Ryuu96 said:
This one annoys me, and I think it just links into the console wars nonsense that you spoke about, if something isn't #1 it's a failure, if it hasn't sold 50m+ it's a failure, a lot of people can't seem to grasp that something can be a success without selling tens of millions or being #1. Fact is, if something is profitable for a company, it is not a failure, it does not need to be #1 to sell tens upon tens of millions. I see it with the SteamDeck, ah it's sold below 10m so it's a failure, uh, no, it is likely profitable for Valve and it's an extension of their ecosystem, it is not a failure to Valve because it didn't sell anywhere close to Nintendo Switch. Silly. I do believe future Xbox devices will be more niche as well, cater to a more hardcore audience, but profitable for Microsoft, but I can't wait for the years of "Lol! Failure! Why are they even bothering!" because it didn't sell anywhere near to PlayStation. In the Console wars, it's #1 or nothing. |
I feel like this site, as well as other sales sites become a part of the blame for that mentality factor. Gamers weren't always this way. I remember growing up during the 90's to 00's and not one person in my multi friend groups (I moved from circle to circle a lot during my youth) talked on and on about sales and what system will flop, because back then we all just talked about gaming and what was coming out/what people had in their libraries.
Today it's different. Gamers have been trained to focus on chart data like a C-suite hawk, from the pitfalls to the greed factors, all the way to profit margins and revenue streams, and really, none of us should be paying much attention to that, because that's not really gaming, that's just business. So now that people focus on just the business side, they end up using that as a means to cause arguments/incite warring, when it really doesn't need to exist in the first place, because again, charts and revenue streams are not games.
Like just imagine a LotR fan, who goes on and on and on about LotR merch sales, and talks less about the games, the books, the stories. It'd sound so dull and so lifeless if that's all they focused on, and that's the impression I get from warriors on the net who just feel they 100% have to compare the sales of one object to another to determine success, when really, success is not always guaranteed in life, nor have we cracked some absolute measurement/formula to achieve it.
The other issue is like I said before in my previous post; warriors tend to use the past to compare the present, in that these new handhelds all have to magically be compared to just the Switch, and if they don't measure up in sales/1st party, it's an auto "failure". Valve is one such company that doesn't operate anywhere on the same level as Nintendo, nor do they follow any of Nintendo's philosophies, and yet they were able to make a handheld device with their own OS and still be happy with it's sales.