| justinian said: Haha!! The good old 3DO and CDI. Anyhow things are much different these days. This system will be cloud base and companies taking this path can all easily facilitate that without too much additional cost. They won't compete directly with the big three, yet. Just offer cheap downloadable games and see how it goes. I believe they all think there is a market for this type of gamer. Steam box, Amazon, Google (rumours). It can become a dog eat dog world out there. Nintendo really need to up their game. They are currently the ones under pressure with very poor wii u sales. The power and support of the X1/PS4 will see them through. Saying that, I have no idea how this is all going to play out. None of it may actually happen. |
Well, they all tried, hahaha... Anyway, I think it's a pretty competitive market. The branding is different, people don't buy Sony or MS, they buy PlayStations and XBox (Nintendo is a dedicated gaming brand, so people simply buy Nintendo). When these 3 guys entered the market, they needed favorable scenarios:
- The dominant player was weak: Nintendo entered when Atari was failing and revitalized the market. Sony entered when Nintendo was simply to late with N64 and was using cartridges when every 3rd party wanted CDs.
- Expend a whole bunch of money for a years before getting some profit: that's more of MS case, they lost a lot of money before putting the 360 in the spotlight. But they are included in the first case too, since they got success when Sony was doing stupid decisions. Sega is a similar case, they expent money with SMS and Genesis became a success when Nintendo was simply enjoying the NES and forgotting to prepare a successor.
But that is more if you are willing to compete with them, but that is expensive and I don't believe a lot of companies want. Besides that, it's the wrong timing. You have to enter with them or 1 year earlier, who enters now is just meat on the table.
About competing in a new market like Sammy wants, it's similar to what all companies I said. When the CD became the media of the moment, a lot of companies entered the market believing they could create consoles with more PC-like capabilities, with educational content, interactive movies and some games too, that's what 3DO, CDi and Pippin were about. But in the end, people who goes out to buy a console want exactly that, a console, play games with nice graphics on a big screen. Casuals don't want to buy devices, you have to convince them. Wii did it because it had something no other device in the world had.
Now, putting smartphone games on a console won't move casuals, simply because there is no reason to move from their phones. And if they want something more than the casual offer, they are allready on the console crowd. One thing that could work would be a media device like Apple TV or Nexus Q that could play some games. If they put Netflix, web, etc and sell it as a media device, not a console, but with some fun games too, then it's an easier sell. But that's more of a new market than a console competition.
