The line is a bit outdated but Nintendo said selling the Wii to non gamers was like trying to sell makeup to men. Those non gamers are not buying the Wii at $400. Not to mention Wii's look and size was a selling point for them as well.

Microsoft honestly fucked up the whole balance of the console market.

If there was no XBox the GameCube I think would have been far better appreciated and given more room the breathe for what it is was ... significantly better hardware than the PS2 with some good exclusivity deals (Resident Evil 4! MGS Twin Snakes, etc. etc.) and would have sold more like 35-40 million units.

But MS was worried that Playstation was going to control the living room somehow and none of that ever came to pass. People just use their Playstation to play games on and maybe watch Netflix on and that's it. It was no threat to Windows at all. Instead Microsoft was paying no attention to Apple who actually created the next line of OS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod) and then Google was even faster to the punch with Android and MS effectively locked itself out of the mobile device market entirely. Massive fail.

In hindsight, both MS and Nintendo would've been far better off if MS agreed to stay out of the game hardware business but agreed to stake Nintendo's hardware as a hedge against Sony. So Halo is available for GameCube + PC and they bring other console exclusives to the GameCube while having them on PC too. And they help Nintendo set up an online network since that was obviously out of their wheelhouse. Stuff like that.

They accomplished very little with the XBox brand other than waste a shit ton of money, it's 25 years in and really they're no closer to beating Sony than they were 25 years ago. 

Some what agree as it was MS who forced HD because they were swept aside easily by PS2 and GC was actually starting to outsell Xbox in the latter years despite it's droughts, HD wouldn't have happened until possibly Gen 8 otherwise, this is why costs in gaming sharply rose rather than the usual organic increase of costs.

Problem MS had is that they weren't sure of what identity they wanted for their brand they just wanted Playstation's position but that position was obtained with an identity Sony had built, this really played into the image of MS not really being trend setters in anything they were involved in but more or less ending up as the one chasing the ship after it's left the dock.

This is actually not always true... And is sadly always that binary answer.

Easier to develop-for hardware means lower development costs.
Power is actually irrelevant to that.

Lighting can be a very good example.

Before we had the hardware horsepower, we couldn't run dynamic lighting in games, so artists had to constantly go back and "iterate" their lighting into light-maps or bake those details into the texture work, so they would compute that offline which would take hours, days or even weeks, which may need to be done multiple times to get an intended result... Which can drive up development time by orders of magnitude.

Now it's done all in real time.

I wouldn't say the PS5 is "modern" it has been on the market for 62 months now.
It's actually nearing the end of it's life as Sony's primary platform focus.

I think what plays in Nintendo's favor this time around, is that the current RAM and NAND shortages/price rises which I stated would happen early last year is likely going to prolong the Playstation 5/Xbox Series X current console generation by a few years, which will be a massive bonus for Switch 2 ports.

Switch 2 has hardware feature parity which is more important for porting efforts.

It's not the best time to stagnate when RT still runs parallel to older lighting methods. We're still in the transition phase where real time lighting already helps development, yet developers still need to make baked lighting and reflections for consoles and older gpu's. 

But on the other hand, engines get more time to mature and do the heavy lifting more and more.

And indeed, PS5 and Switch 2 price will go up this year, no doubt. Not as much though as a new GPU :/


I think people will stick to what they have and publishers will be fine supporting existing hardware. Most of the world is not ready for streaming games, even if it was the only option. Instead a flourishing second hand PC parts market might arise. Game stores might actually survive a bit longer on second hand console sales going up.

A break in the graphics race might not be a bad thing. Heck with money saved on not upgrading, more money for games ;)

(I think I'm getting my threads crossed, part of the reply is for the GPU prices thread oops)

I wasn't even talking about RT lighting, but dynamic methods which predate that.

You can have real-time lighting without RT.

Yeah true, Descent in 1995 already had some real time lighting shooting flares down tunnels. Looked awesome.

Anyway, everyone can opt out of the graphics arms race now... Nintendo is sitting in the sweet spot again with Switch 2, depending on how well they can manage the rising prices :/

The Switch 1 was different though, they learnt from the software shortages during WiiU generation by converging all to one device.
We discussed it a bit here: https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/249208/switch-1-to-switch-2-transition/

I also saw this during the launch period, the Nintendo price hikes seem like a deliberate red ocean strategy. They are effectively squeezing out the competition's next-gen consoles by pushing them into a premium corner burdened by high AAA development costs and a potentially smaller audience. This strategic move leaves their rivals with limited choices: either increase their own prices or attempt a market disruption with a cheaper alternative, a base already secured by the Switch Lite. [source]

Great quote! I would add the disclaimer that Blue Ocean Strategy and disruptive innovation are not the same thing. Unfortunately, these strategies often get mixed up by gaming journalists because Nintendo had a blue ocean product (DS) and a disruptive product (Wii) in one generation. A blue ocean product looks to broaden the market without getting into direct competition with established competitors.

A disruptive product, well... disrupts the established market. That's exactly what's being described in the above quote: "pushing them into a premium corner with a potentially smaller audience" --> moving upmarket. 

This is exactly what the theory predicts. The theory also predicts that established companies (Sony in this case) will make a lot of money up until the point at which they are being disrupted. Upmarket competitors like the fact that they can focus on their most lucrative costumers (in Sony's case: hardcore gamers who will pay a lot of money for PS+ subscriptions, buy a lot of games, etc.) because it means they won't have to cater to the downmarket. 

This strategy works well up until a certain point, where suddenly the disruptive product is "good enough" for most existing customers in terms of old market values (in this case: Most hardcore games being released on a Nintendo platform in a good-enough technical state). At that point the rug is suddenly being pulled away from under the established company's feet.

If we look at the console market, we can see that Sony and Microsoft have sold their consoles on the premise of better technology for decades. But now we are at the point of diminishing returns: Price hikes for GPU and RAM, ever-harder-to-see graphical improvements in games, etc. It will be really difficult to make a PS6 enticing, if the price of the console skyrockets while the graphical improvements are minor and most people can't see the difference compared to a potential Switch 3 console. 

Yes Nintendo made the right choice.
It great to have 2 distinct corps Nintendo and Playstation to cater all type of gamers!
Best of both world you know what I'm saying!