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curl-6 on 20 May 2024
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Jumpin said:
curl-6 said:

Withe the exception of the PS3 where they fucked up massively, PS owners tend to trust Sony enough that they reliably buy the next system, when it comes to home consoles anyway. PS1 owners upgraded to PS2, PS3 owners upgraded to PS4, now PS4 owners are upgrading to PS5.

Nintendo owners however have very often chosen not to buy the next system; consoles like the N64, Gamecube, Wii U, and 3DS, even SNES and GBA to a lesser extent have all sold substantially less than their predecessors.

Sony owners will tend to buy the next one no questions asked, while Nintendo gamers often don't and need more convincing.

Although, a lot of the reason the SNES had fewer sales than the NES wasn’t because of decline in interest for the SNES, but because of a substantially shorter generation. By the time the SNES came out, the NES had been available or semi-available for 6-8 years, and then remained widely available for most of the SNES generation - until around the DKC era. But the SNES all but vanished when (or shortly after) the N64 launched.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dunking on the SNES or trying to undermine its success; it was still a very successful console that won its generation comfortably.

But I'd say the reason it sold less than the NES was primarily due to much, much stronger competition. The NES only had to deal with a few weak opponents; the Megadrive/Genesis on the other hand was a formidible foe that gained a lot of marketshare by leapfrogging the NES and beating the SNES to market, as well as aggressive marketing.

I wouldn't say the SNES vanished quickly either; it continued to get games like Donkey Kong Country 3, Kirby's Dreamland 3, and Harvest Moon and even a revision in the SNES Junior after the release of N64.