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Mandalore76 on 14 February 2019
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DonFerrari said:
Mandalore76 said:

Multiple posters were commenting on how the Switch and PS4 will continue to trade spots every holiday.  All I did was point out that the PS4 had a price cut before its 2nd holiday, while the Switch has been selling at full price since launch.  I'm not downplaying PS4's sales.  It has sold ridiculously well this gen to the point of Sony themselves coming out and saying they don't know why its selling so well.  All I did was state a fact.  And, I've already apologized for stating that there were 2 price cuts in first 2 years, when it was 2 price cuts in 3 years (1 before end of 2nd year, the 2nd before the end of the 3rd year).  Mistakenly saying there were 2 price cuts when there was only 1 is being half wrong.  Last time I checked, 1 was still half of 2.  But, you seem to want to keep harping on something I already admitted to being mistaken on.

The point is "had 2 price cuts" on the context of OP hadn't happen any yet, so you would have to better time it on, they will trade position again because PS4 got a price cut after that period and Switch may not have one. Switch hadn't complete 2 years at the time of your post and PS4 didn't got not even the first price cut on the time show there.

curl-6 said:

Those platforms, like PS3, were all unsuccessful, yes.

"B-but other divisions"/"But they knew they would lose money" are ultimately moot points. A significant factor in Wii U failing as hard as it did was Nintendo  prioritizing the 3DS division above it, doesn't change the fact Wii U was a failure. At the end of the day, PS3 still lost billions. PS3 still gutted Sony's console marketshare. PS3 still lost the sales war. PS3 was therefore not a successful product.

Unsuccessful or flops?

Not moot points, if WiiU HW was made that way to support other ventures of Nintendo then it could be used as justification, but they focusing on 3DS (which also lost 50% of the sales, so a failure as well right?) wouldn't be an excuse. I didn't say Sony focused on Vaio, TV or any other department and thus dropped the ball on PS3, I said that because of other department strategy PS3 was used to push that even at financial cost on that individual department. We do know that it didn't pay on the other departments and that the strategy ended up not being good. But it wasn't by a mistake or overlook that they forgot how to make the sum of the cost of Cell and BD when putting the price. They said and knew from start that PS3 would cost about 800 and retail for 499 base and 599 with bigger HDD and they also know more or less how much SW they would sell on each HW, so they wouldn't recoup that money lost on the initial run on the SW sold. Sure if PS3 had sold more it would lose even more money, but could also drop the cost faster (we don't know the shift though), and perhaps if they hit 150M HW they could had proffited on PS3 (but looking at the money lost on 85M, versus the money made on the 100M PS1 and 160M PS2, even if they had reached 150M I think they would still had lost money).

You are focused on 3DS as a failure based on reduction in customers alone.  While the 3DS has lost around 80 million purchasers from the DS, it actually increased Nintendo's marketshare in the dedicated handheld space from 66% to 83%.  It's gotten close to GBA lifetime sales in a time when some had said no dedicated handheld would be able to survive in the era of smartphones.  So again, the PS3 and the 3DS aren't looked at in the same light for substantial reasons.  The PS3 lost a large amount of customers, lost a huge amount of marketshare, and incurred financial losses staggering enough to wipe out the profit from its brand's most successful gen ever.  The 3DS did lose a large amount of customers, however it increased marketshare by maintaining a better hold in its market than its direct competition, and it sold well enough for Nintendo to post profitable quarters while the WiiU was flopping (yes, the Wii U flopped, no one has ever disputed that, myself included) and money was being poured into Switch development and production.