I think “loyalty” is too strong of a term when it comes to the console market. When I think of loyalists I think of a crowd who will remain loyal to a brand even when it’s obvious to everyone else that that brand no longer offers the performance, reliability, features or content advantages it held in the past.
Are their brand loyalists? Of course, but they don’t consist of the bulk of the console market.
The success of PS1, 360, NES, Genesis and Wii weren’t driven by loyalists. And loyalists didn’t prevent the N64, XB1, PS3, WiiU or Saturn from losing a significant portion of market share held by their predecessors.
Does a large swath of the market hold an an affinity for console brands? Yep. Previous market leaders create a ton of mindshare for the next gen brethren. All it takes is for the manufacturers to put out a competent and competitive product at a reasonable price. The SNES and PS2 benefited from that reality and the PS5 is next in line to enjoy such benefit.
The question is whether the next Xbox can benefit off the good will created by the 360/XB and turn things around like the PS4 and the Wii.
Brand loyalty doesn't mean blind loyalty. I think some people may be getting hung up on that.
It just means that, for whatever reasons a person will prefer one brand over another. That runs anywhere from blind loyalty (I'll never buy anything except X brand if X brand is available) to all things being equal I'll pick X brand over other brands. In the middle will be varying levels of, I'll accept less quality/service/access/whatever or higher prices/more bugs/more repairs (compared to the competition) in order to stick with Brand X until it exceeds a certain personal threshold.
Some people might refer to it as brand preference, but it's basically the same thing.
If brand loyalty weren't a thing, consumers would always get the product with the better stats/quality/warranty/support/etc. Sort of like what I'm doing now with the Black Friday sales items on Amazon. I have no idea who most of these fly by nights brands are, so I'm just grabbing the cheapest item that appears to have the best quality (reviews).
From the Wikipedia entry for Brand Loyalty I found this apropos.
A critical factor of building brand loyalty is developing a connection or relationship between the consumer and the brand. When an emotional relationship is created between the consumer and the brand this leads to a strong bond and a competitive advantage for that particular brand. Loyalty consists of both attitudinal and behavioral components. Attitudinal loyalty relates to the customers willingness to purchase product or service from the brand at any reasonable cost. Behavioral loyalty is the re-purchasing. Both behavioral and attitudinal components are important. One example is that a consumer displays behavioral loyalty by buying Coke when there are few alternatives available and attitudinal loyalty when they will not buy an alternative brand when Coke is not available. The attitudinal component is psychological, this leads to the behavioural action of repeat purchase. It is the attitudinal loyalty that drives most loyalty behavior and ensures loyalty over time not just with one purchase. “Brand loyalty is desired by firms because retention of existing customers is less costly than obtaining new ones. Firms profit from having loyal customers”.
Enough people had attitudinal loyalty to PS3 that despite it costing more and offering less (less games, less multiplat quality, and less exclusives) for the first 1-2 years that it sold as well if not better than the X360 over that same period when launch aligned. Even in the US the PS3 sold as well or slightly better than the X360 launch aligned for about the first 6 months.
Data pulled from here (
https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Seventh_generation_of_video_games )
So the PS3 did as well as a console (X360) that had no competition while competing with that same console (X360) that had been doing relatively well for a year prior to the PS3 launch. Again, launch aligned.
Not surprising as there was a lot of brand awareness and loyalty for the PlayStation brand due to the performance of the PS1 and PS2. The relatively disastrous launch of the PS3 only tarnished that to a degree which lasted the entire generation for many former PS2 gamers (IE - PS3 was never going to match PS2, because they lost too many consumers due to the bad launch combined with good execution by the competition). Despite that there were more than enough consumers loyal to the brand that it was never in danger of getting cancelled (ala Sega consoles). The PS4 was quick to erase that however when XBO stumbled out of the gate (thus losing the loyalty of many X360 consumers).
Meanwhile X360 still had to overcome the either non-existent or even negative brand awareness and loyalty of the original Xbox. But with only one generation of brand loyalty building with the X360 and preceded with an at best lackluster generation WRT building brand loyalty, the relatively disastrous launch of the XBO almost saw Microsoft's console division following in the footsteps of Sega's console business.
Yes, there were still gamers loyal to the Xbox brand, but it almost wasn't enough. Just like there were still people loyal to the Sega console brand, but not enough to save it from going under. Sega consoles always had less brand loyalty than their competitors, even in it's Heyday compared to Nintendo and later PlayStation.
PlayStation 1 was an interesting case of, "How do you get people to switch loyalty from Nintendo?" Well, to start, you basically convince developers to develop exclusively for your platform and thus remove a reason for them to stay with the competitions console.
For example, the Final Fantasy brand moving to PlayStation exclusivity moved a lot of consumers over to the fledgling system. PlayStation 1's popularity exploded after FF7 released exclusively on it. By gaining exclusivity with so many developers that weren't formerly associated with your company, you can move a lot of people by making games that they formerly played on your competitors console unavailable on that console. Sorry folks you can no longer play these gaming brands you loved on a Nintendo console, you're going to have to play them on the PlayStation console now.
That's something I doubt we'll ever see replicated again.
Regards,
SB
), they all sell well and developers thus support all. Ports are simultaneously released and function almost equally on all platforms. This reduces differentiation, customer preference is somewhat more indifferent between platforms. This feeds with sales all platforms, and developers make games for all with less costs even if one platform is not a super seller.
Sales of consoles and games demonstrate a swing from PS2 to 360 to PS4. So where is the brand loyalty?