HappySqurriel said:
From a consumer's stand point: Microsoft and Sony have spent the past couple of years directly and indirectly making very negative statments about the Wii and "Casual" gamers in general. This has (to a certain extent) helped them grow their support from "Core" gamers who feel alienated by the success of the Wii. If Microsoft and Sony choose to follow the Wii's approach mid-generation they could alienate the consumers who are buying their consoles, while at the same time not gaining any consumers in return (in part because an expensive system combined with an expensive and poorly supported add-on will not be attractive to "Casual" gamers). From a third party developer's standpoint: For Microsoft and Sony to have any chance of being successful they will have to convince many third party developers to produce HD games that are designed to take full advantage of their new interfaces. Even a very simple HD game can be very expensive to develop, and these games will likely sell poorly because they require an expensive add on to play. If developers lose money developing HD games for a failed add-on this will hurt their relationship with Microsoft. |
If the prices of the HD consoles are cut, they could well be a serious competition to the Wii.
