TheMisterManGuy on 07 January 2024
Sony's PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Switch consoles are rather interesting. They're both the two best selling game systems of the past generation, and have become beloved systems with large and varied game libraries and innovative features. Yet, the story of their creation and the scenario surrounding them are eerily similar to each-other.
Between the PS4 and Switch, which did you think was the biggest comeback? While the PS4's success was impressive, it's hard to deny that the Switch was the more surprising one. The PlayStation 3 at least sobered up and turned itself around in the later half of its generation, which helped set the stage for Sony's success with the PS4. Sony smartly capitalizing on its biggest rival self-destructing also helped.
Nintendo however, was facing an uphill battle on both ends. The Wii U was a colossal failure and continued the trend sans Wii of Nintendo home consoles loosing more and more of their audience to other systems. Meanwhile the Nintendo 3DS, while a decent success, was facing its own issues surrounding the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets and the games you can play on them, putting the future of the dedicated portable gaming market, once Nintendo's bread and butter, into question. Many argued that Nintendo should either play ball and make a powerful, competitive big boy console like Sony or Microsoft, or get out of platform development entirely and go third party like Sega. Fortunately, the Switch ended up prevailing in the end thanks to its easy-to-use hybrid nature.
- They're both consoles that succeeded strange, obtuse platforms that struggled compared to their competition (PS3 vs. 360/Wii and 3DS/Wii U vs. Smartphones/Tablets)
- They both opted for off-the-shelf parts that were easy-to-develop-for and more compatible with modern development tools (x86 and Tegra)
- They both had a software developer as their lead architect and worked to integrate the first party teams and third party developers into the development process from the start (Mark Cerny and Yoshiaki Koizumi)
- They both cut the bloat of their predecessors by focusing on games first and foremost
- They both had a well executed reveal that showed that they were learning from their predecessors failures
- They both marked a fundamental change from how the companies created hardware before.
Between the PS4 and Switch, which did you think was the biggest comeback? While the PS4's success was impressive, it's hard to deny that the Switch was the more surprising one. The PlayStation 3 at least sobered up and turned itself around in the later half of its generation, which helped set the stage for Sony's success with the PS4. Sony smartly capitalizing on its biggest rival self-destructing also helped.
Nintendo however, was facing an uphill battle on both ends. The Wii U was a colossal failure and continued the trend sans Wii of Nintendo home consoles loosing more and more of their audience to other systems. Meanwhile the Nintendo 3DS, while a decent success, was facing its own issues surrounding the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets and the games you can play on them, putting the future of the dedicated portable gaming market, once Nintendo's bread and butter, into question. Many argued that Nintendo should either play ball and make a powerful, competitive big boy console like Sony or Microsoft, or get out of platform development entirely and go third party like Sega. Fortunately, the Switch ended up prevailing in the end thanks to its easy-to-use hybrid nature.
