| Kantor said: What? The sales gap between the GameCube and Xbox, and PS2, was 100 million units. The gap between PSOne, and N64 and Saturn, was around 70 million units. The gap between the PS3 and Xbox 360 is 7 million units. That does not lead to lack of third party support. Unless you are referring to the Wii, which most third parties hate anyway. |
The PS2 didn't launch to a 100 Million unit lead, sales for the Gamecube/XBox weren't awful out of the gate, and third party publishers didn't always avoid producing games for these platforms. The PS2 had somewhat stable high sales throughout the entire generation, and the other consoles had less reliable and declining sales; the growing userbase lead of the PS2 ensured that it would get the lion share of third party support.
Now, claiming that third party publishers hate the Wii demonstrates your personal bias more than anything else ...
Whether it was appropriate or not, most third party publishers took sales predictions from analysts (or created their own) and since their models were poor and couldn't handle a $600 system or a revolutionary change in people's desires they heavily favoured the HD consoles. After the generation began turning out differently than they expected they started changing direction, and since the release of the Wii there has been a steady increase in the quantity and quality of games released ... Although the Wii will (probably) never be remembered for having the greatest third party library, over the next 4 years of its life the Wii will (probably) have such a steady release of quality titles released that it will become useless to complain about it.
At the same time there are still risks for third party support for the PS3 and XBox 360 ... Most bigger PC games that are being released now require a system (roughly) as powerful as the HD consoles to play (on minimum detail settings, at a low resolution, with a low and unsteady framerate); in 2010 and beyond, as developers expect gamers to own PCs with Geforce 9 or better (to play on minimum detail settings, at a low resolution, with a low and unsteady framerate) there is nothing saying that they would continue to support the HD consoles.
