| Kyuu said: That's because the most powerful system traditionally had a number of real disadvantages (not "excuses"), like late launch and poor design. PS1 had a 2 year headstart vs the N64 which went for expensive (up to) 64MB cartridges, a terrible move that sealed its fate. "Power" isn't the reason the N64 lost. And the low pricetag wasn't enough to mask its inherent disadvantages. Price and power are meaningless without context. Past trends are of little relevance regardless. PS5 vs Series S absolutely proves that. The Series S shares the same feature set with the X. The Switch OLED beating the Lite does have more to do with features, but features are hardware/price related anyway, they require better hardware and come at an additional cost. Nintendo isn't going to launch the Switch 2 at the same price or $50 lower than the OLED model lol. If they wish to repeat the Switch success, then I think it's best to go with $400 minimum (for the standard "expensive" launch model), which is today's equivalent of yesterday's $300. I think there is an overwhelming evidence that the average gamer is ready to spend more money for more hardware, Nintendo should take advantage of this and not be overly concerned about price being high. Pricing the hardware too low at the cost of specs/features is just as dangerous as going too high. I too couldn't care less about high resolutions (1080p is perfectly fine, and anything over 1440p is a total waste of resources), but it's up to developers to decide how to utilize power, and since PS5 will be the lead platform for most relevant 3rd party games, even a "powerful/expensive" Switch 2 would only play them at relatively low resolutions. I very much doubt even $500+ Switch 2 would target high resolutions for demanding and AAA games. |
Bold 1: That's the point. Clearly a power advantage is not enough to make up for whatever other disadvantages that a system has. This is consistent across almost every single generation. In addition, there are several disadvantages that popular consoles had, yet they still ended up being the best selling console. For example, the SNES launched two years after the Genesis/Mega Drive (and was not more powerful in every metric). The PS2 launched a year and a half after the Dreamcast. The Wii launched a year after the 360. The PS4 launched a year after the Wii U. The Switch launched almost FOUR years after the PS4 (and is still notably weaker).
Bold 2: Past trends are absolutely relevant as predictors of future trends. You shouldn't look at things in a vacuum.
Bold 3: No it doesn't, it lacks a disc drive. More to the point, the disc version of the PS5 is also outselling the discless version because, again, it's feature complete. Comparing the Series S to the PS5 is more apples to oranges anyway. You should be comparing the Series X to the PS5, but you're not because this doesn't help your point.
Bold 4: They do come at added cost, but not necessarily better hardware. What's in the Switch Lite is the exact same as what's in the OLED. The differences are: Screen size, screen type, ability to dock, and removable controllers. That's pretty much it. Same with PS5 vs. PS5 Discless, same exact hardware minus the disc drive.
Bold 5: While I don't doubt this, I don't think that Nintendo would be successful selling a system for $499 like their contemporaries. Unless the console had very similar third party support and was feature complete. Even then, the past has shown us that three manufacturers competing in the exact same market doesn't bode well (Sega).
