| Soundwave said: If that's the metric though, DS wipes the floor with anyone, Nintendo could have easily sold that for an extra 2-3 years ... now it would've hurt the 3DS to do so and that makes it a dumb move probably, but they could have hit 175+ million with the DS, the PS2 or Switch frankly would never be able to touch that. I don't think Nintendo really cares that much about end cycle LTD, it's a nice to have but not a must have. The fact that the DS was so close to the PS2 and Nintendo still nixed production and support for it tells you they really don't care about this stuff. I mean if it was even a passing fancy of a priority, there was no reason to not at least stuff the retail channel with a couple more million DS' and take the record then. Making a sports analogy if you told me one basketball player 1 scored 15,000 career points in 10 seasons played, while player 2 scored 17,5000 points in 15 seasons played ... IMO player 1 is the better scorer even if player 2 has more overall points scored in their career. The PS2 hit 150 million after 10 years + 11 months so almost 11 years basically ... the DS hit 150 million in just a bit over 7 years. IMO PS2 is a phony king in that regard. |
Soundwave said:
Is it really a marathon when you're dragging a corpse past the finish line and everyone else has left the track because the actual race ended a few hours ago and it's 2 AM? lol. Everyone and their grandma knows Nintendo could've had that record, they simply didn't want it. Shit, really you could sell the DSi even today for $59.99 a pop especially in developing countries and it would probably move 800k-900k units a year since legitimately the DS library is not available on the Switch at all. Nintendo simply isn't interested in milking hardware forever. To me you shouldn't need all these stupid qualifiers to get the record like "oh no! You can't announce the successor!!!" like gimme a break. If you need a successor to not be announced by like year 7 to keep selling and then you need like 10 years on store shelves, it just sort of becomes ridiculous. The only system that legitimately had a case for being an actual market factor after year 7/8 was the Game Boy because of the Pokemon craze which is a one off kind of event. |
It's a bit funny that I as a Nintendo-guy have to defend the PS2 but so be it: at bold:
1. True, as I myself already said, neither Nintendo nor any other company cares about how many products they sell, they solely care about profit (and logically you need to sell a big amount of your main product to make big profits). DS is a handheld and PS2 is a home console, two different markets, so from Nintendo's perspective, if they would have broken the PS2 record with the DS, people just would say: "so what?" But if the GameCube instead would have had a chance to break the PS2 record, I'm pretty sure Nintendo would have gone for it. It would have been a true victory in the same market. Everybody would have recognized it.
2. I agree again, no console manufacturer is milking anything to death. Every product goes through a lifecycle of release-growth-peak-decline-end of life cycle. Like living beings, ultimately, every product has to die! However, this cycle looks very different from product to product and from generation to generation. The PS2 had a very slow decline and was still profitable in its (very) late years because 1. the product was still kinda popular, 2. the product became (very) cheap and 3. the failure of the start of the PS3 (too expensive). With the DS on the other hand, Nintendo panicked because of the PS Vita and wanted to counter it with the 3DS and to kill off an old console or handheld as soon as the successor is available is a Nintendo tradition, so far they always did that. (However, I think it will change with the successor of the Switch - the old Switch will still be on the market for quite some time).
3. I don't get your logic with the 10 years on the shelves. If a product is successful and there's still demand for it, it's a good thing that that product is still available after 10 years. I can't imagine that any console will be 10 years on the market without a successor announced but once the Switch 2 is on the market but the old Switch is still selling for many years - what's your problem with that? Even if in the unlikely case that after 10 years still no Switch 2 is announced but the Switch 1 is still profitable for Nintendo why is that a problem as long as still enough games in quality and quantity come out? Nintendo games are about fun, gameplay and innovations. Sure, Zelda, Mario and Co. would look better on Switch 2 but ultimately, it doesn't matter. These games are nothing lesser just because they look a bit downgraded. Artificial intelligence is the one innovation that truly brings games to a whole new level but Nintendo is far far away from using it, certainly not with the Switch 2, whenever it releases.
