The conventional wisdom within gaming forums ought to predict the future of the market, not lag months behind.
Right now, the collectively held opinion underlying most discussion is that "360 has the best games," that "PS3 is coming back due to brand, especially in Europe," and that "Wii is selling despite not having many good games."
Here's reality for you: The 360 has the worst lineup, the PS3 is selling due to a superior strategy from Sony, and Wii has one of the best lineups in history.
OMG! How can he say 360 has the worst lineup! Easy. Where's the major exclusive? Nope, it ain't Gears, and it ain't Halo. There's a little thing that happens when a game which performs a certain job is trumped by a game which performs it better. It loses all relevance. Since COD4 was proclaimed "better than Halo," Gears and Halo stopped factoring into console buying decisions. Sure, 360 has COD4, AC, GTA4, GHIII and Rock Band, but those are also on PS3. A game lineup is only as good as it's exclusives, and where's the awesome 360 lineup not also on PS3? Forza? GT trumps it. It's pretty much Mass Effect and Bioshock. PS3 has R&C, Uncharted, GT5P and MGS4. None of those exclusives have been trumped or worn out their welcome. How can anyone say 360 has the best lineup when PS3 has matched it stroke for stroke for 8 months, plus MGS4?
OMG! Sony had a disaster 2007! They were saved by desperate price cuts and the PS brand! Sorry. Sony was stupid in the development of PS3 hardware, leading to the ridiculous price and a long drought of games as devs learned the ropes, but from the start the exclusives they were developing and buying had more diverse targets. MS took the cliche of targetting the core first and working outward to the mass audience, and did okay for the first part, but tried to figure out the second part on the fly. Now PS3 has the momentum and a more diverse upcoming lineup. That ain't brand, it was planned.
OMG! Wii is full of casual-party-mini-non-game-shovelware! True. Also true: it has nine exclusive games which have sold at least 4.5M copies. Super Mario Galaxy is the best reviewed game ever, and along with Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Smash Bros. Brawl account for Nintendo's three biggest, most extravagant "core" projects ever. However, that trio is bested by Wii Sports and Wii Fit all but inventing two new game categories. And Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii, Brawl, Wii Fit and Mario and Sonic already are or have a good shot to become the best-selling 3D platformer, racer, fighter, fitness game and sports game, respectively, of all time... including multi-plats. Those five plus Wii Sports will remain relevant well into 2009 with long legs and nothing on the horizon to trump them. In short, history is going to smile on this lineup. (Looking deeper, oddball artsy games like Zack and Wiki, Boom Blox, No More Heroes and Lost Winds abound.)
Of course sales numbers confirm that in the real world, this IS the conventional wisdom. Way back before Galaxy and COD4, our CW had more truth to it. But now, the conventional wisdom on us is that we're blind and irrelevant.
"[Our former customers] are unable to find software which they WANT to play."
"The way to solve this problem lies in how to communicate what kind of games [they CAN play]."
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President. Only slightly paraphrased.
