JGarret on 25 May 2014
| Mr Khan said: Only in the sense that their competitors are fairly incompetent in how they conduct themselves. PS1 wouldn't have gotten off the ground if Sega hadn't flopped into the 5th generation with the grace of a dying fish and/or Nintendo had embraced CDs. If one or both of Sega or Nintendo had run themselves properly, Sony would have been a big also-ran. This serendipity continued into the PS2 generation, where Sony's only real threat was the Dreamcast due to production delays in the GameCube and the Xbox's general late arrival. Microsoft can be excused to an extent because of their first round entry, but Nintendo really dropped the ball on getting the GameCube out on time and with proper support (stories from the era reveal that they were very slow and uncaring about getting dev kits out to third parties, for instance). Plus there's the whole "purple lunchbox" thing (though at least Nintendo of America got us out of the "StarCube.") If Sega had been in the position to fight back against the PS2 more aggressively, if Nintendo had been more aggressive about fixing the mistakes of the N64 era (or had just jumped ahead to make the Wii early somehow), or if Microsoft had been smoother about entering the arena, there you go. The 7th gen demonstrates what happens when Sony's competitors take things seriously: the 360 was much like the PS2 and the PS4 in spirit: meant to be the gamers' console, to give "us" what we want. Microsoft out-Playstation'd the Playstation, and so held second place for as long as second place matters (it really doesn't matter where the PS3 ends up now, folks. The end of 2012 was basically the end, after the Wii U launched and when Sony and Microsoft were both moving focus to the new consoles). Nintendo, meanwhile, got back in touch with their roots in terms of understanding that their job is to sell games that sell consoles, and create games that do things nobody else even thinks of. Of course Sony took stupid pills in 2005 and 2006, and to a lesser extent 2007, to give Nintendo and Microsoft (more Microsoft for the direct market competition) a leg up, but even later in the gen as Sony righted the ship, the contest remained competitive. Now we're back to seeing Sony's competitors do dumb things and Sony... not do dumb things. There's no magic there. What if Microsoft had made priority one for the Xbox One to be as developer-friendly as possible, reconfiguring the design phase? What if Nintendo had launched a true Wii successor that built on the promises of the Wii, instead of a half-assed retreat into the core market that we got? |
Someday I´d love to hear the story on why Nintendo did that so soon after the Wii´s success.Malstrom´s theory is that Nintendo doesn´t like to develop games that "have NES/Wii philosophy" (I think you understand what I mean by that), even though those games are the very ones responsible for their success in the 7th gen, and really, what got the NES off the ground and allowed them to be a powerhouse.They prefer the "N64/Gamecube type games", and their biggest wish is that the people who love 'NES/Wii' games embraced their 'N64/GC' games.This is his theory, it sounds bizarre but some of their actions lend credence to it.
