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Zekkyou on 18 September 2018
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Replicant said: 
Zekkyou said:

I appreciate the in-depth reply, but I don't think my comment really warrants it. My original comment to Miyamotoo was just a mild observation, not an in-depth analysis and argument. I'm aware of why the 7th gen saw such growth, why it subsequently lost most of it (anyone whose been a member here for more than a few years is likley to be well versed on both topics), and why the PS4 has ultimately been unremarkable in NA. The end result is still unremarkable though, and within the narrow context that my comment was aimed at, I stand by what I said. While the PS4 and X1 have remained stable, they've done so in what i'd personally consider a much easier market.

You're one of my favorite posters on this site. Your comments are always sound and logical. That's why I'm interested to know your reasoning behind bolded.

Isn't competition bigger than ever for consoles? With the growing popularity of F2P gaming on mobile devices as well as the growing popularity of F2P and Esports on PC? It seems like a large part of the new generation enjoys gaming on other platforms than consoles.

Ya making me blush (though I'd personally say Shadow is a much better contributor to the forums than me). It wasn't my intention to provide an in-depth argument, as I noted to Shadow my original comment was just a mild observation, but since you've asked so nicely i'll oblige :')

I'd like to start by highlighting that all of this is purely from the perspective of market size/share, not health. The latter is an important factor when discussing the validity of some of the choices Sony, Nintendo, and MS have made (e.g. paid online will likley have had at least some kind of negative sales affect, but the profit advantages are abundantly clear), but that isn't relevant to the original comment I posted (which was focused simply on how the decline from the 7th to 8th gen, particularly initially as I should probably have better highlighted, has changed our perspective of hardware success in NA).

The PS4 launched at a significantly lower price than the PS3 (and the X1 quickly fell in line with the standard 360 once it ditched the Kinect), they faced minimal competition from Nintendo, the majority of the handheld market moved to mobile (which I would personally consider less directly in competition with home consoles than dedicated handhelds), and most importantly gaming as a whole was getting more popular. So to recap, cheaper, less successful consoles fighting, and launched along side overall market growth. It was their failure to capitalise properly on that growth, despite what could have been good internal market conditions, that created a lot of the competition from PC they would face.

A lot of factors played into why the generation started that way (some arguably even intentional), but I think the biggest one was games. For several years the PS4 and X1 simply lacked a meaningful number of the types of games that could attract the attention of the of people who would normally not be interested in a console. Almost all their big titles were initially on PC and the PS3/360, their exclusives were mostly unexceptional, and the few console-only titles that did create far reaching interest (like Destiny) disappointed. They needed a big hook to attract the attention of PC gamers in particular, and they just didn't have it. They needed a Zelda or Spider-Man in 2014, or at minimum to sooner get on-board with growing PC trends (the trends that were resulting in much of PC gamings own growth). Instead they spent a while just being PS3.5s, which was the same market already being ignored by this new wave of gamers.

As the last year has shown, the NA console market still had a lot of room to grow. Enough room in-fact that an entirely new successful console could arrive, and its competitors would actually grow themselves. Sony, MS, and Nintendo just needed to adapt to this new and growing market. Embracing FTP and other trends, offering PC gamers a hardware middle-ground (MS more so than Sony, and Nintendo's case a side-ground), consistently releasing console-only titles with genuine mass appeal, understanding the value of being a second system to those who will never see you as a priority, or simply filling new niches. Back in 2014 I had friends who would light heartedly mock me for owning a PS4 (i'm primarily a PC gamer, and most of my gaming friends are too), but now in 2018 they're pretty much all interested in or now own either a PS4 or Switch. I'm a lot more optimistic about the long-term viability of home consoles in NA now than I was a few years ago.

As a final note, I should mention that I don't consider my position to be fact, I don't feel we have enough data to be able to come to conclusions that firm (e.g. we don't know the specific composition of the Wii's userbase, and by extension how feasible keeping a larger portion of them might have been). This is just my personal observation :)