A New and Unique Trend in Game Development And Publishing

[Bodhesatva]

super_etecoon said:
Bodhe....what will the size of the market be when only one console is made? Does this cause more sales or fewer? Can the market be sustainable with only one platform? And are we not considering the PC as a platform in and of itself?

There should be no reason for the overall market to shrink if one platform were to become dominant. If it can do everything the other systems can, why would shrink? (I'm aware that this isn't true right now in this generation, but the Wii really is an aberation). It would just mean everyone buys one system instead of splitting up and buying 3. The only thing that would shrink would be total systems sold (due to some people buying multiple systems), but there would really be the same number of users and presumably the same amount of software developed and sold.

Nintendo was right in assuming that the only way to break Sony's burgeoning monopoly (which was supported by a great deal more economic muscle, since Sony was previously both a larger and more profitable company) was to make something distinct and different, and hope that it caught on. It did. Now, Sony and Microsoft are battling over the same market, and both are losing tons of money; simultaneously, almost every major third party developer is either seeing its profits shrink or they're actually losing money. The Wii effectively broke up Sony's monopoly in the last few years before it became effectively unbreakable, like MS's Windows monopoly has been. Yamauchi, Nintendo's previous CEO, even openly stated that if the Wii and DS didn't perform well, Nintendo was probably finished.

The PC certainly USED to be a platform in and of itself, but that's not the case any longer. Think about this: if a PS3 had word processing, what everyday function would a PC serve for you that a PS3 DOES NOT? Sure, for business purposes PCs aren't going anywhere, but for everyday people, music, movies, internet browsing, games, photos, and word processing are 90 percent of a PC's purpose. These platforms are definitely converging, and its precisely why MS entered the video game market.