Darc Requiem on 08 January 2007
Erik Aston said:
Darc Requiem said:
Four things have contributed to the PS2's incredible sales.
1. Built in DVD player. (This really helped in Japan)
2. 1 Year Headstart. The GC and X-box released a full year after the PS2. This allowed Sony to recover from the system's pathetic launch. A build a library of games people wanted to play.
3. Broad 3rd party support. The year head start allowed Sony to build a substantial userbase which garnered them continued third party support and a bevy of exclusives.
4. Shoddy product quality. I have never seen a system as fragile as the PS2. It amazes me that my Sega Saturn is still functional. Yet my PS2 bit the big one after a year and a half. I figured I had a lemon, until I went to Sony's offical site and saw endless threads about DRE. That combined with the class action lawsuit they settled over DRE leads me to believe that a significant portion of the PS2 userbase is made up of consoles that no longer function.
Of those, it was the "broad 3rd party support" which ensured about 99% of the PS2's success.
I mean, the Dreamcast had a year head start over PS2, the XBox could play DVDs, and the 360 has been plauged by the "red lights," but none of those consoles have performed so well.
The PS2, despite the launch issues, basically hit the ground running. The PSone had interrupted Nintendo's dominance, and rewritten the rules of console gaming. The other consoles, right down to their names "XBox" and "Gamecube" were just PlayStation wannabes. They were in the same price range as PS2 and had fairly similar specs, and were going after the same type of games... which meant they had no chance from the get go. They couldn't offer developers or gamers any reason not to invest in the successor to last gen's dominant system. The fact that Sony didn't have to build up consumer confidence, while Nintendo and MS did, helped it outperform even the PSone.
SEGA also had 2 billion in debt. Three consecutive failures in the Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn. Most importantly their biggest third party supporter up until that point was EA and they choose not to support the Dreamcast.
