| The_Liquid_Laser said: The console wars only seem over, because two of the competitors are asleep. If Sony and Microsoft were smart, then they would release their next consoles this year. Instead they simply have declining sales with no next gen console to replace it. Meanwhile Switch gets all of the customers, both handheld and home, because there is no handheld competition and there is no home competition either. There won't be any competition until the end of 2020 when the other 2 generation 9 consoles are launched. These sleeping "giants" are giving the Switch a huge head start. |
I don't see it a failure on MS and Sonys side to not launch this year. Early launches have historically no big impact on the overall result in the gen. In the case of Sega, it didn't panned out too well. More important is, that:
- your machine works well without bigger issue
- you can price it competitively
- you can produce enough of the hardware
- you have important games ready for launch
If you look at that, you can find historic examples. XBox360 had the RROD, which probably hurt it's sales. Moreso, the XBox One got flak for it's online system, MS would have been better off if they had made more market research before and dropped the idea. PS3 had a way too high price initially and only recovered after some time. The Wii had shortages for a long time (OK, probably not that Nintendo was not ready, but more that they calculated way too conservatively initially). And WiiU although pushed back a year had a lackluster launch library.
Compare that to Switch: the hardware was well thought out. You can see it in products that released way later and show new usages of the Joycons, which Nintendo must have had in mind. I mean Labo surprised me, because of what you were able to do with the Joycons. And Ring Fit Adventure took many by surprise by being able to measure your heartbeat. usages like that must've been already thought through, as Nintendo released the hardware. Switch was also well priced. Some may have prefered a lower price, but obviously it didn't held back the sales much. Waiting a year and making advantage of fallign prices of hardware components and negotiate good deals on components helps, so in this case Nintendo wasn't forced to ask a higher price, like they had to with 3DS (the price cut lead to initial losses on hardware sales) and WiiU. Same with PS3, to drop the price Sony had to redesign the PS3, dropping backwards compatibility and replacing some components with probably cheaper ones. You also need enough time to bring up production facilities and with more time beforehand you can stack devices to fulfill launch demand. And more time means you can have games ready. Switch had an excellent launch year in regards to hardware. I can see Nintendo planned on five titles as possible system sellers: 1-2-Switch, Zelda, Arms, Splatoon and Mario. Not everything worked as much, but these titles clearly were intended to bring in different groups of customers. And at least Zelda, Splatoon and Mario clearly brought in the gamers. Also Nintendo had already secured some important third-party releases to pad out the library.
So my point is: waiting and releasing a great package is much much better than rushing to launch.
