burninmylight said:
X1 struggled because Microsoft fumbled on PR well ahead of its launch, and Sony capitalized on it in a masterful way. The "perceived value" had NOTHING to do with power, and everything to do with marketing, message and the perception of each manufacturer. The vast majority of consumers don't give a crap about power. Go out and talk to random people on the street about the difference in power between X1 and PS4 and guage how much they really care. Ask random people why they chose their console of choice. I guarantee you very little of it has to do with the console's raw power. Unless they are PC gamers or message board dwellers like us, they don't give a shit and they couldn't tell you a thing about screen tearing, resolutions, FLOPs, anti-aliasing, framerate or GPUs. Getting back to the Switch, if it doesn't meet the expectations of customers, it will be because the games aren't there, not because Random Game A can only output in 900p on Switch instead of 1080p, or Random Game B has fewer shaders on the Switch than the other two. |
Well I guess the PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio must be figments of my imagination. What are the odds the PS4 pro itself does better than the Wii U did lifetime? I'd say those odds are pretty good. But it's a good thing that would-be buyers don't care about power right?
I think you're wrong. Most would-be gamers do care about power when it comes to determining value, and they care more than ever. They don't need to know about anti-aliasing or screen tearing to know that PS4 games look objectively better than Xbox One games, that look dramatically better than Wii U games. It's a factor that helps people choose which console they're going to buy, especially when all of the prices are the same!. You're right in the sense that most Nintendo fans couldn't care less about power, but that's an incredibly easy argument to make when your console of choice isn't nearly as capable as the rest. I heard plenty of Nintendo fans toot about how much more powerful the Gamecube was compared to the PS2, and I bet you those are some of the same people that suddenly don't care nearly that much.
If that's the marginal difference you're referring to than your point might is valid, but from what's been leaking out, it's entirely possible that the Switch is actually less powerful than the Wii U. Just let that sink in. Think about how hard it will be to sell a system to developers that's actially less capable than its predecessor, when the competition has gotten many times stronger. The difference is going to be stark. Making a PS4 game run on a console less powerful than the Wii U For example, imagine two display booths in a store like BestBuy. In my local store they're literally all right next to each other X1 - PS4 - Wii U. All in a Row. In the middle, you havePS4 pro that does native 4K, and then not 6 feet away, you have the Switch that does native 720p upscaled to 1080p, the is absolutely zero chance that the games from the switch aren't dramatically worse, and they're selling for the exact same price.
There's no way you can't objectively look at that and realize it's a really hard sell.
