Console WAR question..

[Oyvoyvoyv]

Wii_R2_Hardcore said:

Good question. I think the profit is important in the short term, but the market share is the most important thing in the long term, otherwise the competition will eventually destroy you. Take the Gamecube as an example. It was a profitable machine during the last generation, but Sony almost monopolized the market, to the point that Nintendo needed to change radically its strategy (make a revolution) to survive this generation. Now they have both things, profit and market share. They will probably still be around the next generation.

Besides, history has shown us, that the most succesful the console is, in terms of market share, the bigger library it has. More games and maybe better chances to find those games you find "the best" games. That can make your console "better", at the end. But those were the years when most of the people had one machine only. Now is very common to have two or more current generation consoles.

If you are asking yourself "what is the deal with fanboyism?". Well, tell me about it. I don't get it either.

I planned on writing a post here, but you said pretty much everything I could have. Nicely done.

 

One other thing though.

 

If you measured things in profit, nothing would ever change. You'd have Nintendo winning almost all the time, even during their "bad periods". Also, 2007 wouldn't be that different from 2008.

With unit sales, things change all the time. 360 is up 40% in March, Ps3 is dead on even (year over year). Profit wise? I'd guess Microsoft is roughly at the same (losing money on  360 hardware, making more from SW), or a slight increase. Sony is probably up a fair bit. Still, that's minor.

 

It should be about profit, but profit is... dull. The quarterly changes simply aren't big enough. There are some threads about it (they appear monthly or so), and they generally go through most of what you can discuss on a forum.

 

Unit sales, on the other hand, change a lot monthly.