By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Killiana1a on 02 February 2011
Edit Thread
Squilliam said:
landguy1 said:
Squilliam said:

Its the reason why the PS3 performs poorer in the USA and why the 360 performs poorer in places like Europe even though the libraries and system capabilities are identical.

Ahhh....  Most posters on this site don't like the idea that the Wii especially is a success due to the "Popular" scenario.  We seem to be on the same wavelength on this in that the Wii became the "it" thing, and it has retained that image in general.  I have to concede, at this point in all of the consoles life cycle, they each have a decent enough game library.  With that said, why do people still buy Wii's?  By now, all of the people who are "Gamers" or "Hardcore" probably have all 3 systems or have what they can afford.  It's the rest of the people who are out there who still buy the Wii...  The people who don't really care which they buy, but can't help but to get what everyone else has(like i have said in other posts - Ipods/sliced bread/cabbage patch dolls/ELMO).

If im buying a multiplayer shooter game in a few months am I going to be more likely to get Killzone or Call of Duty? It doesn't matter how much better anyone tells me Killzone is if Call of Duty is the game I know, strike one and all my friends play it and not the other game, strike two. The fact that I can probably get the previous game for free from a friend because hes moved onto a new version helps makes that strike 3 for why Killzone just got struck out of this contest. The same really applies as well to consoles as it does to individual games, especially when we have multiplayer etc.

The general public will only grow an affinity to what is familiar to them. The more a console sells the more likely it is to become familiar to people who may want to own one. Rapid sales growth begets rapid sales growth, which is the path that the Wii took to success in 2006. There are other reasons like excitement, fear of not being able to buy one, keeping up with the Jones family etc which also come into play too.

If word of mouth and familiarity sell a console, then how would you explain the failure of the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube? Both had plenty of Nintendo "core" games of Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Donkey Kong.

Since I asked, let me answer to see how you would respond.

The Nintendo 64 released in 1996 was released more than 18 months after the Sony Playstation began the current PS1/N64 generation. This time gap along with Nintendo having scant 3rd party support essentially gave Sony the generation.

The Gamecube failed not because of time or price. Both were acceptable. You have to look at it from Sony's perspective:

The PlayStation 2 released in all territories in 2000 was the first video game console to take full advantage of the changing media formats not only for video games, but for home movie viewing. At the time, you would be hard pressed to find a DVD player cheaper than the Sony PlayStation 2.

Furthermore, the PlayStation 2 did not disappoint in it's game library. There were the Ratchet and Clank platformers along with Grand Theft Auto 3, Gran Turismo, and plenty of other games.

The Gamecube on the other hand followed a more traditionally Nintendo game library chuck full of 1st party offerings, yet very few 3rd party offerings. Released in 2001 in Japan and North America and 2002 in Europe and everywhere else, Nintendo not going with DVD killed them. Just literally killed them because at a time when the world was transitioning from VHS to DVD, Nintendo looked to the past, got defensive, and paid for it big time with the Sony PlayStation 2 going on to sell more consoles than any other console before or after.

Current day, Sony has not had the luck with Blu-Ray the same way they did with DVD. The price point was too high with entry level between $500 and $600. The world was not ready to convert over to Blu-Ray in 2006 and even now, Blu-Ray is transitioning a lot slower as the preferred media format than DVD did in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Sony thought they could replicate the PS2's success on the PS3 with a new media format and overshot badly.

Did I leave anything out?

Oh, as for the OP, I believe it is games. People buy video game consoles to play games. Only once in history have we seen people buy a video game console en masse to use it for purposes other than video games. That one time was the Sony PlayStation 2.