Kyros on 29 December 2007
"One of these patters is that the system which builds a rapid early lead tends to extend this lead throughout the generation"
Yes because of this 360 and Dreamcast did so well. Now you say but their lead was not big/rapid enough but in this case we again have no clear measure. Let's wait and see. If having the lead would always be so great console manufacturers would always make small incremental additions to their consoles to keep down prices and have games from the last generation. Its not that easy and we haven't had enough generations to establish clear rules. It comes down to many many many factors playing together. And often cause and correlation are not the same.
