Soundwave said:
And how about that XBox 360? Boy oh boy, no one bought that after being burned by MS replacing the original XBox so quickly. Nope. People prefer 6 year life cycles where the console is barely supported/marketed at all for the last 2 years, because all that really matters is reaching some arbitrary "year length" cut off date. As we can see the Wii brand didn't suffer at all and it would've been horrible if Nintendo had released an HD capable Wii successor if 2011 or even 2010. /sarcasm off. |
You have a point with the GBA. The XBox-example doesn't work. MS was late for the gen and everyone expected they are testing the waters. The XBox didn't sold spectacular but was good enough to establish the Halo-franchise. The GBA is different, you're right. Iwata probably wanted to test the new concept with a handheld and not with a home-console and he relied on the backup, that if the DS is a flop, the GBA is still available. DS was successful, so they killed the GBA off.
The typical console-cycle is driven by consumers. As the consoles are slowly reaching the full customer-base, the sales dry up. Also more and more games start to look alike (gameplay, optics, settings, story), and customers stick to their old games mostly. The new gen breaks this cycle.
