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Soundwave on 14 September 2023
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RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:

lol, you seriously think if Apple really *really* wanted to compete in the console space, they'd be sitting here with a mediocre 24 million units sold after 3 years in this gen and 20+ years total experience in the business? Who here actually believes if Apple made a real push into the game console space with an actual console that 20 years later they'd be only selling like 8 million consoles a year. This is a company that sells 230 million iPhones a year, 50-60 million iPads (and that's a decline for them) a year, sold almost 60 million Apple Watches in 2021 (lol, I knew this was a solid product for them, but that number is bonkers). 

Apple has succeeded in almost every major area they'd put some effort into. iPod? iPhone? iPad? Apple Watch? Air Pods? All hugely successful products. Shit even the Air Tag is now taking off as a hit product that consumers swear by. 

Microsoft failed with Zune. They failed with Skype. They failed miserably with Windows phone. They can't get out of third spot in the game business despite spending massive amounts of money. 

No one if they really critically thought of this would believe that Apple would be in the same spot MS is in the game business 20 years in. Do you suppose like from Apple's massive war chest that they would develop a few games? They probably would manage their IP a lot better than the dumb ways Microsoft has. Better than 50/50 chance I'd say that they own Disney within 5 years. 

No, I don't think Apple would be in the same position as Microsoft after 20 years, because Apple would pull out of the console business after their first console fails. (Technically second, because they had the Pippin already.) Microsoft stayed in the console business because of their belief that they needed a console to protect their Windows cash cow from being disrupted by a PS console. Apple's motivation would be profits, so as soon as that couldn't be realized, they would be out again.

If it were so easy to get into the console business, we would have seen more entrants during the past two decades (there were none). All the big companies know that the entry level is set incredibly high with Nintendo and Sony as the established players. On one side you have the best first party in the business that is able to sustain a console mostly on its own. Of course, it's not realistic to replicate this approach, so it has to be the other side: Get all the big third publishers on board while having your own occasional hit games as supplement. But even that wouldn't be quite enough, because you have to do it better than Sony in order to convince gamers to leave PS behind. Apple could get all third party publishers on their console, but Apple has no games on their own, meaning there's no reason to buy the Apple console instead of a PS.

What makes the console business different to pretty much every other entertainment business is intellectual property. An iPod plays people's music, whatever it is. An iConsole wouldn't be able to do that, so its value is inherently a lot lower by default. IPs are why it's not as simple as buying your way into the console business and rolling in the money.

Another drawback of a stationary home console (you've said Apple could roast Sony, so this is the form factor it has be) is that it sits in people's homes. This removes Apple's biggest brand advantage altogether: Apple has managed to create an image of trendy products that people love to show in public as status symbols. It's no coincidence that portable Apple products are hugely successful while their other products are niche at best.

Pippin is somewhat irrelevant as it was made in that weird era where Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple and they completely lost their way as a company. Since Jobs came back and subsequent to that they are much better run company (to put it mildly). Your point about Microsoft thinking Sony was going to be a threat to their OS business just underscores their stupidity ... they were watching the Playstation when they should have been paying attention to Apple who actually did create the next big OS post-Windows.

If Apple was in the game business and took it seriously with a Jobs or Cook at the helm, they would've broke Sony in half with the Playstation 3 and never let them recover from that. It's not that hard to invest in some good dev studios either when you have that much money. Apple makes some high quality TV shows and movies now despite being a newcomer is those areas without a lot of experience. 

Sony as I said dominates in almost no other business they operate in except the stationary console market. It's not because they're brilliant, it's because in the stationary console market their competition frankly is pretty stupid. 

Nintendo has basically been this in that market after the SNES ended:

Just drunk off their ass for most of that period with a short 3 year stint where they looked sober but were drinking behind the scenes and then hard back into the booze right after. 

And Microsoft is basically the equivalent of this in the console business:

Not the brightest bulb in the pack. 

People can feel free to disagree but I'm just not that impressed by that. Sony just sits around and wait for their opponent to gift them a dumb mistake and MS/Nintendo at least with stationary home consoles just go out of their way to take the bait every time. Even this generation where Microsoft supposedly "learned their lessons from XBox One", they apparently forgot you need to have even one 1st party exclusive that is a system seller at some point in your 1st 3 years. 20 years and tons of money invested in multiple studios including the mismanaged Rareware and they can't even come up with one lousy title that is a must have. How hard is it really to beat an opponent that poorly managed. It's really not terribly difficult to conceive of a better competitor than that. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 14 September 2023