I hear a lot of people saying Nintendo can't afford to compete with a traditional console...

[Bofferbrauer]

artur-fernand said:

Bofferbrauer said:

They did it before, Gamecube and N64 say hello. Both flopped because they couldn't manage to stand out enough compared to Playstation, and later, Microsoft. Even then they got already screwed by the third party publishers and it's very likely it will happen again on the next console, no matter how awesome it will be, pushing consumers again to buy an Playstation or Xbox.

In other words, Nintendo needs something other than pure specs to stand out from the rest of the crowd. It worked well with the Wiimotes, sadly not with the Gamepad.

They can financially afford such a console, but the question is more: Will it do Nintendo any good? If it flops (which, like I said, the paintings are on the wall already), surely not. So it's better for them to take a third option and do something special, as this at least can pay out

N64 and GC failed because of reasons that were not "they couldn't stand out".

Had the N64 used CDs, we'd probably have a very different history now, they were coming from the successful SNES after all. Not to mention, it suffered constant delays, releasing a full two years after the PS1. That's a lot.

The GC failed to offer any multimedia features, and the DVD player was a huuuuge selling point for the PS2 early on - while the Xbox offered a killer app from day one, plus pushed online multiplayer on consoles. Not to mention, the design was more like a toy, in a time when people already wanted electronic devices for gaming. The proprietary media, which stored far less than a DVD, also hurt them.

So the N64 and GC were traditional consoles, but had severe flaws that prevented them from being more successful - which allowed MS and ESPECIALLY Sony to grow in the industry.

Even if they had CD/DVD drives, I doubt the sales would have been much better. Playstation was just way too big to compete with the standard weapons and still is outside of US/UK