Basically, I was just wanted to gather opinions upon the Nintendo Structure (A pure Games company) vs the Microsoft and Sony structure (A varied product line). I'm asking about the benefits and conns as pertaining to the gaming industry only.

Nintendo has the benefit of being able to devote all of it's time and money to it's first party titles, advertising, and console developement. As a result, they're completely dependent upon the sucess of their products and sometimes find themselves at the shallow end of the tech pool.

On the other hand, Microsoft and Sony have multiple product lines and can better afford to take monetary hits to get their gaming products in homes and worry about the profit later...thus better third party support. In addition, they can afford to take bigger risks with better technology. But does this mean that quality management isn't as rigorous?

Obviously each style is vital to the gaming industry. The failure of any one of these company's isn't good news for gamers at all. We should rejoice in their mutual success. But what other pros and cons can you come up with?

Ive always said, the Wii is the new DS, the PS3 is the new PSP, and Xbox 360 is the new Xbox.

I like the fact that we have both types of companies involved in the console gaming business, because there are advantages to both.

I tend to prefer when a company does one thing and does it exceptionally well over a company trying to have a slice of lots of different markets, but some companies do a good job of bringing resources and ideas from related fields into a new field. For example, Microsoft is heavily focused on user interfaces, and this allowed them to create Xbox Live, which has sparked Sony and Nintendo to innovate in this area. In the 32-bit era, Nintendo was too used to running the show, and thought that they could maintain the status quo; however, Sony's marketing experience and resources allowed them to greatly expand the video gaming market.

So while I still believe Nintendo makes some of the best games and has a better vision and understanding of video games as a medium, both MS and Sony have been valuable contributors due in part to their experience outside of the video game industry.

I think Nintendo is driven more by the fact that the System is their bread and Butter.
Sony and MicroSoft could take more risks but they thought of the system as a means to sell other products beneath their company umbrella.

As far as Nintendo being on the shallow end of technology- I don't see it as bad. Look at the DS and the Wii. Everyone thought Nintendo was crazy and doomed, but they are now the most sucessful. Just because the Tech is out there does not mean that everyone will adopt it right away. Even though Sony and Micro Soft took a loss on their product it is still more than most people want to spend. Especially, when people (like me) feel they need a HD TV to truly enjoy it.

So part of good business is knowing what the market needs not just what you CAN do.


But I think the PS3's staying power may allow it to win 10 years from now. I think they built the PS3 to last for a long time rather than 5 years. Nintendo probably will have a new system out by then. (I wonder if Nintendo could support 2 systems like Sony is with the PS2 and the PS3. If the Wii stays profitable once Wii 2 comes out).

@eugene

of course the 360 is the new xbox lol. thats what it was intended to be XD.
just kidding.

i think the ds is going to do what gameboy did. appeal to everybody. i despised the n64 and gc but my gameboy never left my side. its a different element to gaming.

i cant seem to understand how you conclude with ps3 bing the new psp. psp has actually sold a very good amount of hardware since release. ps3 is more inline with being the new gamecube imo. the ds just makes psp look extremely bad. but its not. ds is just the daddy when it comes to handhelds.

You're right.

Although, thanks to Sony I won't ever enjoy the golden shine of a new ZELDA cartridge again. Curse you Sony, you and your Disc Drive!

-But at least the games are longer, and I got to admit the graphics are pretty nice, not to say I wouldn't buy Zelda if the next game looked like the very first.

I think one of the most notable things about MS and Sony not being gaming companies is that people don't take it into account when making their worst case predictions for the 360 and PS3.

1. They will not keep making games to the bitter end like Nintendo will, or Sega did. They'll rather drop gaming and move to operating systems/electronics/whatever.

2. If everything else with the company is doing really well, they can rebound from a very bad situation. On the other hand, they might be forced to stop supporting even a very succesful console if all their other enterprises suffer a catastrophy.

This might happen to Microsoft if Vista fails bad and Linux gains ground, or to Sony if their electronics take dive and they have many repeated problems like the laptop battery incident.

Now I'm not saying anything will happen, but people should probably take it into account more when making long-term predictions.

I think now that games are beginning to sell for $60 people are beginning to be more cautious when selecting games to buy, meaning developers may begin to focus more on the quality of their games.

From what I observed in the last generation most consumers owned more then one console. This is because many people enjoy playing different games other Nintendo. People will always want a Final Fantasy game, Metal Gear, and Halo. I think overall 360 have done an excellent job with their management. They are appealing to their target plus their console is much more cost efficient then PS3. Sony however tried too hard to make advanced which screwed them over. PS3 would have made a good PS4 though. Can you imagine if Sony first introduced Bluray and then a few years later introduced the PS4. That would have made their production a lot cheaper. Anyways I got off track Sony will eventually introduce Grand Turismo, God of War, and other titles in addition have a few more price cuts which should help hardware and overall software sales increase.

See I'm personally biased twards Sony, but I believe the peak of video games could have been acknowledged with Nintendo and Sony, Nintendo always had the creative edge on the market, and Sony always pushed for functionality and tech specs. They were two different markets that a bunch of people could appreciate, now the 360 on the other hand is delivering in the software (which is great), but man o' man the hardware itself is terrible ><, it's like there the middle ground in an "extreme war" that I think could have been avoided all together, Microsoft makes buckets of money on there software devision and have yet to see a dime from there hardware :/ I personally think Microsoft should have taken it's money and created some great games for the Wii and or PS3, but meh oh well :D 

I guess I just liked it better when what you wanted to buy was more defined, I just don't like that Microsoft doesn't offer anything aside from software, you get creativity and innovation from Nintendo, and you get an awesome multi media device/entertainment system from Sony. On the plus side I guess it forces Sony to regulate it's prices some, but the Nintendo Wii's been doing a fine job of that as well although software sales is still a good enough reason to lower your prices.

[Edit] I am glad that Microsoft brought the "online community" aspects to consoles though, it probably would have been here this generation anyway (probably not as good), but we can say they got the ball rolling.