Industry to Nintendo, "We finally got you."

[imaprettyhotguy]

Mr Khan said:

imaprettyhotguy said:

Kenny said:

While it is true that Nintendo's fortunes have waned for the seventh generation, they are in fact in the best position to seize the eighth generation.  Microsoft is only now close to breaking even on their investment for the XBox 360, taking an abnormally long generation to do so, and Sony has lost so much money that they've managed to wipe out all the gains they've made with the PS2, the most successful console of all time.  On the portables front, Sony shot itself in the foot with the PSP Go, and the NGP has given the 3DS a head start of an entire year.  As for third parties, they are just about bled dry, having witnessed a generation where record losses in the face of record revenues was the norm.

To put it simply, forjust about everybody except Nintendo, the seventh generation has been an unmitigated catastrophe.  Many practices that became prevalent in the seventh generation, like taking losses on hardware as a matter of course, and moneyhatting developers for exclusives, won't be repeatable in the eighth.  To top it off, Nintendo's competition is financially trapped in the seventh generation due to sunk costs, and the need to recoup expenses, as I alluded to earlier.  If Nintendo moves up the launch timetable, they put Microsoft and Sony in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between abandoning their sunk costs, or handing Nintendo a huge head start on the eighth generation.

I am aware that Nintendo has substantial challenges in attracting third party support and repairing their reputation with 'core' gamers, but this is meant largely as a dissenting opinion in terms of just how d0med Nintendo is.

I don't think Sony is in that bad of a position the headstart isn't doing 3DS any favors right now, all Sony needs is a good NPG line up and the headstart will become meaningless headstarts aren't as important as people think on the home consoles the PS3 will beable to compete with nintendos next system and by the time they launch the next one it will have been so long people who brought a nintendos console won't mind getting a ps4 if it has games they want you are right about MS though they are screwed next launch they are caught between everyone and the only move they'll have is moneyhatting devs for exclusvies 

You're both right and wrong in one. A good head start can prove to be a gamechanger (see: PS2 vs Xbox and GC, 360 vs PS3), but it can also be surmounted (see: Wii vs 360, SNES vs Genesis). So long as your head start builds momentum behind itself, you can become inaccessible, or at least make it so that it takes competitors years to catch up (PS3 likely will catch 360 now, but it will have taken them 5 years to do it)

Out of the advantages 360 had over the ps3 at the start of the gen the headstart was one of the most minor ones, price point and lack of good launch games and exlcusive not to mention the lackluster 3rd party support (which should have been easy for them after the ps2 they were counting on it) so a headstart is a slight advantage but in the grand scheme its not that big of one and can easily be overcome