Food for Thought: 4th Gen Parallels in American Market

[Sullla]

Final-Fan, thanks for some insightful comments. Let me respond in turn.

I knew that someone would make the comparison between 360/Genesis and PS3/SNES. However, this really does not stand up to closer scrutiny. The 360 and the PS3 are competing for exactly the same market: young males in the 15-25 age bracket (generally speaking). There is little to no differentiation between the two systems; both are designed to be as powerful as possible and make use of cutting-edge HD/online tools to service the core gaming crowd. The design philosophy is the same - the 360 just happens to be doing a lot better right now in the American market. You could take one of Sega's commercials from the early 90s and insert it into the marketing strategy for either the 360 or PS3 without batting an eye. (Imagine someone screaming "Halo!" or "Sony!" at the end of a TV ad. Not too hard to picture, is it? )

The SNES (and Wii, by extending the comparison) both aimed at a different market. Instead of deliberately seeking out the rebellious youth, these consoles sought to sell to everyone, through what has sometimes derogatively been called "family friendly" entertainment. The "Wii would like to play" ads are pretty much the same thing that Nintendo was doing over a decade ago, although definitely a little slicker than the "Mario Mania" campaign from back then! The Wii/SNES comparison thus works from both a sales perspective and a marketing one. In making a SNES/PS3 analogy, you can perhaps make a sales analogy (although only weakly, and only by assuming that the PS3 will eventually pass the 360 in American sales - which I *VERY* much doubt will ever happen!) but you must ignore the philosophy behind the manufacturers completely. I think that's a mistake!

There also seemed to be some confusion about my analogy, with several posters saying that the Wii had already passed the 360 in worldwide sales. Well, yes - but this post is directed at the AMERICAN market, where the Wii is only gaining ground on the 360 very slowly. I think it will take most of the generation for the Wii to pass the 360 in the American market (probably in 2009), which is why the sales situation is comparable to SNES and Genesis. Pretty much exactly the same thing happened back then, with the SNES not passing the Genesis in America until 1993 (the Genesis launched in 1990!)

Finally, I very much dispute than online multiplayer is this generation's "have to have" feature. Maybe to the core gamer, but hardly so for the typical consumer. The Wii has bare-bones multiplayer, yet it's outsold the 360 and PS3 combined in something like 80% of the weeks this year. That claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny.