When you think DVD.  Do you think Toshiba, When you thin CD... do you think.. I don't even know.  Floppy disc drives?  Anyone.

Did a bunch of people buy into HD-DVD because it was from the people who made DVD? 

Actually, now that you mention it, the general view was that HDDVD did come from the same people who made DVD. Nobody really knew who was behind it. They just thought the two formats were related. There are many many cases in which people bought hddvds for their regular dvd player.

While the Playstation 2's success had a lot to do with the Playstation 1's success... near it's release Dreamcast sales had trouble because of PS2 anticipation.   The reason the Playstation 3 has done as well as it has is the Playstation 2.  Had Nintendo made the PS3, it would of sold worse, no doubt.

The Playstation 3's general failure in the market will carry over to the PS4... at least, initially... if the effect is significant it will carry on to PS5 as well.

We don't knw to what extent that failure is though.. PS3 sales this holiday season, starting september are roughly 50% higher than last year, while every other console is down yoy. We may see a huge rally. I'm no trying to be optimistic here, I'm just saying 'let's not call the game in the 5th inning'.

Just how N64's failure carried on to Gamecube, and would of carried on to Wii had the Wii been more conventional.

And how SNES failure carried on to the N64? No, it is not a single reason for this trend. It is the combination of brand loyalty, perception, and the console itself. Each console has its own chance to succeed. Consoles that have failed in the past were not apt for the market. That's like saying PS2 was successful because of PS1. That's ignorant, and its completely undermining a great console and strategy. Why was PS1 so successful? It's not all about brand. Brand is really strong and influential, but its not everything.

Ture, though to be fair... a bit of that failure did still carry over to the Wii.

I know before it released I thought the Wii was stupid.

I thought it was going to be another virtual boy and that Nintendo had lost it for good.

Heck, the reason I found VGchartz is because I was so surprised such a stupid sounding system could be beating PS3 and catching up to the 360 so fast.

Had, it not been for all the good word of mouth and stories of it's success, i'd of been surprised had i bought one.

Up till then I was waiting for the PS3 to drop in price.

Maxwell's argument has some erroneous, simplistic assumptions -- namely he's ignoring the fact that Sony makes about $9 in royalties off each BD drive produced (which is $270M for PS3 drives alone) which are reported in another division as revenue, and that money is spent by the game division, in purchasing BD drives from 3rd parties (which is part of the reported expenses), and that the cost-of-goods for all of Sony's software is reported as losses in the games division, and as gains in the disc manufacturing division (again, tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars, in this gen alone).

Still, he's fundamentally correct in his base assumption -- the same things I mention above were true during the "PS2 era" (except DVD royalties for Sony are far lesser per unit), and thus the PS2 was actually much more profitable than it appears from reading the games division reports directly, and the PS3 is not as profitable thusfar... at least not directly.  You might put forth that BD royalties will eventually sum to billions of USD for Sony alone (i.e. not inclusive of the rest of the BDA), during the format's lifetime.

The Wii is just plain a cash cow for Nintendo -- they have created a no-lose scenario for themselves, by creating hardware which is cheap enough for consumers to afford, and yet profitable enough for Nintendo to rake in money from hardware alone.  On top of that, the plethora of cheap software available for the platform ensures its continued existance, and although the profits are spread too thinly amongst 3rd parties to make them happy, Nintendo sees money from every single title licensed for their hardware -- DS and Wii alike.  Much like Apple's iStore, actually...

Also, it should be noted, that while you think Blu-Ray will eventually vindicate Sony... there are a LOT of hurdles in the way. More then you'd think.

Blu-ray is STILL well behind it's predicted targets in 2007... and the loss of China is a HUGE loss. CBHD could actually become the leading world wide format leader... just from China.

There are additional worries that China may export the format to other poorer nations. Which, said nations may gladly accept, sick of being poorer yet still paying more on a per unit basis.

CBHD is scary because Toshiba just sold them the HD-DVD technology for an incremental fee. They don't even pay royalties per disc.

It really was a sly move by Toshiba.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10303224-1.html

The SNES success actually did carry over leading to the N64, the problems with the N64, slightly overrode it though.

Once again.  Had Nintendo made the PS1, and Sony the N64.  The gap in numbers would of been greater.

Brand isn't EVERYTHING, but as you yourself stated it is SOMETHING.

Here is another issue though.  Which do you think hurt more?  N64's impact on the Gamecube, or Betamax's impact on Blu-ray.

I'm guessing most people know that the Nintendo 64 and Nintendo Gamecube were made by Nintendo... i'm guessing most people do not know that Betamax was made by Sony.

I'm not even sure most people know that Sony is the lead IP owner in blu-ray.

I really don't care to know all the details. BR will be the standard. That's all I care to know.

That is the trend and the current and future market.

CBHD is a complete joke. It is yet another last stand by the DVD Forum to block BR. Revenue on movies in America is roughly 4 times higher here than the same movie in china on cbhd. CBHD is only viable in poor countries and will never takeover over here, the format war is done, it's been done. CBHD has Warner and Universal and Nat Geo as far as Hollywood goes. But of course, Universal, just before the death of HDDVD, was the ONLY studio supporting HDDVD, everyone else had pulled out.

The push for CBHD by a vocal minority only contributes to market confusion and will raise prices. Isn't it painfully obvious that people are saying "the format war is back on"? They've said it for so many formats already, CBHD is simply the next format in line. It simply isn't feasible to contest BR, when you're talking a difference of 10,000 western titles compared to a few hundred, and a difference in revenue of 15-20$.

I agree, the format war's pretty much settled (at least in the west and Japan/Korea), but to say CBHD's only viable in "poor countries" is bit off the mark.  China's the richest country in the world, by a gigantic margin, and they've managed to weather the global recession better than anyone (Communism can save Capitalism, who knew?).  They also have a huge fucking audience alone, not to mention other fast emerging economies that the format's targeting (India, Brazil, etc)... it's entirely possible (and even probable) that globally, CBHD will manage a higher total userbase than BD.  Not that it matters much to us, the market will still break down in BD's favor in any nations likely to influence our tastes.

Yes, sorry, my frustration over 4 year old arguments got the better of me. What I meant about "poorer countries" was that there is a huge market that cannot yet afford BR. In that case, supporting cbhd is a smart business investment as long as your studio has something valuable to offer. However, CBHD will never challenge BR in NA,Europe,Japan.

EDIT: haha, I notice you editted your post to include a lot of "fucking" lol.