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HappySqurriel on 20 August 2008
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Resident_Hazard said:
HappySqurriel said:
colonelstubbs said:
Ive only had my PS3 a year! 2011 makes it 4 years! Thats ridiculous! If the PS4 was to come out before 2013 i will...switch sides!

What 'colonelstubbs wants' or the technology available doesn't really factor into when a new console is released ...

The videogame market is an oligopoly which means that each of the participants in the market bases their strategy in response to the strategy of their competition. As we have seen in the past, it is a very bad idea to leave your competition on the market for too long before bringing a new system to market that is in direct competition to it; one of the primary reasons why the Playstation was so dominant over the N64, and the PS2 was so dominant over the XBox and Gamecube, was they had an 18 month lead (only dealing with weak competition) to build a userbase and secure third party support before their competition came to market. At the same time the market tends to start rejecting the more minor competitors after 4 or 5 years, and they soon start to see a very rapid death.

 

Your logic is heavily flawed.  The Saturn and Dreamcast were out well before the Playstation and PS2, respectively, and that didn't put them in the Number 1 slot.  The Genesis was also out two years before the SNES, and the SNES ended up with almost twice the userbase.  The Xbox360 hit the market first this generation and lost the number one slot to the Wii.

Being first means nothing and by now, everyone in the industry should understand that.  Just as making the most powerful hardware means nothing as, traditionally, the most powerful hardware is never the top selling console.

 

The Atari2600 dominated over more powerful rivals such as ColecoVision, and trounced earlier arrivals like the Fairchild Channel F.

The NES trounced the more powerful Master System and TurboGrafx-16.

The SNES usurped the earlier-released Genesis (and to an extent, the TurboGrafx), and vastly outsold the more powerful Jaguar and Neo-Geo.

The Playstation annhilated the earlier released Saturn and 3DO, and sales-wise, crushed the more powerful N64.

The Playstation 2 crushed the earlier released Dreamcast and controlled the market over the more powerful Xbox and GameCube.

 

Coming to market first does not guarantee success by any stretch of the imagination.
Developing the most powerful hardware does not guarantee success by any stretch of the imagination.

 

First off, Sega's reaction in the market and their competitions reaction to Sega was a little different than what we would see today ...

Sega released the Sega CD, followed by the Sega 32x, and then did a "Surprise" release of the Sega Saturn at $500 with no games, so its not that surprising that the 12 month lead it had over the Playstation didn't lead to its dominance; after all this failed hardware, the Saturn's software not being carried by major US retailers, and major third party publishers (EA) refusal to produce any games for the Dreamcast even die-hard Sega fans wouldn't buy the system.

 

My argument wasn't that releasing a console first leads to its dominance (by the way), it was that none of the console manufacturers would wait 2 years to release a console to compete with a new console that actually can threaten their position within the market; in particular if their console has already had an acceptably long life (5 or 6 years).