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Soleron on 29 May 2012
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superchunk said:
Soleron said:

 

Its always about games content. Wii sold well due to Wii Sports and Wii Fit, it also leveled off due to no 3rd party support and Nintendo themselves focusing on its next gen hardware.

However, none of these companies can ignore the way the market is moving. Its been moving this direction for generations. Its why MS entered gaming in the first place. Its why Nintendo added Netflix, hulu and various TV services to Wii late in its life.

Yes, and they were stupid and wrong to do so.

Content is king. Nintendo helped create Android and Android is the dominant mobile OS. It only makes sense for some form of integration, especially with the tablet controller.
 

No it doesn't make any sense, because it doesn't give them additional sales.

All three will have their game content. That is inevitable. But what will be the differentiator? It can't be just first party games.

Yes. First party games. That is the differentiator. Wii Sports alone propelled the Wii to levels unreachable by the most content rich 360 and PS3 you could imagine. All the 3DS Store in the world didn't do anything like MK7 and 3D Land did.

You can't deny the obvious move by MS with win8.

MS make their money from Windows and Office. Xbox is a drop in the bucket, they privately wouldn't even care if it lost money, it only exists to keep people on Windows. Thus it makes business sense to push Windows and its ecosystem at every opportunity whether it makes financial sense or not. That just isn't true for Sony or Nintendo.

You can't ignore the Vita

How many Vitas has all this expensive content support and OS features got them?

and what it has already done without Android and Sony's lame attempt to bring playstation brand to Android the so far sub-par Playstation Suite.

You also can't deny that its a logical conclusion that Apple and Google will move stronger into gaming. They did so with music, movies, and books. They've already started to with games and both publically stated gaming will be a big focus in the near future.

Google I don't think so. Games don't help their core business, search advertising. Apple will only do so as far as it keeps people buying iPhones, so they have no regard for game quality or attracting big name franchises or making the games people want to buy for themselves. They just want to make it really easy for everyone else to develop and see what sticks. So far, nothing has. (No existing mobile game will have consistent revenue or franchise loyalty. No one is waiting for Angry Birds 2.

The only loss for these companies would be to ignore this. If any of them put out a pure dedicated console with now smart OS base, they would fail and lose big time. They would not only be behind the their more direct and natural competitors, but also Apple and other Android OEMs who put out TV based boxes.

Their loss would be to imagine that gadgets and addons like Android or music will define the gen, or that they can focus on this instead of solid first party development and third party support.

Imagine a white cube 10cm on a side that played only three games at launch: 2D Mario, Mario Kart, Call of Duty. It doesn't do anything else, it just sits there being a dumb box. How much would it sell? I'd say minimum at the pace of the DS.

Now imagine the same box that does everything at launch: full Android shell; streaming TV, music, films; the top 20 titles from iOS and Android's game store; and so on. And its launch games are the Gamecube's, or the Vita's. It'd sell like a GC or Vita.

I love Nintendo games and would buy a Nintendo console anyways. However, the price I pay for it will be greatly dependant on this topic.

Your consumer type is honestly rare. I just don't think people would buy a console wholly or mainly for media reasons, or worse phone-imitation reasons.