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jarrod on 27 August 2010
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Resident_Hazard said:
jarrod said:

Resident_Hazard said:

 Hopefully Nintendo and Microsoft will maintain their current machines after the successors launch.  Both Nintendo and Microsoft axed their last-gen machines last time, almost immediatly as the successor hit the market.  The NES survived almost two years after the SNES launched.  The N64 was dead nearly a year before the GameCube hit the market.  The PS2 is still available for sale--and people still pick it up.  That system has lasted an incredible 10 years.  Because Sony was smart enough not to just drop it because the PS3 was out.  They didn't alienate their own customers.

GC/Xbox/N64 being abandoned so quickly had more to do with their market performance and cost of production than who they were from.

NES actually lasted a solid 4 years after SNES (Nintendo's last published game was Star Tropics II in early 1994).  In Japan, we were still getting new SNES games until 2000.  GB had lifespan that lasted over a decade, and we were still getting new GBA games fours after DS launched... that's how Nintendo tends to handle really profitable and successful wind downs.  N64 was killed because the cost of goods (ie: carts) and 3rd party disinterest, GC was killed because it's market was already dead outside America and those resources were better served going to Wii projects (Zelda TP, Super Paper Mario, etc).

Microsoft's recent comments about 360 (ie" kinect adding 5 years to it's cycle) make me pretty secure in it's continued support for the future too.  Xbox was killed early because nVidia was raping them on licensing fees for the GPU, and MS wanted to put everything into pushing 360 as soon and as hard as possible.

If anything, I'd say PS3 would be the one to worry about most (look at how Sony's utterly dropped the ball with PSP), but with Move being pushed as a new platform and all those massive debts the system has to recoup, I think we're going to see them push PS3 as long as they reasonably can.

Oh yeah, the original Game Boy is still one of the longest-run systems, including the minor Color upgrade--which didn't really bring a major change to the hardware.  The feeling with the N64 and GameCube was that Nintendo gave up on them early along with the 3rd party developers.  I think in the last year of the N64's life, Conker was the only game released with any fanfare.  I'm glad to see a lot of games coming up for the Wii, but I think Nintendo should space them out a bit like they did with Mario Galaxy 2, S&P, and Metroid over the summer. 

Yeah, what gives with the PSP?  I just picked one up fairly recently, and I think it's great (Patapon!)--and it sold to fantastic success, so what's the deal?  They have new ad campaigns, but no new games.

I wasn't aware of some of those details about the Xbox's premature demise. 

I still have the belief, though, that this entire generation (the home console side) was rushed and leapt to far too quickly--and before the industry, developers, and gamers were really ready for it.  For a wide variety of reasons.  I just want the current generation to actually be running empty when the next gen is launched.  So that is feels like a natural movement, rather than a forced one.  There is still so much left to do with all three consoles. 

Now, why the hell are new games still released for defunct systems everywhere, seemingly, except the US?  And I mean "official" (licensed) games, not the homebrew community.  There was still Dreamcast games trickling out two or three years after Sega discontinued the console (if not more).

I think GC/Xbox's core problem was the same, outside the US they just never really caught on or became viable.  From Nintendo and Microsoft's perspective, it was probably better to just move on sadly.  N64 was definitely killed a bit prematurely though imo, at least in America where it was still incredibly strong sales wise. There was even stuff like Sin & Punishment or Custom Robo V2 that were planned for US release in 2000 that Nintendo canned. And a bunch of late term N64 games got moved to GC (Cubivore, Eternal Darkness, Dinosaur Planet, etc) or killed entirely (Echo Delta, MiniRacers, Mother 3, etc).  I think GC would've been fine out on missing those titles, but N64 would've benefitted greatly from getting them. :/

Also, I've no idea why the US market seems to shift so fast?  Even for market leaders like PSone or SNES, it seems like Japan Europe kept getting cool releases, while US publishers and retail balked later on.  Weird imo, considering the US is by far the biggest market with an insanely strong 2nd hand market (where "last gen" games sell like crazy).