S.Peelman said:
Atari tried that. The 7800 was 3rd Gen, the Jaguar was 5th. It didn't help them in the slightest and they fell out of the console business worse than Sega. They thought to outsmart Nintendo and Sega by releasing a 5th Gen console early. Unfortunately, nobody cared anymore because they took too long and the Saturn, the new Playstation and the N64 completely blew the Jaguar away. If Microsoft and Sony would skip the 8th Gen and come out in a few years with a 9th Gen system, WiiU's successor would be around the corner again beating them in hardware capability. Unless they wait for such a long time, that WiiU's successor would be released before PS4 and XBox720. By then, chances are that like with Atari, the XBox and Playstation brands would almost be 'forgotten' to the regular people. Long story short they probably would be caught in a never-ending loop of trailing behind Nintendo. Granted, the PS3 and X360 are loads more succesfull than the 7800 ever was so the comparison is not exact. |
Yep, it was a very daring suggestion, and I think they could try it only if Wii U won't sell too well, while at the same time PS3 and XB360 sales won't drop too much. Also, they'd be able to do it only together, neither of them would accept to be left the only one sticking to the previous gen.
Another thing against them would be little RAM, with PC already offering as much RAM as they want, and Ninty offering more than 1GB user space memory, at last, devs would be willing to use it to make more ambitious games, and old gen would be cut off.
