Jay520 said:
I'd say having a big price advantage is actually the bigger factor. It just happens to be dependent upon weaker hardware in most cases. If a company managed to get stronger hardware without effecting price, then I'm sure they wouldn't be hindered greatly. Are people really debating over who started the console war. |
I would argue that the lower price is often a consequence of releasing earlier ... By releasing a system earlier a system will generally have a lower price and better game library at the same point in time, but your system will be less powerful; all relative to the same console releasing later.
Hypothetically speaking, had Microsoft released the XBox 360 in 2007 (a year after the PS3), the system would probably have been far more powerful and included things like a Blu-Ray player, but by still selling at $400 it would have lost (most of) its price advantage over the PS3; and, since it was now 12 months behind rather than 12 months ahead of the PS3 in terms of building a library, the XBox 360's game library would be far weaker than the PS3. The net result would be (maybe) a million or two fewer people a year would have bought a PS3 rather than an XBox 360, and the XBox 360 would be 20 to 40 million units behind the PS3.
