| darthdevidem01 said: @puffy That all fine & dandy but we are talking worldwide here I can do the same & only talk about japan: Tell me the last time a 3rd place console managed to almost outsell the first place console in Japan (in fact at this rate PS3 may outsell wii in Japan for this years salesonly)? |
A fluke, i would say, in the long-run. Sony managed to condense it's greatest strengths in Japan into the single year (except for GT5, unfortunately for them), but they got the slim-line model, mass-market price-cut, and FF all at once, and in a year of particular weakness for Nintendo. The volatility of the Japanese market (strong, short-term responses to anything), and Sony's ability to keep those short-term bounces coming across the year was what sorted it out. Nintendo dropped the ball, and its definitely worthy to give credit to Sony for understanding that the Japanese console market is largely driven by these flash-in-the-pan flavor-of-the-month sort of things, but one must also recognize that it's as much about Nintendo's failure as Sony's success.
If the PS2 had ever heavily dropped the ball in Japan, certainly GameCube could have outsold them in one year. But it was a different world back then. PS2 was basically everyone's only option, whereas the battle for the big Japanese franchises is still quite live between Sony and Nintendo.
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
