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HappySqurriel on 21 August 2012
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richardhutnik said:
Immortal said:
richardhutnik said:

Names as brands get old and change.  A company may be too successful to leave, but labeling a product as never failing in the market is pushing it.  Even Nintendo doesn't keep the same name for the platform.

I would say that "Playstation" as a name is weakening.  It isn't top dog anywhere now.  And with this, it loses its FUD factor.  


Wait, so are you actually affirming that you see a possible scenario in which the PlayStation brand no longer competes in the market because it simply whithers away due to a lack of popularity rather than being forced to shut down due to financial issues?

I'm not saying I disagree with you. That's just a pretty untraditional line of thought. I mean, while proportionally and historically, it's poor, but some odd 90 million sales for a console is not so bad as to get you thinking that the brand is going to die soon, is it?

By "too big to fail", I was just referring to (and probably misusing, :P) the common term. I just can't see it dying due to a lack of popularity anytime soon.

Name one company that has kept the same name over and over for their console offerings, for so long as they have been in the videogame business?  I can only think of one, and that is Sony with the Playstation.  No one else had.  You had Atari who ended up using numbers, which might be it.  But Nintendo didn't, NEC didn't, Sega didn't, Mattel didn't, Magnavox didn't.   I can't think of any who had a prolonged period of time has done away with the name.  Nintendo is the prime example.  They even killed off the Gameboy brand name in the  portable arena.  Other who attempted didn't last long.

What would happen, based on what is seen with Nintendo, is they want to release a system that is so new, and has such new features, they feel a reason to end up changing the name to reflect that.  Gameboy went away, and they went DS, because DS (implying dual screens) was more important than the Gameboy brand itself.

What I am saying is that, Sony may hang around, but they may end up looking to do away with the name "Playstation" as a brand itself.  What Sony has done with the Playstation name as a brand hasn't really been done before, and there is no historical record for that happening in the area of videogame consoles.


From what I remember, Nintendo promoted the Nintendo DS as a 'Third Pillar' and claimed that the Gameboy successor was on its way; and they probably didn't use the Gameboy name to protect it in case the DS failed.

Edit: and the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Nintendo 64 retained the same brand but Nintendo broke that pattern with the Gamecube (probably) because of how much the N64 struggled.