Mr Khan said:
? No? Used to be generations were in-line with each other. Only now are people only speculating that Sony and Microsoft can last longer than the normal generation, and they bought that by tremendously overshooting the market in the first few years or so, but Nintendo products have traditionally had more longevity than Microsoft ones (the Xbox ditched quickly), and on-par with Sony on the console front. Only Nintendo has maintained a single platform for ten years so far, and that was the competitionless Game Boy |
MS is still too new, so frankly they have zero history whether they can maintain long console life considering their failure in the original XBOX.
However, there are a few reasons why I think there is a shift in strategy that makes SONY differ from Nintendo.
One, SONY has always intended for PS3 to last as long as PS2 at the very least. From PS2 release to PS3 release was a little over 6 years. While GC to Wii was a little over 5 years. I think this time SONY will go for 7 years, at least and as I said could go longer, between PS3 to PS4. Which would peg PS4 at 2013-2014. Whereas I think Wii will stick with 5 years, pegging it at 2011-2012.
The GC was at least comparably as powerful as PS2. It could compete very well control wise and power wise with both the PS2 and the XBOX. This is simply not the case with the Wii and PS3/X360.
You can argue that the controls made it competative, but I think simply that the two install bases (motion controls and non-motion controls) simply do not mix. Only us hard core who typically own multiple consoles every generation. Now PS3 and X360 have their own versions of motion controls, this alone suggests an extension of at least 2 years from now before either one of those two consoles are going to want to deflate sales.
So again I say, the Wii2 will compete half its life between PS3/X360 and the other half between (maybe the larger half) PS4/X720.