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potato_hamster on 05 January 2017
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zorg1000 said:
potato_hamster said:


See, you just take an interpretation of what I say, make a nice little straw man out of it, and then try your best to light it on fire. Adorable.

I was making a point that the sales of the Xbox and Playstation home consoles is substantantially higher than the likes of Sega, Atari, etc. Aka, the sales of their competition has increased while Nintendo's sales have decreased over the years, aka, Nintendo has much more susbtantial competition now than they ever have, and the sales show it The home console market has grown in the last couple decades overall, yet Nintendo's piece of that pie just keeps getting smaller and smaller. As you've stated many many many times, this has been somewhat buoyed by Nintendo's handheld performance, but even that train appears to be running out of track.

Hilariously though, if you want to look at a stable platform over the past 20+ years, that title easily goes to Sony's home consoles. With few exceptions, they have consistently sold at least 18 million. In fact, between FY97 and FY07, the only year they sold less than 18 million home consoles was FY05 at 16.2M. Sure FY08 to FY11 they only averaged between 12 and 16 million, but since FY12 they've been back to 18+ million. If you're not keeping track, that means that in 20 years, Sony's home consoles have sold at least 18 million 75% of the time. That's actual consistency. now before you try and make a mountain out of that 4 year period of less than stellar sales, let me remind you for a little perspective - Nintendo would be delighted if the Switch sold a 12 million average over the next 4 years.  That alone should tell you all you need to know about the decline of Nintendo over the years.

Thats not a straw man, you said Nintendo being down 20-25% is a massive decline, that means that the Xbox & Playstation ecosystems are very likely to be suffering massive declines as well. Either the Nintendo decline isnt as significant as you are making it out to be or the entire dedicated gaming market is in massive decline. Its one or the other, it cant be both.

Yep Playstation home consoles have been pretty stable with the exception of PS3, not gonna deny that.

3DS averaged over 12 million per year in its first 4 years on the market, its not some unfathomable idea that Switch could do the same.

Of course it can be both, The PS4 is currently selling very close to the rate the PS2 (the most successful video game console ever). Now, no one expects the PS4 to do PS2 levels mainly because of how cheap Sony managed to sell the PS2 for and how long they sold it for, however, all signs indicate that whatever momentum Sony lost with the PS3 it's surely regained. Yes, it's given up on the handheld market, as that userbase has appeared to have moved on to phones and tablets for the most part. As for Microsoft? I don't personally think they ever had long term plans in the console space. I believe they always treated their Xbox division as a means of getting people invested in the ecosystem they've created, and then leverage that to supply their PC investments. It appears we're now seeing that come to fruition, as I now believe they're pivoting away from the Xbox being a home video game console, and will be treating the Xbox label as a brand of "gaming ready" PCs in the future that will allow developers to see some of the gains of optimizing for a console while supporting a few different specifications to ensure engines don't have to be as bloated as they would be for PC (Similar to what I believe Nintendo is doing with the Switch's operating modes). MS is releasing few, if any Xbox One exclusives now that they've seen many of their Xbox 360 fanbase either go back to Playstation or simply moving on to the PC where they can play the vast majority of the games they used to enjoy on their Xbox 360.

But Nintendo? In all seriousness, if your assumptions are right and the Switch will cover both the handheld and home markets, and truly is a hybrid device, and you're optimistic for 12 million a year in sales, then that is a massive gap from the 20-23 million combined they were selling annually in the 90's. It appears that a large portion of Nintendo's fans that were playing their consoles 15-20 years ago are no longer doing so. It appears that they've lost people to Playstation and Xbox, and even more people to mobile phones and tablets when looking at where GBA, NDS and even PSP owners are now playing. In my opinion, both Sony and Nintendo have both seen the end for dedicated handheld consoles, the main difference here is that Nintendo's handheld userbase is still significant enough to make it worth the effort to try and entice those users to remain on the Nintendo platform by offering them a compromise.