NanakiXI said:
I think it will be a really close second but none of us will know for sure.
I mean no one really expected the Wii to be the beast it is but we were all fooled.
Last gen I could have told you otherwise because almost everything was pretty predictable after the first few years. This gen is really anyone's guess. |
Can I say something?
I hear this mentioned a lot now. First of all, not everybody was fooled by the Wii. I knew exactly what it was gonna do, and so did many other people. Just the fact that we a leadership change doesn't mean the situation is all that different, we have now a former leader that is not only naturally insane, it is taken way too seriously by the established media and communities.
But that's it, nothing else is different. How about the PlayStation 1? The NES also made a fool of a lot of people, and many analysts were very excited about new consoles such as the entry of NEC into the business. Also consoles like the Atari Jaguar, Sega Genesis and Lynx made a big splash. If you had no information about the real numbers, and instead just listened to the hyperbole, you would have figured all these consoles were much bigger than they were. All were, at some point or another, declared to be a market stealer or a surprise victor, with no real basis other than perhaps wishful thinking. Sounds familiar?
This industry has a leadership exchange once in a while, does that mean this exchange will be constant? No. Every leadership has done just what the name implies, and with it much contribution to the medium as a whole which is the point. I can't even begin to tell how early we are in the Wii's timeline of that plan.
Just because you didn't see the Wii coming, doesn't mean a number of new consoles will take the lead sporadically in a short period. The feeling that everything is unpredictable is nothing new, it comes from the misreading of the videogame business. If you know what gaming is really about, and you know the history of gaming, this feeling that trends are impossible to predict becomes more diluted. It is why I could see from a distance Nintendo was destined to take over the market, and many others too.
I can tell you now that, unless something goes very strangely, from what I can see there is no real comeback for Sony soon. They continue to work in an old paradigm, that will award them a passionate number of customers that won't be giving them a position of leadership. Same goes for Microsoft for that matter. I personally see more paralells between this generation and the NES generation, but since a lot of people today aren't that familiar with that one let me just put it this way:
It's like the N64 taking the role of the PlayStation, and having the two 32 bit systems(PS& Saturn) take the rolw of the N64. Basically, having one PlayStation using certain values, and two N64 systems. It will take more research than that to grasp it, but that's one way to sum it up in a recognizable way. Of course the Xbox 360 and PS3 will have fanfare, of course they'll have an audience, but they're not leaders. The Wii is still new, analysts also didn't predict the rise of the PlayStation or the NES. Just because you didn't see the Wii doesn't mean there is no consistency to this industry. On the contrary, if you really look at the Wii and past generations, you'll find a tremendous ammount of consistency in Nintendo's rise, and continued leadersip for the time being. What you probably won't find is a consistency of incredible comebacks from old leaders who continue to sing to the old tune.
