zorg1000 said:
Shadow1980 said:
zorg1000 said:
U pretty much just agreed with me, the only time the market leader switched was because of massive mistakes the previous leader made or when somebody came along and made a console unlike any before. So in order for Nintendo to sell 50-70 million consoles, the others either need to make big mistakes or they need to make a completely new concept.
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Uh, no, that's not what I was trying to get at at all. Nintendo didn't make any big mistakes in the 16-bit era. The SNES launched at a competitive price, had a games library every bit as strong as the NES's, and was strongly marketed. They still lost market share, at least in the U.S. (in Japan the SNES sold about as well as the NES while the Genesis sold poorly). Sega proved to be stiff competition and the 16-bit wars in the U.S. was the closest race between any two consoles ever. The Genesis had a reasonable price, a good games library, and was well-marketed, and that's why it did well.
The beginning of each generation is effectively a reset button. Gaining or losing market share isn't always about making mistakes or capitalizing on the mistakes of others, though it does happen. A system's success depends on pricing, games, and marketing, not on waiting for the other guy to screw up. Two systems with identical pricing and comparable libraries should have very similar sales, as we saw in the 16-bit era. However, a system that outclasses the competition in terms of overall games library should, assuming it is sold at a reasonable price, completely dominate, as we saw with the NES and PS2. And on one occassion we got a system that succeeded despite a weaker library than the competition because it had a much lower price tag, it was well-marketed, and it had a gimmick that clicked with gamers everywhere (and attracted a periphery demographic), and despite the weaker library it had the games it needed to sell it on its other points. But it did succeed on its own merits, not because the competition screwed up.
The U.S. in particular has no collective brand loyalty. Neither does Japan, though they do reject Xbox because it's not a Japanese system (they also largely rejected Sega for reasons that aren't clear). Europe does have a strong pro-PlayStation bent, though. There is no reason to think that the console market will stay the course assuming Sony doesn't screw something up big.
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Nintendo did make mistakes with the SNES in the US tho. They gave Sega a full 2 year headstart, which allowed them enough time to release a killer app (Sonic) before SNES even launched. Sega was also trying to slander Nintendo by calling them kiddy, which Nintendo basically admitted by censoring Mortal Kombat.
The reason why Playstation was able to dominate in the US was solely due to Sega & Nintendo making large mistakes. Sega pretty much did everything wrong in the mid-90s, expensive unsupported addons for Genesis. Expensive, difficult to program console in Saturn. Nintendo went with cartridges instead of CDs. Basically Nintendo & Sega handed the market to Playstation.
PS2 continued that dominance by not making any large mistakes but with PS3 they released a $600 machine and pretty much handed over a massive chunk of their PS2 fanbase to Xbox and Wii.
Playstation has been able to reclaim much of that market due to Xbox making similar mistakes this generation like DRM, always online, Kinect required, $100 more expensive. Microsoft has fixed literally all of those problems but the damage was done and PS4 is still leading comfortably in the US.
So yes, the only time large amounts of people have jumped ship to another brand in the US is when their previous brand of choice fucked up. If Nintendo makes a $400 console that is basically Nintendo's version of PS5/XB4, they will get squashed unless one or both of them make huge mistakes. People don't jump ship unless they have a compelling reason to do so.
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