I Wish Microsoft Never Entered The Gaming Business (From a Nintendo POV)

[NightDragon83]

S.T.A.G.E. said:

NightDragon83 said:
I don't agree that the Xbox really hurt GCN sales... if M$ never threw their hat in the ring, last gen simply would have been PS1 vs N64 all over again, only with an even larger disparity between sales of their respective consoles.

I think if anything the Xbox took away more potential PS2 sales than it did the GCN, especially here in the west. Exclusives like Halo 1 & 2, the best online service on consoles plus ports of major 3rd party AAA games like the GTA and MGS games convinced alot of people to get an Xbox over a PS2. If Xbox didn't exist, I guarantee you that a minimum of 75% of its sales would have went to the PS2 instead, probably more.

Hmmmm....if the Xbox took away more potential PS2 sales then why did the PS2 gain 50 million more gamers than their previous gen, leaving Nintendo with nearly ten thousand less gamers than the gen before, while the Xbox got in second place? Nintendo couldn't do much against both in a head on fight. With the Wii, Nintendo didnt fight head on they aimed at a newer market.

Because the gaming market as a whole expanded pretty drastically from the 32/64-bit gen to last gen.  According to the platform totals on here, the three major gen-5 consoles sold a total of around 146m units, while the three major gen-6 consoles (excluding the Dreamcast) sold around 205m units.  That's a pretty big jump, and it was even bigger a generation earlier when home console sales nearly doubled from gen-4 to gen-5 thanks to Sony entering the market.

One of the biggest reasons for this jump was the evolving image of game consoles as home entertainment hubs with the advent of the DVD medium, rather than strictly game machines aimed primarily at the under-18 crowd.  Both Sony and later M$ were able to capitalize on this growing trend in the industry, whereas Nintendo was stuck mainly catering to their niche audience that was growing smaller and smaller each year until the Wii.  That's why I suggested that if the Xbox hadn't existed, then most of its user base would have ended up in Sony's camp, because they both catered to a similar audience.