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superchunk on 03 October 2009
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Dr.Grass said:

I wouldn't rule out that Nintendo could launch first. Some reasons:

1- Your 'historical' argument is useless because (a) the strategic aspect is more imporant and (b) ANY good statistician will tell you that to make a prediction based on known data you need a big enough sample space. What am a saying? There have only been the NES,SNES,N64,GC (I'm not counting Wii) so to deduce that much just from these is rather presumptuous.

2- Sony has been the only 'twice-in-a-row' winner and they launched first so there's some incentive.

3- Nintendo might want to grab the bull by the horns: The other 2 consoles HAVE to stick it out because of the huge investments. Nintendo could drown them with an early launch.

This doesn't mean that I think they'll do it. I'm just saying some people here are overly presumptuous.

What would I like? For Ninty to go head-to-head with MS and Sony and launch something technically comptetitive. I'll still buy though - Doesn't matter to me what they do.

1. While anything can obviously happen, SNES, N64, GC, and Wii have all launched ~1yr after their earliest competitor and all are about 5-6 years after their parent.

2. Did NES and SNES just dissappear off of the history records? Keep in mind SNES came late and still won, which is why Nintendo has never really cared about launching later. Granted, you are right that there is incentive to launch first as shown by PS2 and 360s lead over PS3. Which is why I keep saying regardless of what PR say, this gen will be replaced in 2012 at the latest.

3. All three have the same incentives to wait or launch early. Waiting for all three will maximise profits on current hardware. Launching early gives them a possible benefit of getting a big enough lead and potential big gains resulting from market share lead. However, the question is which will pay off more? Keeping in mind that MS/Sony will definitely not allow each one to launch before the other in any significant manner.