erm..yeh where to begin...first games are not the only thing that sell consoles...innovation/pricepoint/format/techtrends/cultural shift etc these can all be factors.
secondly comparing company products from different generations can be dangerous from a critical standpoint. Sony lost betamax but won bluray. I read an analysis that made a few good points on that case that may be relevent here. sony has playstation now. that drove bluray sales. sony is also a holllywood studio behemoth. That helped. and sony had two (what he called) 'super brands', vaio and bravia. in consumer minds that is quality. and this is quality that is selling very very well. so much in fact that it's actually meaning that sony is still making raking in a profit.
basically sony is not sega or nintendo, if it completely fails with ps3, its other brands will carry it through. we will definitely see ps4. developers know that. however developers (those who love franchises) love a steady longlasting platform. those reasons are selfexplanatory...but I suppose I can explain if I have to.
for want of better words, 'it (the ps3) can't trully fail'.
its sold two million already, and with what exactly? motorstorm? a brand new half finished nonpnese, non jprg, title? and promises that are far far away...want to know what made the ps1 reach 2 milion? the ps2 reach 2 million?
now we have to ask, can it succeed. Firstly, (again credit must go to another user somewhere out there) a fanboy once made this point: personally I don't care for the reasons for people thinking the ps3 is struggling because of the ps2. it simply ain't, it's actually helping the ps3 stay afloat. when I asked him/her why? he/she said, there is something sony cares more about then customer sales and that is it's stockholders. and stockholders are given the 'playstation brand figures'. So basically without psp/ps2...ps3 is...well ps2's fighting the battle for ps3. and i think I agree.
next comes the wii. what a lot of people (including me) have thus failed to realise is that it's skipped to the last stage of any technological product. it's skipped intial reception at high price point, isn't developing a brand, instead going mass market right out of the bat. The ps3 like a lot of succesful mass market brands is going through the cycle. The apple ipod, playstation 1,2...cd's, dvds, computers, intel/amd/nividia products, even the DS.
ps2 is still churning out multi-platinum titles by the way (pes/winning eleven).
talking about the ps2, the wii is acheving what the ps2 did in its hay day, but the wii being out only a year mean both good and bad things. good because it looks good on paper, puts money in the bank, sells unprecedented amounts of software and provides a solid foundation for the future (wii2 if they decide to keep the brand name).
bad, (and this is important), shareholders will want improvement, year on year, third party will want the same platform year on year, and you've already targeting the mass audience...I don't know when critical mass will hit, but every mass market product ever sold eventually hits that point... and now we arrive to what every industry analyst who wants to shoot himself in the foot has said: has the nintendo wii sacrificed long term markets for short to mid-term gratification. Yes the nintendo absolutely needed it, rather like AMD does now, but in that case what happens come quarter end 2009. Sony will still have two behemoths GT and FF13 on their cards. and please don't forget the monsterous possiblity of little big planet going into chrismas. We simply don't know what is going to define this generation.
and if anyone is still awake untill now...i have to get this off my chest...will japan ever love FPS? if jpn can be seduced that way...mgs online/socomm/killzone/*resistant2*...if sony manage that they will win jpn for sure. but nonetheless...sony is getting konami to spend huge amounts of money with its biggest stable brand (mgs), its also getting square enix to spend huge bucks on their blockbuster title exclusively on the ps3. japanese consumers won't forget that. Sony is running into blockbuster games whilst nintendo is runnning out of them...
peace...
