Next-Gen: Nintendo Not #1

[Squilliam]

Killiana1a said:

Squilliam said:

Just in case anyone was wondering, if I was to take a bet out of the current 3 console manufacturers I would have to say Nintendo would be the most likely to win again. Theres nothing in the other consoles unique selling propositions which Nintendo cannot replicate whilst at the same time Nintendos own first party provides unique value which is unmatched by the competitions first parties or third parties.

Nintendo has Netflix, Nintendo will probably get other media service providers and offer similar streaming services. They can probably get all the games so long as the console is powerful enough. Given the fact that the first party developers for the DX9 consoles offer similar style games to the 3rd parties theres a degree of duplication there which isn't seen with regular Nintendo titles. So barring any major SNAFUs like the N64 generation say for instance if they don't properly support 3D and 3D is popular, given their lead in mindshare they are more than likely to take the lead once again. This is more likely than say Sony or Microsoft taking the lead from them outright.

Noted.

As I have said in a previous post, Sony and Microsoft compete for the same market demographic. A Red Ocean of dog-eat-dog, winner takes all competition.

The big question is how serious Microsoft and Sony will support Move and Kinect among the non "core" 25-30 year old, male demographic. If one of them or both go vigorously after what many consider Nintendo's Blue Ocean, then things can get interesting. From my point of view, only Microsoft appears to be semi-serious, while Sony with Move created Move because it was expected of them and they want to tie it in with their whole "3D gaming on 3D Sony television" line of business.

TL; DR: Sony and Microsoft currently resembles Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Doubts remain as to whether Sony or Microsoft is serious about the Blue Ocean with Move and Kinect. Microsoft with their $500 million ad campaign appears to be serious, thus semi-serious. Sony with Move created Move because the market expected them to do it, not because they wanted to. Sony will try to align their 3D television business and 3D gaming with Move.

Hardly a Red Ocean. If it were price competition would be a lot more fierce and any moves which increased sales for one would take away sales from the other. Even in the content market with a lot of publishers, if one releases a lot of great selling titles overall sales for the year tend to increase so even in that case it isn't a zero sum game where the numbers are just moved around. So you could argue there are plenty of fish in the sea and being a better fisherman means more fish are caught overall.

I can't say how serious each are about their motion control efforts. We will have to see with regards to their future plans for the interfaces. Obviously Microsoft has immediate short term goals for Kinect whilst the longer term goals for both are difficult to be certain about. If they are indeed serious then we would only expect to see the result of this effort with the next generation of consoles because this current generation is too far gone for the controls to have any significant effect on all but the late adopters.