Should video game consoles be short term or long term?

[gumby_trucker]

RolStoppable said:

NightDragon83 said:

Well first off I honestly thought B&W 2 was for 3DS, not the original DS (haven't kept up on Pokemon games in over a decade), so my bad on that one.  I'm honestly surprised Nintendo is putting the sequel on the DS, when the 3DS is begging for a proper Pokemon installment.

But the GBA was still selling like hotcakes well into the end of 2005/2006, when all the major series started seeing installments on the DS like Mario Kart DS and NSMB.  It was at that point that the GBA was essentially killed off by Nintendo, despite still not even making it to its 5th b-day yet.  And as for the DS... what major games have been released for it since the original Black and White over a year ago?  Maybe a Professor Layton game, and that's it?

The GBA was in a unique position because of Sony entering the handheld market. Sony got a major foothold in the home console space by having a 20 months headstart with the PS1 over the N64. If Nintendo had ignored Sony, the PSP would have gotten a similar headstart on Nintendo's GBA successor. This is why the GBA was less than four years on the market before Nintendo launched a new handheld. Sure, Nintendo could have sticked to the GBA because it was selling really well, but it would have raised the risk that Sony took over tremendously, because the GBA successor would have released during a period of time where the PSP already picked up momentum.

Nintendo was forced to act, but they still supported the GBA. As I said in the previous post, the GBA lineup in 2005 was still pretty good. 2006 is when the support fizzled out, but a March 2001 launch for the GBA means that the handheld had completed its fifth year by then. That's certainly not as bad as you make it sound and the threat Sony had to be taken seriously.

As for the DS in 2011, it didn't have all that much. In addition to Pokémon it had a Layton game, Dragon Quest VI (like Layton, Nintendo-published in the West), Kirby: Mass Attack and a couple of of minor games. It was the DS's seventh year already though.

Another thing that should be mentioned about this period is that at the time the PSP was announced and released Sony was DESTROYING Nintendo on the console front. It's true Nintendo were making a profit on the Gamecube but their lifeblood  was handheld hardware and software for many years. This was a time where Sony was as close as it had ever been to striking at Nintendo's core business.

The only way Nintendo could remain competitive during those years, prior to Wii making a huge entrance and PS2 sales beginning to decline, was by launching a "third pillar".