Microsoft could end up in 3rd place next-gen

[CCFanboy]

Soundwave said:I was talking about credibility with the "hardcore crowd". I think you'd have to be in serious, serious denial to say the XBox brand doesn't carry much more credibility with this crowd. 

A few people will cry over Kinect, but MS' core audience is the hardcore player, so no one's going to freak out if they devote some resources to appealling to a wider, more mainstream audience as well. 

Really MS is looking at Apple, the Japanese companies, Nintendo and Sony are clueless and small potatoes in comparision a lot of ways. MS has to pay attention to what Apple is doing too, because all reports have Apple massing for a major assualt on the living room in 2013. XBox 720 will be MS' answer to Apple's iTV as well as being just a game console. 

I don't really look at the DS as a hardcore platform in the West. It has virtually zero major Western support and its third party sales outside of kids-centric brands are beyond mediocre. The top selling 3DS third party game in North America is Angry Birds, no other third party game has sold more than 400k, even Resident Evil flopped on the system. 

Yeah I see where your coming from. But it wasn't only 'kids games' that were successful on ds. Yes a lot were but you need to look at the bigger picture. A lot of other games sold in the hundreds of thousands and millions even. It isn't about who can pump the most sales figures. The ds library had something for everybody. I believe it had the best library of the generation and it can easily hold the title for best handheld ever.

As for western developers they tend to develop primarily for consoles. They never dedicate a lot of resources to handhelds as they always go for the more 'cinema games' style. Handhelds are for quick and fun games which are easy to pick up and play. Resident evil didn't really bomb. 600, 000 is a good number. You could argue it underperformed outside of japan. It probably sold enough to make profit since 3ds isn't really as expensive to develop for as the others. Its also a number that more 'hardcore' games aren't even close to touching on the handheld that is supposedly targeted at that audience. Overall people would rather play games like that on consoles.