| Paperboy_J said: You're saying the PS1 brought in new gamers like the Wii did? People who had never been interested in videogames before? Sorry but I gotta disagree with that. The people who bought the PS1 were those same kids who grew up on the NES, SNES and Genesis, only older. The PS1 didn't expand the market, it merely stole Nintendo's and Sega's fans (not saying that's bad or anything, but that's what happened). Wii on the other hand brought in grannies, soccer moms, everyone. DS had women gaming for the first time ever. Those systems just took things to a whole other level. |
I had to check your profile before replying. Now i dont understand how its possoble that you seem to be old enough to have been around when all this happened to not know or remember what really happened.
Pre PlayStation era gaming was generally regarded as something for kids. Hell it wasn't till the SNES era and the whole mortal Kombat fiasco that an ESRB rating system was even deemed necessary. PlayStation (1) basically made the industry grow up. That's not my opinion, that's fact.
Everything you say has a heavy casual gamer bias, and what the issue here is is that you fail to realize that "casuals" have always been there. Be it on the PS1/2/Wii..... whatever. There has always been a casual market and there always will be one. Casuals are their own type of demographic or market. You seem to insist on mixing the two up.
What Nintendo had seen a lot of success in is appealing to that specific market. Everytime they have attempted to make a fully "hardcore" console they have failed. And this is because for one reason or the other they fall short on something the hardcore market feels is important or relevant. Be it hardware, net structure, added features or just games.
Sony or MS focusing on a market that has carried them accross generations is not a bad thing. Think of it this way, Sony and MS are cultivating more and more core gamers everyday. Nintendo usually goes after the casual crowd first.
It's simple, if nintendos approach is better, then the wiiU should have sold better than it did. And the PS4 should not sell as well as it has.
Most importantly though, and this is something you seem to miss; the casual gamer is still there. They are actually bigger and more than they have ever been in the history of gaming. They just happen to be on smartphones and tablets and facebook today. They are not the sort to buy a dedicated box to play games when they have an option of playing games on the phones they all already have. to them that just doesn't make sense. Unless of course you think it's a coincidence that the wii's value started to decline as smartphones and tablets gained in popularity.
What would you rather have. 100M dedicated userbase that you can carry with you accross generations? Or a 150M userbase that can't sustain your business after 4yrs and you lose at the start of the next generation?
The wiiU failed because that "casual" expansion that Nintendo enjoyed with the Wii, simply went to play their games somewhere else.
