Wyrdness said:
What brings in more consumers is market approach not more platforms as that's what caters to consumer types not having multiple platforms, Gen 3 despite only having the NES and MS moved more units than the Gen before it because the platforms had different approaches where as the gen before it had a tonne of platforms that all did the same approach and ended up crashing the market. What you're saying is flawed and untrue as you're equating two different things into one. I bring up profits because that is what's affected by price point and is what drives business approach, Nintendo are purely a gaming company so have to make profit which in turn affects the price point they go for, if tech is more pricey than what they're used to it will make pricing choices harder as they can't afford to continuously use a business model where they sell at a loss. What the consumer pays is the whole point as portables are still seen in the west as being of lower value because so the price going into console territory was a massive issue and 2DS came out 2 years later when momentum was established, what backs my point on pricing is when the price cut happened the baseline shot up, pricing was also what helped bring down the Vita as well. 3DS was pricier than they wanted because Vita was on the horizon with harware improvements over the PSP which despite getting run over did pretty well so they had to be competitive with progression, this is what competition forces, GBA had non of that. 3DS doesn't have a monpoly because even though it has demolished the Vita the latter putting up a fight in Japan has lead to it snatching a significant chunk of support from the 3DS as a whole not to mention its sales of 16m if they were 3DS units would put the platform's sales above the GBA total, GBA had no platform at all putting up a fight anywhere. Markets shift that's why sales in EU and US aren't like those in Japan, the west has become more console centric in its preference while the east is more portable centric, the's also the case of the consumer base for gaming as a whole changes overtime while the industry is changing. Portables today are seen as the same experience as their home console couterparts which they pretty much are now days so consumers tend not to double dip like they did before when the portable experiences had quite a number of differences when designs were base on pick up and play concepts, instead consumers will buy the one platform that will fill most of their needs. An example is that if half or even a third of the Wii U consumber base don't have a 3DS and were 3DS owners instead it would push the platform wel into the 70m range and likely help the platform finish LT at or above GBA numbers alone. The 3DS hasn't been replaced because it was a competively good platform and yes Wii U was not a competitive platform either, 3DS destroyed the competition because it allowed Nintendo to be heavily competitive in fighting for consumers even with out the blue ocean consumers that's why it's not replaced and still going. This part of your post is not even very coherent in what point you're trying to make either so I'm not sure what you're even trying to say. It doesn't make sense because it's not logical as having two portables would hamper and compete against each other, any revenue made would be drained because more resources are need for all platforms. |
Of course that market approach (be it strategy or even marketing) brings in more or less people, but you can't assume that everyone is bound to like your product just because you did everything right.
Every product has a sales and market potentital - which isn't infinite.
If you can add another product to the market, chances are, you'll get people, who didn't like one product, to like and buy the new product.
Gamers don't care why company A provides a product at this or that price point. They could care less.
What i showed was that the argument of a monopolistic position does not garantee better sales than another product in a non-monopolistic position, in a market.
When you see, in Japan, 3DS fighting Vita and outselling GBA, that argument can't be used.
What it means is that 3DS did a better job of gaining customers than GBA. The reverse is valid for the US and Europe.
3DS' price had nothing to do with Vita.
3DS was more expensive to produce than prior consoles and after NDS, it was only logical for Nintendo to try and up the price.
Remember that at 170$ they were already losing money.
GBA didn't have competition until 2005, but then it had to fight PSP and NDS (both did very, very well in sales).
So, if you want to add those 16m to 3DS' numbers -and you can't - than you should do the same and take sales from NDS and PSP (a console much more successful in the US and Europe, than Vita, btw.) and add it to GBA's totals. Only fair, i think.
And GBA did have competition in Japan: Wonderswan. Of course, it wasn't anywhere near relevant. But it had competition.
Market shifts don't explain 3DS' performance being below the GBA, in the US and Europe. Not when you look at past Nintendo handhelds selling so well and consoles selling so well, at the same time.
In fact, you could say that japan's shift to handhelds (clearly taking away console sales) was very responsible for 3DS' victory over GBA.
What i tried to say was that Nintendo did not replace 3DS because it didn't have to and, to a certain extent, it would be a bad option.
With Vita having failed and Sony not releasing a new portable, why replace the 3DS?
If 3DS is making Nintendo money and Wii U not, why replace 3DS? To invest heavily in R&D and see your revenue plummet because of a newborn portable.
If Nintendo launched the NDS to fend off PSP and 3DS to fend off Vita, don't you think that if Vita was a success and Sony was ready to launch Vita 2, Nintendo would release a new portable?
It's true that having 2 portables would result into DS eating into GBA's sales, but in this case, DS was for a different market and different experience.
So it made sense to try and expand your market, whilst appealing to your "fanbase".
It would be like GBA for kids and teens and NDS for adults.
I don't disagree with the resources part. Never did.
