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Louie on 02 May 2007
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mrstickball said:
Louie said:
Well we´ve got Sega, too. With 1st generation worse than the seond one and gen 3 and 4 failing they exatcly match to this theory. And Atari was the same: 1st gen good, 2nd gen better 3rd gen bad. So we get to 6 proven examples for it.

 Of course it is just a theory, but Microsoft follows the same way (at least for the first 2 gens) with Xbox and 360.

 And important is how big your market can be in the best possible scenario (I pointend it out befor though): Sega did good with Genesis because they knew their mistakes from their first console. Sega fits even better in this rule than Nintendo because SNES sold worse than NES.

 But again: It is just a theory.


 

Again, wrong. The SMS-1000 (the first Sega system) sold 8-10m units. It was then transformed into the Sega Master System/Genesis which did 35m units.......A massive increase. It's market then shrunk to about 40% of the market it formerly had, then shrunk another 33% with the DC before it was axed.

The Atari 2600 sold 24m units w/w against very fierce competition. It was the first iteneration of the Atari machine. The 5200 sold maybe 4m units, 7200 sold 2m, and Jaguar sold 3m. Really, there was no drop-off for Atari. After the market crash, Atari was ruined as a h/w maker and never recovered. But in the same breath, it never had another succuess/failure other than the 2600.


Well I was maybe wrong with Atari (I wasn´t into the market at that time)

Two things: The gaming business as we know it today started with Nintendo Entertainment System. In that case you´re wright I shouldn´t include Atari in this Thread. But Nintendo was the first company to really open the market to a broad audience. And the Master system was Segas first system in the new era and (let´s speak it out) at least it followed a strategy

 

@Rolstoppable: Good point. It´s true everytime a company focused on growth (but didn´t forget the core audience) it won the generation. I mentioned it in my post, though.

I didn´t say "there is a two generation rule" - I just said "in the past, everytime a company followed the same path for more than 2 generations the 3rd console more or less failed." And the market you want to sell your console to decides your business strategy. It IS your business strategy - so all in all we said more or less the same

Again for everyone: I never said "you can´t be the maket leader for more than 2 gens". I just said you "have to" change your strategy. That´s what happened to Nintendo, Sega, it is happening (or likely happening) to Sony now and Microsofts first two consoles are continueing this trend to a certain degree.

 

Edit: Segas Master system was introduced in 1885 (in Japan) - two years after the Mark I had launched. So I wouldn´t call it a "generation console". This is not even half a generation...