| arsenicazure said: the weakest hardware is the stongest.. didnt apply last gen with the DC :) or the saturn before that.. :) although some ppl will argue otherwise... |
It's not about the weakest hardware winning. The Genesis didn't win either, neither did the 3DO.
It's that the strongest hardware never wins. Just look at the Neo Geo for instance, which came out the same year as the SNES. The SNES wasn't the most powerful contrary to what many believe.
Above the Wii, it's arguable which console is the most powerful, so that leaves the Wii as the only clear weaker console to keep the tradition. But keeping aside the disagreements and looking only at what is generally accepted from least powerful to most powerful we have the exact market positions we should expect. In order of computing power, from what we know in the status quo of things the PS3 is accepted to be the most powerful, and sure enough it's coming out last place. Secondly the 360 is the most powerful, therefore it is second place and the least powerful, the Wii, is the leader.
The reason for that is probably related to what gaming is really about, which isn't graphics. It's not some rule, or something that has to be the case. It's not so much the norm that the most powerful console loses, but it is a tendency to have the companies behind those powerful consoles focus too much on graphics and enthusiast hype, while losing the real customer that wants gameplay. Whereas companies supporting less powerful systems have to give gameplay and the user a little extra attention to win. And then they do win, every time so far.
