Millennium said:
Microsoft's rush to release didn't hurt it; in fact, it may have helped against the PS3. Sure, it didn't save them against the Wii juggernaut, but Wii won because of a fundamentally different philosophy on game development; no amount of delaying on Microsoft's part would have changed that. I honestly thought MS would have released their new console in 2010, due to their love of short upgrade cycles, but they'd have announced it by now if that were the case. Maybe 2011, then. I very much doubt that the 360 has more than two years left in it: Microsoft won't wait much longer than that. The one I'm really not sure on is the PS3. Sony must know by now that the 10-year plan is a failure, but it is extremely likely that they got cocky and didn't bother to start the successor as soon as the new console was ready for market (as the industry has done since at least the days of the SNES). They figured they had time, and they were wrong, and now they're the ones playing catch-up. They have little choice but to rush, at least to some degree, but how much will they be willing to do that? This will determine where in the lineup it launches. Wii in 2011? Don't make me laugh. 2013 at the earliest. Nintendo will keep on working that thing as long as it continues to sell in ludicrous numbers, and given that Nintendo hasn't had to pull a single demand-spiker trick yet -no price drops, no colors, no form factors, no new bundles, and nothing else- the Wii has a lot of life left. |
Microsoft lost $1 Billion on RRoD and you're telling me it didn't hurt Microsoft? Not to mention the brand name going down the toilet..
A lot of people forget that Microsoft were forced to drop the XBOX due to their chip manufactuing partners stopping the production of the chips that were used to make the XBOX, so it's not like Microsoft 'like' short hardware cycles.. Please remember that for next time.
About PS3, I don't know where you get the idea that work doesn't start on the next console almost immediately after the release of the one before it.. In Nintendo's case at least it's an instant transfer of resources towards the next-gen machine even if it's just research and brainstorming, it's still a lot of hard work towards the future. Sony may not be doing nuch R&D right now due to the massive losses they are posting but they'll still have people working on it and will have had people working on it for a while now.
With Nintendo, I agree that when they're doing well they don't like to just drop their console and go on to the next one so quickly and that's why I think that there's no way that they'll drop a console on us in 2011.. That would mean the Wii lasts as long on the market by itself as Nintendo's least successful home console.. That's why I believe they'll be looking at 2012/2013 right now as around the time they'll want to be launching their next system. Even Nintendo won't know right now what year, it'll depend on many, many factors such as console sales (including portables), software sales, revenue, profit, growth which will all point to Wii becoming dated and no longer good enough for the consumer and then Nintendo will also have to look at what the competition is doing (although it may seem like they don't, they most definately do) and this will be especially important next generation as the competition moves into the 'casual' space.
Look at how long it took for the SNES to be released for example.. A year or two after the Genesis was it not? NES had a good 7 or 8 years to itself.. SNES had 5 years due to both of it's competitors, SEGA and Sony relasing consoles 4 years into it's life and obviously it's sales would have been eaten into at that point, as did the N64 as it's sales were also down which you can see lead to the whole 5 year cycle.. Continuous Nintendo console sales drops..
Not this time.
