| Plaupius said:Of course, that's somewhat of an oversimplification, as the retailers obviously care about the causality of sales, so it might be that having consoles helps them sell other, more profitable products, in which case they won't be so hasty to drop consoles. |
That was what I was trying to get at. I buy 90% of my things online. If it wasn't for games, I'd probably buy no pleasure purchases at the store as my wife does the grocery shopping and I only buy clothes when I absolutely need them.
However, here is my question, that I pretty much asked in another thread. Let's assume away all problems of digital distribution. Assume bandwidth is unlimited, assume people don't care if they don't actually own a physical copy, assume Microsoft and Sony release IP machines next generation with massive hard drives. Then let's say Nintendo basically makes a Wii HD. You can even assume that Microsoft and Sony's machines are cheap. The question I have is, would Nintendo's console fail? It certainly wouldn't put up Wii 1 numbers but is it possible for it to do worse than the gamecube? In my mind I think there will always be a console market. And if there is one stores will have games for them. Will they have decreasing space for them? Probably. But when I look at most retailers (Wal-mart included) I see tons of wasted space. If they were really that concerned over what at most stores is a few cases 3 feet wide by 5 foot long then they need to do a complete store overhaul.
