouldn't go well for Nintendo. I think 30-40m would have been the limit for such a console. 360 would probably win in this case as it competed with Wii around the same price point. At least 360 and Wii were much closer in price than anything and PS3.

S.Peelman said:
If Nintendo went with a GameCube 2, they’d be last. I think tye 360 would’ve won in that case, because with Kinect, it’d have gotten all the casuals.

Do you think Kinect would have existed in the alternate universe without Wii? I have some doubts about it



 

COKTOE on 19 August 2019
S.Peelman said:
If Nintendo went with a GameCube 2, they’d be last. I think tye 360 would’ve won in that case, because with Kinect, it’d have gotten all the casuals.

With no Wii motion controls to ape, and casual crowd to attract, Kinect would never have existed. Also, I think the timeline in Back To The Future would have been fine if Marty had boned his mom. What I'm saying is, Marty is his own father.



- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."

S.Peelman on 19 August 2019
derpysquirtle64 said: 
S.Peelman said:
If Nintendo went with a GameCube 2, they’d be last. I think tye 360 would’ve won in that case, because with Kinect, it’d have gotten all the casuals.

Do you think Kinect would have existed in the alternate universe without Wii? I have some doubts about it

COKTOE said:

With no Wii motion controls to ape, and casual crowd to attract, Kinect would never have existed. Also, I think the timeline in Back To The Future would have been fine if Marty had boned his mom. What I'm saying is, Marty is his own father.

Heh. You guys make an interesting point, I didn’tthink about that.

I suppose it’s fair to say the success of Wii and motion control was a big incentive for Microsoft to go big on Kinect (and Sony with Move, to lesser success), so it’s also fair to say the strategy for the gen would’ve also been different for Microsoft. On the other hand, though I don’t know the history of it’s development so I could be wrong, I doubt Microsoft wasn’t already working on it’s development when Wii became. It doesn’t look like something you’d conceptualize, research, develop and release in a little over three years?

Ahh time mechanics, it’s mindboggling. And BttF is all kinds of weird. XD



SanAndreasX on 19 August 2019

Nintendo would have been last, unless they scored some kind of major software coup. But a HD Nintendo 7G would also have had poor online, and Xbox Live was a big selling point of the 360 in its early years. I suppose there's a chance that, with Sony's head so far up their ass about the PS3 and its pricing, that Nintendo could have squeaked into second place briefly behind 360.



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curl-6 on 19 August 2019
The_Liquid_Laser said:

I think it would have been about a 3 way tie, although I'll give the edge to Sony, since that is what actually happened between Sony vs. Microsoft.  Here are some factors to consider:

-As others have said, Nintendo does not get most of its new customer base that it would have gotten from Wii. 
-I agree with Bofferbrauer2 that the Virtual Console was something of a selling point, and "Wii HD" would still have brought in some old school gamers like myself.  
-Nintendo launches at a $300/$350 price tag means it is the cheapest HD console on the market.  That gives it something of an advantage as well.
-Third party companies were gradually transitioning to making their games multiplatform.  Microsoft was the main company championing this, but Nintendo would get some of the benefit.  This means that the "Wii HD" would have had a better third party library than the Gamecube, but not as good as PS3 & XBox360.  (Take the average of the Gamecube and PS3 library sizes and that is a decent estimate of the "Wii HD" library, and then add in Virtual Console games.)

In the end I think Nintendo steals a very large chunk of the XBox360 audience in NA, and it also steals a decent amount from Sony in Europe in Japan.  The "Wii HD" sells to 3 groups: 1) Gamecube fans who stay loyal to Nintendo, 2) People who just want the cheapest HD console (a huge selling point for the XBox360 originally), 3) old school gamers who return for the Virtual Console.  Put that all together and I think Nintendo sells about as much as XBox360 and PS3.  Perhaps they all sell about 60-65m each, and again I give Sony the edge.

Also, given the lack of a $250 console that appeals to new gamers, I'd say DS sales go up about 10m, which would end up putting the DS above the PS2 in lifetime sales.   

The Xbox 360 had a $300 USD SKU from launch, so Nintendo wouldn't have had any price advantage there.

HoloDust said:
curl-6 said:

Ah, yeah I should have clarified that; this isn't the same alternate history timeline as N64 using CDs in the other topic, for the purposes of this thread, let's assume Gen 5 and 6 played out as they did IRL. I'll add that to the OP, thanks.

NP, honestly, I was assuming you meant different timeline to start with, but I personally find what happens further in N64-CD timeline much more interesting for speculations (and to be fair, timeline I would much more prefer), since it means fairly different Nintendo and, if not fully absent, than limited MS influence.

Well, that thread remains open and you are more than welcome to use it to speculate about the long term ramifications beyond Gen 5. ;)

I think it's fair to say that by the time we got to Gen 7 in that timeline the industry would likely look totally unlike what we actually got.



The_Liquid_Laser on 20 August 2019
curl-6 said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

I think it would have been about a 3 way tie, although I'll give the edge to Sony, since that is what actually happened between Sony vs. Microsoft.  Here are some factors to consider:

-As others have said, Nintendo does not get most of its new customer base that it would have gotten from Wii. 
-I agree with Bofferbrauer2 that the Virtual Console was something of a selling point, and "Wii HD" would still have brought in some old school gamers like myself.  
-Nintendo launches at a $300/$350 price tag means it is the cheapest HD console on the market.  That gives it something of an advantage as well.
-Third party companies were gradually transitioning to making their games multiplatform.  Microsoft was the main company championing this, but Nintendo would get some of the benefit.  This means that the "Wii HD" would have had a better third party library than the Gamecube, but not as good as PS3 & XBox360.  (Take the average of the Gamecube and PS3 library sizes and that is a decent estimate of the "Wii HD" library, and then add in Virtual Console games.)

In the end I think Nintendo steals a very large chunk of the XBox360 audience in NA, and it also steals a decent amount from Sony in Europe in Japan.  The "Wii HD" sells to 3 groups: 1) Gamecube fans who stay loyal to Nintendo, 2) People who just want the cheapest HD console (a huge selling point for the XBox360 originally), 3) old school gamers who return for the Virtual Console.  Put that all together and I think Nintendo sells about as much as XBox360 and PS3.  Perhaps they all sell about 60-65m each, and again I give Sony the edge.

Also, given the lack of a $250 console that appeals to new gamers, I'd say DS sales go up about 10m, which would end up putting the DS above the PS2 in lifetime sales.   

The Xbox 360 had a $300 USD SKU from launch, so Nintendo wouldn't have had any price advantage there.Well, that thread remains open and you are more than welcome to use it to speculate about the long term ramifications beyond Gen 5. ;)

I forgot about that version of the XBox360, because it didn't have a hard drive.  Even if that is what you meant for the $300 Wii HD, then the $350 version would be the cheapest version with a hard drive.  Wii HD still has a price advantage in this situation.



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curl-6 on 20 August 2019
The_Liquid_Laser said:
curl-6 said:

The Xbox 360 had a $300 USD SKU from launch, so Nintendo wouldn't have had any price advantage there.Well, that thread remains open and you are more than welcome to use it to speculate about the long term ramifications beyond Gen 5. ;)

I forgot about that version of the XBox360, because it didn't have a hard drive.  Even if that is what you meant for the $300 Wii HD, then the $350 version would be the cheapest version with a hard drive.  Wii HD still has a price advantage in this situation.

Based on the patterns we did see with Wii and Wii U though, even the $350 model would likely have only a small amount of flash storage. So I'm not sure the price advantage would help much. In the gen before, we saw Gamecube retail at just $100 less than two years after its release, yet still sell very poorly.



The_Liquid_Laser on 20 August 2019
curl-6 said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

I forgot about that version of the XBox360, because it didn't have a hard drive.  Even if that is what you meant for the $300 Wii HD, then the $350 version would be the cheapest version with a hard drive.  Wii HD still has a price advantage in this situation.

Based on the patterns we did see with Wii and Wii U though, even the $350 model would likely have only a small amount of flash storage. So I'm not sure the price advantage would help much. In the gen before, we saw Gamecube retail at just $100 less than two years after its release, yet still sell very poorly.

For Wii U, the $300 model had 8GB, while the $350 had 32 GB.  That can be a very big difference if games require a 2-4 GB install in order to play.  For the XBox 360, the Core model had 256 MB at launch while the Pro had 20 GB.  That is a pretty big difference in storage.  I'm not even sure what you could play on the XBox360 with only 256 MB.  I would think most people would need to buy a bigger hard drive for their XBox360 if they wanted to use it as their dedicated console.  I owned a PS3, and I know I played a lot of games that required an install that was bigger than 256 MB.

For both the XBox360 and our theoretical "Wii HD" the more expensive version would basically be the "real version" of the console.



curl-6 bet me that PS5 + X|S sales would reach 56m before year end 2023 and he was right.
My Bet With curl-6

My Threads:
Master Thread, Game of the Year/Decade
Switch Will Be #1 All Time
Zelda Will Outsell Mario (Achieved)
How Much Will MH Rise sell?
My Bet With Metallox

curl-6 on 20 August 2019
The_Liquid_Laser said:
curl-6 said:

Based on the patterns we did see with Wii and Wii U though, even the $350 model would likely have only a small amount of flash storage. So I'm not sure the price advantage would help much. In the gen before, we saw Gamecube retail at just $100 less than two years after its release, yet still sell very poorly.

For Wii U, the $300 model had 8GB, while the $350 had 32 GB.  That can be a very big difference if games require a 2-4 GB install in order to play.  For the XBox 360, the Core model had 256 MB at launch while the Pro had 20 GB.  That is a pretty big difference in storage.  I'm not even sure what you could play on the XBox360 with only 256 MB.  I would think most people would need to buy a bigger hard drive for their XBox360 if they wanted to use it as their dedicated console.  I owned a PS3, and I know I played a lot of games that required an install that was bigger than 256 MB.

For both the XBox360 and our theoretical "Wii HD" the more expensive version would basically be the "real version" of the console.

Realistically you probably would've needed a hard drive to get much use out of even the expensive one though, just like you pretty much needed one for the Wii U and Switch. Nintendo have always been very stingy with internal storage. The historical Wii had what, 500MB of internal flash memory?

Last edited by curl-6 - on 20 August 2019