Master analyst, Michael Pachter, predicts that Switch will not sell near Wii.

[Mnementh]

Kyuu said:

Mnementh said:

I already said it: thinking the Switch wasn't significantly more powerful than PS3/360 was buying into hyperbolic exaggeration. We all knew the WiiU was more powerful than PS3/360, starting with 4 times the RAM. The hyperbolic exaggeration was, that the differences basically didn't matter so it was *the same power*. Then the Switch was obviously more powerful than the WiiU (twice the RAM again), but the hyperbole was, that it was again the same. Putting together two completely unrealistic statements makes an even more outlandish statement: that the Switch wasn't much more powerful than PS360. But the reality was and is different, and everyone thinking through it with calm mind knew that Switch obviously outperformed PS360 by a lot. So if you say:

"Pretty sure the vast majority didn't think it had a 2x+ advantage over PS360"

you are basically saying the vast majority was complete morons. Everyone programming know the importance of RAM and in clear numbers Switch has 8 times as much as PS360. That is only one factor, others are much harder to pinpoint, but the more modern architecture surely does a lot here.

"And no, Mnementh! It isn't weird to consider the launch of the platform because having a headstart is arguably the bigger advantage unless the power gap is absolutely massive and the price is around the same. PS2 launched a year before GameCube and Xbox, the realized power gap between them was nowhere near generational (the same goes for PS1 which launched like 2 years before N64?), but it was still a big enough selling point that helped Xbox outsell the GameCube; a decent achievement from a newcomer."

"Wii U on the other hand came out 6-7 whole years after the aging PS360, and a single year before the actual next generation systems (yet many games played and looked worse IIRC). Of course price, form factor, and other Nintendo screw ups contributed to its failure but you can't even make a shadow of a comparison between Sony and Nintendo's approach on power since the Wii. At no point were Sony's consoles severely underpowered, the PS1 and PS2 had a huge wow factor that helped them selling and being supported. They were powerful consoles."

So you construct the weird statement, the PS2 was the most powerful at start, while denying the same factor for WiiU, although it absolutely is? That is incredibly weird.

"I know you aren't saying power is completely irrelevant, but I feel like you're underselling its relevance."

I don't think so. No evidence points in any way to the power being a deciding or even major factor in any generation.

No offense but you're engaging in semantics now.

PS2 had a generational lead over PS1, Wii U didn't have that, hell the results weren't consistently better than PS360. It's like you expect every phrase I leave to be super specific and detailed. I expanded on what I meant and you insist that it's "incredibly weird". It isn't.

Power is a factor, how that factor plays out is tied to other factors. Wii U wasn't from the same generation, so a slight and inconsistent power advantage over 7 year old systems was nothing to write home about.

You may believe that, I just don't see that backed up by real world data. But maybe our differences are just the scale. I already said that WiiU was much more powerful than PS3/360 and Switch is more powerful than WiiU. Maybe that just suffices as the power difference you claim has to justify a new gen. And maybe that is true. I don't know, because never a major console was just on the level of previous gen consoles in term of technological abilities. You though compare the power increase of WiiU and Switch with the ones taken by Playstation and Xbox consoles and see in comparison these increases as insignificant. But these increases may just be enough to justify a new gen and after that other factors are more relevant.

So maybe you are right: if we ever see a console on the same powerlevel as last gen, then it indeed might stop this console from being successful. It just haven't happened yet, which is why I find no data for the claim power has a big influence.