Screen Digest still believes the PS3 will take the worldwide lead

[omgwtfbbq]

RolStoppable said:

omgwtfbbq said:

tsk tsk Rol, don't you remember our little latin lesson? "Cum hoc ergo propter hoc"? ;)

In reality, the situation is a lot more complex than to break it down to these factors. While it's true a large and varied game library does attract buyers, much more influential is the opposite, that a large user base attracts games. We are all aware of the "third party development spiral of doom/win" theory, and it's the one most people use to rebut the "PS3 will win because of the games" scenario.

So the real question is, how do we make a game console sell a hundred million and dominate the Industry? Well it would seem that is rather simple. The game console that looks like winning early on will almost certainly win. This pattern makes sense, since developers will flock to the winning console in order to make the most money. (Always follow the money)

So now the question becomes "how do we make everyone think we're going to win the console war?". Well if I knew the answer to this I wouldn't be posting it on a video games forum. But looking at past statistics, there are a few things that help:

1) Brand name. This is especially big in the SNES/Genesis war, where Nintendo very slowly overtook Sega to be number 1
2) Price. People are more likely to pick up a cheaper system
3) Killer app. The important thing about a killer app is it has to come EARLY. Not necessarily early in your console's lifetime, but before you are being consistently outsold by your competition. Otherwise the killer app just appears as a "blip"
4) A head start. If two consoles are selling at roughly the same rate, but one has, for example, 7 million more users, then one year down the track when your next game is going to be released, you can expect the gap to be about the same. Which platform would you prefer develop for?
5) I'm sure there are more that I can't think of right now

Things that don't seem to help:

1) Processing power
2) Extra features

Now of course, these things don't hinder (except indirectly by raising the price), but I haven't found any evidence to suggest that they help.

Whatever the magic formula is, the important part to remember is that once a console gets momentum, this momentum doesn't stop, in fact, it usually spirals out of control. You'll notice that loser consoles tend to have their first two years decent and then tail off quickly, whereas the winner consoles have first and second years better than the losers, and then the third and fourth years are better still. So while it's a marathon, it's a special kind of marathon where people give drinks to whoever's winning and throw stones at whoever's losing.

The point of my post was to point out what all winning systems have in common, which is what Nighteyes was talking about. It wasn't a question of how a system made it on the winning road, just what winning systems have in common.

"Why did this system win?" is a totally different debate.

The Nintendo 64 makes your first three points obsolete. It had the brandname, it wasn't more expensive (it matched the price of the PS1 for the most part) and it had the killer app at launch (Super Mario 64).

So why did the PS1 win the 5th generation? Just because of the headstart (remember the Saturn had that too)? I don't think so. The more important reason was how Sony handled things with 3rd parties. Every developer was allowed to 1) make games and 2) wasn't restricted to a certain number of games per year. Which automatically led to the two things that all winning systems had in common: size of library and variety in library.

The SNES didn't win because of brandname, it won because it had the games due to Nintendo's strict contracts with 3rd parties, especially the japanese developers. Either make your game exclusive for the Nintendo system or don't make games for it at all. This way the Mega Drive never had a chance to take off in Japan and all these exclusive games later helped the SNES in America to overcome Sega's headstart.

The NES won because there was nothing else at that time due to the crash in the early 80's. The emerging competition was too late to the party to ever have a chance to match the NES library.

The PS2 had the headstart, brandname and faith of 3rd parties right out of the gate. The competition offered the same gameplay, so gamers sticked with the console which had the most games.

Now the real question becomes how could the Wii win? It didn't have the brandname, nor a headstart and no faith from 3rd parties due to lackluster performance of their games in the past 10 years. At least it was cheaper than the competition, but that's not really the deciding factor.

The real reasons are:

1) The Wii makes games more accessible, thus more people become interested in the system. The Wii also changes the way how games are played and makes games feel new and fresh again, which reinforces interest from veteran gamers to keep playing games.

2) Right out of the gate (see launch games) the Wii doesn't restrict its library to focus on a few selected genres. Nintendo also has learned from Sony how important it is to amass a large library of games, hence all the shovelware Nintendo allows on its system. The low development costs (compared to 360/PS3) also greatly help to build a large library of games in a short period of time and let's not forget the virtual console. Within a year there are about 400 games available for the Wii/VC, a library unmatched in size and variety from any other console in its first year.

While it's true a large and varied game library does attract buyers, much more influential is the opposite, that a large user base attracts games. 

The large and varied library (or its potential for the first couple of years) has to be there in the first place to attract buyers. Otherwise, why would people buy a system in the first place?

The point of my post was to point out what all winning systems have in common, which is what Nighteyes was talking about. It wasn't a question of how a system made it on the winning road, just what winning systems have in common.

Yes, but there was a strong implication. Don't pretend you didn't mean it ;) You were pointing out the correlation between a large variety of games and winning consoles. Now in this post you're saying that a large variety of launch games helps make a winning console. Of course, there's a rather large difference in those two statements. Launch games are of course important. Is it the size and variety of launch games that helps propel a console forward? Or is it the popularity of one or two launch games? 

I did mention it wasn't an exact science, didn't I? The N64 vs PS1 was actually an incredibly interesting competition. There are so many factors in this one that it's impossible to narrow it down to one or two. By all accounts, the N64 should have won. Unfortunately, the launch lineup was simply too small. I think Japan rejected the N64 out of the gate and this was the major problem. It seems Japan wasn't interested in a 3D Mario, which was basically the entirity of N64s launch. Especially with FF7 following shortly on the heels of the N64's release (the PS1's killer app). In America, the N64 actually performed extremely well despite the tiny launch library, mainly on the back of Mario 64. It probably would have won had America been the entire world. But in Japan, the PS1 outperformed the N64 quite handily, and Japanese developers (an incredibly strong force) went with the PS1. Japan was a much more important market in those days.

How was it that Nintendo was able to pull off those strict contracts with third parties in the SNES era? If they did that now third parties would simply not publish for Nintendo consoles. So how come they managed it back then? Well it's simple, brand name. At the time, the Nintendo brand was at its strongest, and everyone wanted to publish for them. Nintendo simply leveraged their successful brand name to force publishers into exclusivity contracts.

Now how did the Wii win? I think this is more straightforward than the previous consoles, and I don't think size and variety of the gaming library had much to do with it at all. I think the main reasons why the Wii is winning is:

1) Wii Sports. The killer app that built up an amazing amount of hype for the console. Let's be perfectly honest, if it wasn't for Wii Sports, then the Wii wouldn't have anywhere near the amazing hype it does now. Mainstream press coverage plus Wii parties have sold so many consoles.

2) price. While the Wii is off to a phenominal start, there's no question that if the PS3 launched  without blu-ray and more modest specs at a $300 price point, it would have sold more consoles. How many more? Who knows. But if it had captured the hearts of the PS2 owners rather than alienating them, it wouldn't take much to get a large portion of them to switch. Unfortunately for Sony, they concentrated too much on competing with Microsoft in their territory, and made an expensive powerful FPS machine to try to beat them.

Of course, you can argue that it was the large variety of games that sold the Wii, and I have no real proof that this isn't the case, but I think if you take that variety and remove Wii Sports, then you end up with the Xbox 360 still handily outselling everything else.