Nintendo What-If? #4

[bdbdbd]

Ka-pi96 said:

bdbdbd said:

No, no. You fail to see the big picture here. PS4 and X1 are pretty much interchangeable, PS4 sells while X1 doesn't. Why? If you wan't something more special, there's Wii U, PS4 sells, Wii U doesn't. Why? You can't just go on to say PS4 is selling better than Wii U because PS4 has nothing special in it, at the same time saying X1 isn't selling because it has nothing special.

While I agree you on that Sony managed to deliver what it's market wanted, there was a huge drop from the 7th gen. Even if none managed to reach the whole market, there was a huge overlap between console owners, with many having two or three of them. 

Does the X1 really not sell though? It was outpacing the 360 for awhile, at least until we stopped getting updates from MS at least Plus looks like it will end up over 50m when all's said and done, 50m is definitely a respectable amount. Besides, the PS4 does a lot of things better than X1. All that attention resolution and stuff the PS4 got before release came from somewhere. Then there's the infamous X1 reveal, sure you could argue that Sony did gain sales from MS fucking that up. But if MS would have started out with the current X1 instead of the DRM infested thing they announced would that have made the PS4 not succesful anymore? Not a chance as far as I'm concerned. PS4 was going to sell well regardless, sales would have been more evenly split between the two but MS having a better X1 reveal wouldn't have turned the PS4 from a success in to a failure. I'd bet it still would have been the #1 console for the gen, not by such a large margin but still by a fair bit.

And I don't think the decline from 7th gen really means anything. I think it's pretty obvious that the huge sales of 7th gen were only a one off, it's not that noone is reaching the whole market, it's just that the market isn't as big as it was in gen 7 and most likely won't get that big ever again. That shouldn't take anything away from the PS4s success this gen though.

360 did have a bad start (so did PS3, though).

So, what is the size of the market then, if you think 7th gen sales were a one off and you obviously project the sales somewhere? Where did the people go and do what if they no longer buy games?