Japans PS3 Nightmare

[johnlucas]

Avalach21 said:
People keep comparing the PS3 to the likes of the Gamecube and the N-64 etc. and using this to argue that the "PS3 is gonna be ok." No. That's not a good arguement. Nintendo is a self sufficent company. Nintendo needs no one else. Having 3rd parties making great games on a Nintendo system is great, but Nintendo does not NEED them. They make many of their own games and that is enough to have a userbase. They sell their consoles for a profit from the get-go. Sony is a 3rd party dependent company. They throw away their consoles for a loss to get a large userbase. The 3rd parties follow the largest userbase. This is why Sony and 3rd parties have worked so well together in the past. The problem is that the PS3 will not have 3rd party support. Your arguement:"Well the N-64 and Gamecube didn't have a lot of market share, so if the PS3 has the same market share, they'll survive just like N64 and Gamecube did!" No. It doesn't work like that. Sony is already losing tons of money per PS3 they sell. (This brings another point. A PS3 price drop is FARRRRRR OFFFF. They are already losing an absurd amount of money per PS3. Anymore so and it would just be.... ridiculous?) Anyways, they are losing money from their hardware, and they are NOT getting the software to bring that money back. Nintendo had a bunch of their own great games, and when they sold, they made 100% of the profit. Marketshare is just something us fanboys squabble over on internet forums. I'm sure the bigwigs at Nintendo didn't mind that the Gamecube had like 15% of the marketshare that the PS2 did - the Gamecube was bringing in the profits. What's important to a business is PROFIT. Sony is losing the userbase, which in turn is losing the 3rd parties. They are only making a small percentage of income off of 3rd party games (compared to Nintendos 100% profit from first party games). Nintendo could survive without the 3rd parties. Sony cannot. Sony's business strategy DEPENDS on 3rd parties. Please don't compare the marketshare of the PS3 to the marketshare of the GC/N64. Marketshare is insignificant to profits.

Intelligent speaker here.

The comparison *I* would make is that PS3 is more like Saturn and Dreamcast than N64 and Gamecube.

In the marketshare/financial context this is the proper analogy.

It only resembles N64 due to a once-dominator losing its marketshare power in comparison to an upstart. Which makes another tie to the Saturn analogy.

Pyrrhic Victory is the key word here when you analyze Playstations' and XBoxes' business plans.

John Lucas