Food for Thought: 4th Gen Parallels in American Market

[Sullla]

I've been kicking around this notion recently, and was curious whether the rest of you think the comparison has any merit. It struck me this past week that the American sales charts are in some ways reminiscent of the famous 4th Gen competition between the Sega Genesis and the Nintendo SNES. Today, the XBox 360 and Wii occupy somewhat similar positions. Think about this:

* The Genesis released well in advance of the SNES in America and built up a sizable user base advantage. Over the course of the generation, the SNES then slowly gained ground on the Genesis and eventually passed it at the tail end of the systems' lives. We may see a very similar track record for the 360/Wii this time around.

* The Genesis (Megadrive) was crushed in the Japanese market by the SNES. The 360 has essentially no chance to avoid a similar fate.

* The Genesis was enormously more popular than the SNES when it came to sports games. (The Madden series started on the Genesis, and didn't even exist on Nintendo consoles until years later.) The 360 clearly has emerged as the dominant sports console in the American market in the current generation; EA doesn't even make Wii versions for some of its major sports franchises (e.g. NHL 08).

* The Genesis was deliberately marketed to an audience of teenage males (remember the "SEGA Scream?"), while the SNES was seen as more of a family console. The parallels should be obvious.

*SEGA produced two add-ons for the Genesis in the form of the SEGA CD and 32-X, costly hardware additions that were less than successful. The 360 has three different SKUs on the market, and the hardware failure rate has been less than successful.

Now just as every generation is the same in some ways, they are all different as well. Gigantic differences this time around include the presence of the PS3 (nothing quite similar in the early 90s), the fact that the 360 is more powerful than the Wii instead of the other way around, the greater financial resources of Microsoft compared to SEGA, and so on - etc. etc. But it seems to me that there ARE some parallels here, with two genuinely different user bases between 360/Wii that are interested in purchasing different types of games. Since the 4th generation is often considered by many people to be one of the best eras of gaming, I don't see parallels as a bad thing.

Crazy thought, or not?