RolStoppable said:
All eighth generation systems have been launched now, so here are a few things that we can be almost certain about.
1. PS4 success should put the "Company X must kill off their own Y to help their own Z" idiocy to rest
VGC has only been around since the launch of the seventh generation home consoles, so it has never seen a smooth transition from one system to the next. The PS3 cratered and so did the 3DS, PSV and Wii U. What all those systems had in common was that their respective predecessor was still putting up good hardware sales numbers which led to a lot of people suggesting that Sony/Nintendo should kill off those old systems as soon as possible, because they were stealing sales from the new ones. This has always been an idiotic argument, because it assumed that late adopters of video game systems (who look for cheap hardware and software) would become early adopters (which is expensive), if only choice was taken away from them.
The real cause of slow starts for new hardware were always poor decisions and/or poor lineups by the respective console manufacturer; something that is all too common in the video game business. Systems like the PS2 and GBA had no problems to pick up right where their predecessors left off, the same goes for the PS4.
2. The industry stays on the same trajectory as in the seventh generation
The breadth of available retail software will keep getting narrower while the blockbusters will accumulate more sales per individual title. Nothing was done to reverse the fortunes of the middleground games. The market will increasingly shift towards the Call of Duties, Assassin's Creeds, Battlefields, FIFAs and Maddens, not just because people want to play those games, but also because there won't be any real alternatives. Games that do not exist cannot sell, as I like to say.
3. The Wii was the right decision
A lot of people freaked out about Nintendo reconsidering their strategy after the GameCube failure. It wasn't right to make such a console. Worse, it was injustice that it was successful. With the Wii U, if nothing else, everyone gets to see why the Wii was the right move. The spiritual successor to the GameCube sells worse than the GameCube, thus continuing the historic decline of Nintendo home consoles. Although this early in the generation there are still a lot of simpletons who are falling for the Wii branding and mistake the Wii U for a continuation of the Wii.
4. The Wii U will finish in third place
For me, ever since E3 2011, it was only a matter of when, not if, until the PS4 and Xbox Doublespin would overtake the Wii U in hardware sales. Nintendo had laid out their strategy and that's basically all you need to know to make a sensible prediction. That strategy was, in the most simplistic sense, anti-Wii. Nintendo had lost before it even began, so the only question that remained was what Sony and Microsoft would do.
The PS4 was announced to be nothing more than a straight evolution of Sony home consoles, without committing PS3-like blunders in pricing and hardware architecture; and that's really all it takes for Sony to be successful, because they are on very good terms with third parties on a global basis.
Microsoft... well, you all know what they did. We trolled them like there was no tomorrow under the guise of caring about consumer rights. Then they put a $500 price tag on it and that was the moment when I questioned my certainty regarding the Wii U finishing in third place. It's not that that would have made the Wii U sell better, but the result would have changed to the PS4 steamrolling everything. But Microsoft got cold feet after seeing their preorder numbers and fixed as much as possible before launch, so they will be okay to go... in the USA and the UK, because they once again failed to present any sort of strategy to succeed in other countries. But those are big markets, so that's at least something.
5. The 3DS is still failing, because it was conceived with the same philosophy as the Wii U
Right, I shouldn't say the 3DS is failing, because it was the best-selling video game system in 2013. That's what the general consensus is, the 3DS is doing great. But it really isn't. Just like the Wii U's strategy revolved around taking gamers away from Sony and Microsoft, so did the 3DS's strategy revolve around taking gamers away from Sony. And while the 3DS at least succeeded somewhat in its mission (securing Monster Hunter exclusivity helped a lot), it came at the cost of driving away a lot of DS customers. Nintendo certainly noticed some of their errors and tried to fix them, but not everything can be fixed, so not all of the problems will go away.
Another general consensus is that home consoles and handhelds are so different that they should not or cannot be compared, but I beg to differ. Consequently, this means that the Wii U is unfixable and its result is going to be worse than the 3DS's, because it only drove away Wii customers while not picking up anyone else. The Nintendo of the eighth generation doesn't care anymore about expanding gaming which clearly shows in the lack of new IPs (digital-only games don't cut it).
6. The PS4 will be the best-selling home console in every country
Why wouldn't it be? There is no such thing as widespread brand loyalty. If Nintendo could usurp Atari in the USA, Sony Nintendo, Nintendo Sony, and Microsoft Nintendo, then why shouldn't Sony be able to beat Microsoft? Did you have problems to read and comprehend the previous sentence?
7. Nobody gives a damn about the Vita
Even I almost forgot about its existence. Just kidding, I already mentioned its failure briefly earlier in this post.
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