| HappySqurriel said: Lead time is a huge advantage ... The NES, Gameboy, Playstation, PS2, and 3DS all launched significantly earlier than some or all of their competition and went on to win their generation by wide margins. |
This is a fallcious argument. The NES had several systems launched prior to or concurrent with it. The same is true of the Gameboy. And the only way the PS2 can be included is if we, again, ignore the Dreamcast. This leaves the Playstation and 3DS as the only generation-winning first movers. The only way around this is to arbitrarily exclude earlier competitors to fit the narrative. I refuse to do so. This is especially true when of all the reasons I've heard given for the success of the give systems you've outlined, "lead time" has only seriously (and incorrectly) been mentioned for the PS2.
In the omitted portion you stated that "by launching a year earlier, a system will have a better library, lower price, and larger userbase against their competition throughout the generation than they would have had if they launched at the same time." It's a nice hypothesis, and one we can never completely test for obvious reasons, but the data we do have don't support it. That one-year advantage did not change the outcome for the Genesis. Or the Wonderswan. Or the Dreamcast. Or the NeoGeo Pocket. Or the 360. Or...
The theory has been tested over generations, and has yet to prove decisive or even particularly important. For the sake of this discussion I'll concede that it's an advantage. But other factors have proven to be much more important. And, based on what we've seen and heard, launching a year earlier would very likely have led to only minor additional third-party support for the Wii; if anything, it would have had even less Nintendo support ready.
Based on the stellar announced Wii U support thus far, I submit that its one-year advantage will prove similarly unpersuasive for most major third-parties. Their A-teams are likely gearing up for the next Microsoft and Sony systems, and unless those games are easily scalable to the Wii U I expect the Wii U to emulate the Wii's third-party support.
| kitler53 said:
very much agree to bold. to the rest, allow me to rebuttal at least in part. psn. xbla. e-shop. smaller shops like TellTale games have being doing quite well with the small budget but not as shallow as $1 market. there has been a lot more "experimentation" in these games too. flower, journey, braid, lost winds come to my mind. i think these distribution services are going to be really really important next gen if any of the big 3 are to be successful. for me the biggest question is how can they make those services successful? there seem to be obstacles in place: download speeds, storage capacity, credit card requirements, a general perception against digital only, and most importantly (imo) awareness of what is actually on these services to potential customers. i'm not entirely sure how but these need to be solved for those middle-ware games and experimental games to continue. |
I'm less convinced that those digital shops are viable in the long-term, to be honest. Most of the titles there are indie stuff, and most of the titles are similarly unsuccessful. The successful titles, including the ones you've outlined, have almost unanimously been ones pushed by the first-party (if not outright published by that first-party). How many such titles have succeeded without being spotlighted and marketed by such a big publisher? In other words, how many of those titles could have stood on their own? Admittedly it's not all bleak: you're right that Telltale seems to be doing well for itself in this middle ground. I wonder, though, if that's because they're essentially the only company serving an underserved (and niche) market?
I agree with the question you've posed. I think awareness and especially accessibility are going to be the big hurdles going forward. I think the vast majority of people aren't going to go through the effort of sorting through the digital stores to find something that interests them. People are pretty damn lazy, after all; there's a reason that the vast majority of the stuff that sells in the iOS marketplace is the stuff that's already in the top 10, i.e. the stuff that's there without the hassle of digging around.
Basically, I've used all this digital ink to say "yeah, we mostly agree." 
