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The_Liquid_Laser said:
Mar1217 said:

So why are the stats showing Nintendo dominance there but you would consider them as second fiddle to the Xbox ?

I am talking about brand rather than raw sales.  Brand is the ability to sell a product simply because the company put their name on it.  Partly it has to do with how well the best product can do and how well the worst product can do.  XBox and Nintendo are both strong brands in the Americas, so maybe they are about the same.  I tend to think XBox is a little stronger though.  

VGChartz has XBox360 at 49.11m and XB1 at 32.47m in North America.  There is not much variation there, even though XB1 seems like a clearly worse product than PS4 (higher launch price, weaker hardware, fewer exclusives, etc...).  That's a strong brand.  Nintendo's brand is strong mostly because of their handhelds.  DS sold 57.92m and 3DS sold 25.77m.  So the DS has a higher peak and the 3DS was a lower valley.  I suppose that makes Nintendo close to XBox, but 3DS didn't have to compete with a product that was clearly better.  That is why I'd put XBox a little ahead.  (Also Nintendo's home consoles haven't faired nearly as well.)  Both are stronger brands than Playstation in North America though.  People still like Playstation, but it really hasn't done extremely well since the PS2 days, and it lost that title fairly quickly in the generation after.  Americans simply like XBox and Nintendo more than Playstation.

US is definitely Xbox's strongest market but I think its hard to argue its stronger than Playstation or even Nintendo, they have different demographic strengths but I think they're similar pitched. Microsoft have simply had stability, they never had a catastrophic phase like PS3/Wii U. The Xbox One's only major problem with mainstream implication was launching at £499, but that changed within months and from day one it delivered all of the experiences which brought the majority of people to Xbox 360 (Halo & Gears/3rd Party AAA games/Online competitive gaming).

PS4 didn't establish a strong exclusive library until mid way through the generation and they were all cinematic single player experiences. Prior to Uncharted 4 we had Knack, Killzone, Driveclub, The Order....  Microsoft was buying 3rd party exclusives like Titanfall and Tomb Raider in the first half of the generation alongside Halo actually having a strong presence from year 1. The disparity you see in other regions where PS4 doubled Xbox is more in relation to how strong the PS brand is in those areas versus Xbox One being some terrible console.

Comparably PS3 was a much bigger misstep than the X1 and yet their sales are almost equal in the US



Last edited by Otter - on 25 May 2022