Why it DOES matter whether there are two consoles or three

[Impulsivity]

sc94597 said:

@Impulsivity, I think you should look at the DS vs PSP. The ds is what you would call the low end system that inovated, and in its early years 3rd party games mostly targeted non gamers and casuals. The psp is what you would consider a high end system that gave you a console like experience. Now the PSP started off with better 3rd party support, and alot more games, yet sales still didn't match that of the DS, because many Die hard nintendo fans, and Casual/ Non gamers bought the ds. After the psp kept failing to sell software at the level third parties wanted it to, developers looked toward the DS. Once the DS started to sell software for the Casual, Non Gamer, and Core markets it got/gets almost all of the support while the PSP gets many droughts. Now if it was only the Wii and PS3 this situation would have happened by now. The ps3 would probably keep its high price, and alot of the 360 owners would have just gotten a high end PC, or just went with the Ps3 or Wii( Nintendo Core TItles seem very appealing). The Nintendo Core would have stayed with the Wii, and the Casual/Non gamers would have went to the Wii. The ps3 would most likely not come anywhere close in terms of hardware or software, and would probably be in a similar situation to that the PSP was in. It would get alot of support in the 1st year or 2, but due to low sales and high development costs 3rd party developers would probably went to the Wii with alot of their 3rd party support.  I woudl think it would be more like Wii at 35 mln, Ps3 at 20mln if the 360 wasn't present.  So I think the 360 being in the market actually helps PS3 gamers more than hinders them. It does hurt fanboys who can't brag about exclusives though.

 

   Handheld games is a casual market.  Look at how badly the black and white gameboy trounced the game gear.  That said the PSP has done very well, compare it with the gamegear which barely broke 10 million vs a black and white machine.  Also the PSP has a very serious piracy problem which doesn't help software sales. 

   Nintendo core titles only buy about 20-30 million in sales (see gamecube and N64), again a lot of the HD gamers are not devoted to mario games unless they grew up on Mario (which less of the generation coming up, by which I mean those under 20, did).  Casual friendly controls of course buy more for the Wii, but there are a lot of people who really really like quality cinematic games.  GTA4 has sold 10 million copies without being bundled at all for instance, ditto for Call of Duty 4.  I don't know how/why you don't understand the very different perspective of a lot of gamers who really really do care about things like graphics, we're not some tiny minority (again I point to the sales of big adult titles both in this generation and in the PS2/PS1 generations).