I guess there is a way to phrase a thread to not get it locked. The responses I see here are ones I would of expected in a thread I did awhile ago, which got locked and warned about. It asked people why they thought Americans were stupid to prefer the 360 over the PS3. The responses here are getting into, "Americans are stupid" category now. Ugh, Americans are suckers for marketing and other things.
Anyhow, my take would be here:
* The FPS is the TOP genre for sales this generation. The XBox positioned itself as the place to do console FPS. Halo put this on the map. Gears, which appeals to FPS fans also, was a follow up. When JRPGs were consider system sellers, and Sony did the disk format, it stole that genre from Nintendo, and got Square on board. You saw what happened with motion control, and Nintendo being the place for it. It got it as sales. Mindset of the place for the greatest in demand genre gets the sales.
* The American market tends to be driven by the cheapest way to get a desired feature. High def gaming means XBox in America, because it is the cheapest way to get it. Americans do tend to buy a lot, but really are driven by buying bargains. It hasn't hardly ever been in America that you were the best, just you were good enough, and cheap enough.
* Microsoft being an American company does mean it likely does have a superior handle on marketing to America, because it understand the market better.
* Microsoft got to market a year earlier, with a comparibile product. By the time the PS3 is able to show itself as clearly superior, we are likely into next generation. Well, as seen by the Wii, apparently the market doesn't care about the most superior.
* With the PS2 Sony was able to be a bully in the marketspace, by the perception of being the top dog and buying Sony is "safe". Well, Microsoft went after the space of Sony with JRPGs and other RPGs, and even fighting games. It played smart to with this. Sony ended up being late, and didn't show itself superior. It still hasn't with games, as far as multiplatform goes. Sony tries to do new IP to make a difference, but that is new IP. Gran Turismo has been VERY late to the show. Maybe if it hit within the first year, with what it has now, it would of made a difference, but it hasn't. Trying to do releases in the FPS genre haven't helped Sony either. Resistance and Killzone didn't manage to make a difference. Sony isn't seen as top dog, just another company now.
* Microsoft is real good at adopt and extend. With Kinect, they do this with motion control. It looks like, unless things are different, Microsoft manage to beat Nintendo in the U.S markets this point onward. Will wait and see on this.
