What are some things to know if a console is about to fail??

[HappySqurriel]

Tetsuya said:

HappySqurriel said:

Failure of a console is largely a subjective term ...

If you mean whether a console will have a disasterous end (say like the Dreamcast) the signs would be that the console manufacturer is losing a lot of money, third party support is fleeing the platform, and sales are amazingly low (probably under 15 Million world wide after 2 years). The canary in the mine would be the Madden Franchise ... We really don't know what the criteria is but EA is under contractual obligation to release Madden to every living platform (this is one of the requirements to getting the NFL licence exclusively); if a console didn't have a Madden game in the year that would imply that it was dead.

Beyond that, if you mean failure as in the late years of the N64 and Gamecube the signs would be slow sales in the begining that lead to third party support being (almost) entirely multiplatform games; this in turn will lead to slower sales and multiplatform games will begin to leave the platform.

ok i understand a little...but ur missing my question...say for example there were no sources for gaming sales...and u had no knowledge of how many units have been sold...what would be ur indication of a console that is not selling well???

like i posted above if i didnt have any knowledge of gaming sales..i would say a price cut is a indication of a console which is not selling well....arent i true?? does anyone agree with my statement??

Well, that makes it more difficult ...

An indicator that would probably work would be total retailer shelf space for a product after about 18 or 24 months on the market. If you walk into any major game retailer (including Best Buy and Walmart) they generally set up their store to give the most shelf space to the console which is selling the most software and accessories; when you look at the ammount of shelf space for systems, games (including budget and used games), accessories and game guides.

As an example, in the last generation my local Walmart had 2 game cabinets for the PS2, 1 for the XBox, 2 that the Gameboy Advance and Gamecube shared; the PS2 had a similar ammount of shelf space devoted to budget games and accessories as the Gameboy, XBox and Gamecube combined.

The sign that the Dreamcasts days were numbers was that stores stopped carying accessories and they didn't really restock games after they sold out of the initial run. In other words there was very little shelf space and most of the space was empty.