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Soundwave on 09 August 2020
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curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

The problem with this logic is so what? OK so they could've maybe squeezed an extra year of selling Wii Party 4 for the Wii (things like Zelda: Skyward Sword and Sin & Punishment 2 even weren't putting up impressive sales towards the end). 

But then what? 

After 4-5 years of support, a system is what it is, you're not changing anything, but by extending support beyond that, especially with big titles it can harm the next system.

Especially Nintendo. They are so reliant on having a good start because they don't have the benefit of the developer support Sony gets, they have to have a great 1st 6-12 months for a system, it's absolutely critical.

Wasting big gun games in the twilight years of a console is a bad idea for Nintendo because it often leads to the next system having nothing great ready early on. The 3DS probably could've badly used one of those late release Pokemon games the DS got instead, the DS still would've ended up selling the same 150 million, but life probably would've been way easier for Nintendo. 

It's possible to strike a balance where you support a system until it's replacement and also give it's successor a good start; Nintendo just tend not to be very good at striking that balance, the Wii being perhaps the most obvious case in point.

The GBA, GCN, Wii U had far worse late life cycle support than the Wii did. 

And all the successor systems to those machines sold great. 

So really probably what that tells you is late cycle support doesn't mean much really and cutting off support for an older system to ensure better early generation support for the next system has if anything worked well for Nintendo. 

To be honest maybe Microsoft would've been better off doing this too. I think they maybe should have considered ditching the XBox One in 2019 and getting a year headstart over the PS5. 

Sega really, is actually the outlier here and they did extreme things. 

I mean Sony too could've supported the PS2 into 2007 really if they wanted to and pushed PS3 into 2007 ... I don't think it would have helped the PS3 any bit though. 360 would've simply cemented itself a larger lead.