WAG: Best selling next generation console.

[BoardBonobo]

Well, and I thought Nintendo was pushing things by holding us back a generation - you want to take it further and make hardware go backwards.

Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to continue forward

Seriously though give me a box that is cheap, low powered, plays games, and is from a big name brand. Allow it to use cloud gaming if required (the skies the limit, a game so amazing it NEEDS to be played from the cloud(tm))

 

[kagemaru]

Or ignore it completely and become a success in South America and Asia. The developing nations may end up being where next gen is won, which is where a cheap Android player or something might come out on top.

Lots of variables!

I definitely don't agree with ignoring it completely, but you're right, there are many variables which is why "predicting" how things go between them two is rather pointless right now.

 

[fearsomepirate]

IMO if Sony can get the great marketing back from the PS1 and PS2 days, they can win America over again. Sadly I think it's that easy for them in the states.

I actually think the Playstation's success was a bit of a "perfect storm" situation again. Book-length treatises can and have been written about the many, many reasons the N64 and Saturn were failed products. (Short version: There's nothing Sega didn't do wrong with Saturn, and Nintendo made a mix of great and terrible decisions.) The differences between the strategies of Sony and MS are marginal at this point. They've both corrected their earlier mistakes and converged on more or less doing the same thing. So I'm expecting really close performance again.

Now Nintendo, they have the most challenging hurdles next gen IMO. A big part of their market this gen, hate to say it but the casual group, are the least likely to upgrade for the sake of more performance or added features. They jumped on the Wii for a reason and if they cared for more features or better graphics, they may have picked up a PS3+Move or 360+Kinect by now.

Agreed. Nintendo's big problem right now is software. Wii Sports/Resort, Wii Fit/Plus, Mario Kart, and NSMB were record-breaking hits for them. But they haven't really delivered anything the market got excited about in a long time. Wii Music bombed. Wii Party bombed. I don't think Nintendo Land is going to do well at all (if Nintendo Nostalgia was what the ~90m Wii owners wanted, GC wouldn't have petered out at 21m sales), and phoning in a 2D Mario game works when you haven't published one in 18 years, but not when the latest one is fresh in everyone's memory. A lot of their products are motivated by developer narcissism these days, and vanity projects just don't deliver mass-market sales.

 

[kagemaru]

I actually think the Playstation's success was a bit of a "perfect storm" situation again. Book-length treatises can and have been written about the many, many reasons the N64 and Saturn were failed products. (Short version: There's nothing Sega didn't do wrong with Saturn, and Nintendo made a mix of great and terrible decisions.) The differences between the strategies of Sony and MS are marginal at this point. They've both corrected their earlier mistakes and converged on more or less doing the same thing. So I'm expecting really close performance again.

While I agree that the PSone and especially PS2 were a perfect storm for Sony, I can't agree at all that Sega didn't do wrong with the Saturn. Both Nintendo and Sega underestimated Sony with the PSone and we see how that went.

Sega did a horrible job evaluating where the industry was headed, even though they were leading in this direction in the arcade market. They tried to fix this mistake, but it resulted in an overly-complex and expensive system that hurt support from both the development community and consumer. Their surprise launch was also a disaster on many levels, damaging relationships with retailers, leaving publishers/developer short on time or missing the launch, and raising questions with consumers. There isn't enough character space in a post to describe how Sega screwed the pooch with the Saturn. And this is coming from someone who loved the Saturn.

Nintendo was late to the race, stubbornly stuck with an outdated cartridge set up, and were their typical self with 3rd party relations.

Meanwhile Sony steps in with a well balanced system (for the time), good tools (comparatively) which was unheard of at the time (at least from what I've been told), a great price point, a lot of hype, and great marketing.

Agreed. Nintendo's big problem right now is software. Wii Sports/Resort, Wii Fit/Plus, Mario Kart, and NSMB were record-breaking hits for them. But they haven't really delivered anything the market got excited about in a long time. Wii Music bombed. Wii Party bombed. I don't think Nintendo Land is going to do well at all (if Nintendo Nostalgia was what the ~90m Wii owners wanted, GC wouldn't have petered out at 21m sales), and phoning in a 2D Mario game works when you haven't published one in 18 years, but not when the latest one is fresh in everyone's memory. A lot of their products are motivated by developer narcissism these days, and vanity projects just don't deliver mass-market sales.

Can't agree with this, software is Nintendo's key strength. True, things may be lacking now with the Wii-U, but those types of games take time. If it wasn't for Nintendo's collection of valuable IPs, they would be dead in the water when other options are available.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

While I agree that the PSone and especially PS2 were a perfect storm for Sony, I can't agree at all that Sega didn't do wrong with the Saturn.

Fearsome's saying exactly the opposite - Sega did every single thing wrong.

 

[kagemaru]

Fearsome's saying exactly the opposite - Sega did every single thing wrong.

Oops, I read that completely wrong, sorry. =(

 

[Sonic]

Oops, I read that completely wrong, sorry. =(

Dude that's fine. I did at first as well until I read over it again.

And yes! PS1 was a perfect storm for Sony, but also they executed upon that perfect storm excellently and took over the market. They had awesome marketing and awesome dev relations. 3D was new and exciting and PS1 did it better than what the very limited saw of the Saturn. Really no comparison. Sony was best in terms of hardware, marketing, developer relations, and general support for the system.

SEGA did much wrong with the Saturn. One of the biggest is a failure of not having a flagship title for the console, with the company's mascot, early on in the console's life cycle. Sonic X-treme went nowhere and would have sucked. Instead in the early release we got Bug!, which while not being horrible isn't exactly a system seller. Another failure was the design of the hardware itself, yech. Really good memories from those times, and Saturn is still in my top 5 favorite systems, but the company just executed in a piss poor manner. It was too late by the time DC launched I guess. Our brand image was in the gutter and the PS2 was looming on the horizon. They should have held out six more months just to see if they could increase sales at all. But nope, now the company is crap.

And the PS2 was also a perfect storm. The internet was widely adopted at the time so that may have helped the hype all that much more. They had a hard to develop for system, compared to DC, but that didn't matter as the market devoured the machine. Is it the most successful console ever in terms of total number of units sold? And once it established itself as the market leader it left little room for anything else. Nintendo was successful with Gamecube in terms of profits but that's that. Xbox was MS's brute force push into the living room. But PS2 just continued to dominate, and since that's what everyone else had it became the standard console and had the most exclusives.

And with PS3, well I thought Sony would continue to dominate with it. I hadn't realized how complacent they had become with their #1 position and to think it didn't have much to worry about. I bet they're still kicking themselves in the ass for having a $600 launch price.

I don't know what to expect for the future honestly. With the current generation it is funny how Nintendo ballooned up early on and has now sort of fizzled out while the 360 continues to grow and make nice profits for MS. It's hard to say who really won, os is winning this gen as it is Nintendo early on and MS later. I could see Sony being #1 again, but they would have to execute flawlessly. But MS is not Nintendo and they have no fear of competing for supremacy of the market. Wii U could end up being a huge hit like Wii was, or it could bomb. Will wonder if MS or Sony can get the hype machine rolling and kill some of the initial pizazz Nintendo has. Anything could happen.

 

[rekator]

Personally I don't want One Winner, an equivalent part for all actors with a slightly headed (10% PDM more) is the better situation for us (customers), strong competition on price, games, services and innovations. But who?
Sony are not a good leader they have tendencies to go to proprietary formats and thinking they can made all they want and don't learn from their mistakes (look at Vita).
Nintendo… they're lived in their Nintendo Space so out of the equation and they're on a different market (there always new kids to play Mario… ).
MS, they're bette when there strongs challengers and they're not in strong position… so may be the better candidate for a slight leader…

But I'm really hope a New Player arrived…*Sony and MS are already to strong and Big editors have easily negotiated (No prices war on games) with both so not a good thing for customers… Market need to be shake. Game market is sclerosed.

 

[Arwin]

There was extremely little proprietary about the Playstation 3 though compared to everything else ... Default BlueTooth support (for headsets, keyboards, etc.), default USB stuff, hook up any type of storage through SD (in the initial models) or USB (hook up any keyboard, mouse, etc.), HDMI, and Optical outs, BluRay (but still plays back CD and DVD as well), DNLA support, swap in your own standard HDD, etc.

As for the Vita, they did their best to protect the platform from piracy, and yes, they went with a custom Memory Stick format and power connector. I think they kind of had to for this platform, because if it was pirated quickly again, they might blow their chance of ever having a viable portable software platform again. The Vita is not necessarily an indication that they have changed their ways as a company altogether in thise case. I think the memory card thing was probably a tough decision, and I think that if they feel they can get it be safe enough, they may go back to SD in a future revision.

In short, the Vita is very much the result of Sony learning from their mistakes with the PSP. And the Playstation 3 is very much one of the most 'open standard' platforms out there? They only got rid of Linux because it was starting to become a security weakness.

Sure, everything may change next gen, but it wouldn't necessarily be 'because they don't learn'. Wanna bet, for instance, that the next gen machine won't launch at $599?

 

[fearsomepirate]

Can't agree with this, software is Nintendo's key strength...If it wasn't for Nintendo's collection of valuable IPs, they would be dead in the water when other options are available.

Nintendo's valuable IPs are only enough to get them to Gamecube/N64 levels of success. They need to break out of that niche to hit 50+m units, which is what Wii Sports and Wii Fit did. But they haven't been doing well with that lately, which is what they need to be able go beyond their past-gen sales.

 

[wco81]

Some stock analyst type was saying Nintento will primarily be a software company in 5 years, whether they realize it or not.

Better question to ask about the next gen is if they will move as many HW and SW units as this generation.

Back before this generation launched, publishers were crowing about how they were going to raise the price of games from $50 to $60.

Wonder if they will be pushing for price increases now.

 

[ERP]

I don't know about price increases, but if you just count PS3/360 software sales now they are higher than at any point during the PS2/Xbox era.
Most of the recent sales decline is in the mobile space mostly DS.
It's hard to even speculate on who'll win when you don't even know how they will position the consoles.
If they are both pure game machines, the first 12 months software lineup will have a big effect, I think Sony has an edge there.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Or ignore it completely and become a success in South America and Asia. The developing nations may end up being where next gen is won, which is where a cheap Android player or something might come out on top.

Lots of variables!

I'd almost go with this one but not necessarily for the reasons stated here. But looking at it from the outside (and reading European news sites), it appears that many countries in Europe are teetering on economic collapse as they attempt to find ways to pay for government programs that can no longer be sustained.

If those economies do completely collapse there could be a potentially damaging domino effect throughout the EU due to all the money that has been lent to those countries. That in turn could trigger a recession that makes the collapse in 2008 appear like a mere bump in the road.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily make it easier for the Asian countries as they not only depend greatly on the US buying their products or contracting for manufacturing but on Europe as well.

Either way, Sony may have a hard time of it with some of the Sony bastions in Europe having a rough time of it. Spain and Portugal, for example. France has a lot of money tied up in Spain and Italy so how they do will determine how France goes. Britain is relatively stable but tied to a fragile Ireland with a lot of money lent there. So there's a potential there for MS to take a hit as well. Germany is still in great shape and it remains to be seen just how much they will commit to propping up the rest of Europe.

Either way Sony has far more to lose than Microsoft if things were to go downhill for the EU. Japan's markets are being continuously rocked this year due to concerns over EU member states.

But then is South America really where there will be potential for a lot of growth? That's a hard one. Most countries there are still teetering between being a second world or third world country. China has the most potential, but with so much of their fortunes being tied to the performance of the western economic powers, it's hard to determine just how they will weather the storm.

The one big thing that China has going for it, unlike say Japan, is that their government hasn't commited itself to expensive and unsustainable social policies and is still very much business friendly rather than being antagonistic to business. Even with all the potential governmental controls, which can be sidestepped with a well placed bribe.

Regards,
SB

 

[joker454]

I've been thinking about this and I've come to the decision that al I want from my next console purchase is a gaming console. One that plays games and just games.

I think I've changed somewhat, if the new Xbox console just played games and only played custom games locked to that platform then I may just pass on next gen entirely. I want to be able to buy a game from the Microsoft app store and have it work on my pc, laptop, tablet, and console, and on the occaisional case phone when possible for smaller games. I'm tired of buying apps that only work here, other apps that only work there, that just seems so old school. They've already got what I need to where apps will work on my pc, laptop and upcoming tablet I'll be buying so that's cool, they just need to add console to that mix and phone when possible. If they do that then I'll buy an Xbox 720. If not then I may just pass. The reality for me is there is already so much gaming entertainment on pc/laptop/tablet that I can't catch up to, pc gaming will always look better, and that I can play my same games on the go on my future tablet is just such a plus to me, all the same apps, achivements, etc, to where I don't think adding a console that lives on an isolated island makes sense to me anymore. I'll have to see what Microsoft does, if they go x86 on their next console that would make getting the same app working across everything certainly possible.

 

[liolio]

I wonder about why some voted as they did. I'm not ready to take that leap of faith, too much doubt.
Still I would safely discard Nintendo this time around.

Between Sony and MSFT, my take is that MSFT has now won North America and it's not a little win.
So when it comes to next-gen both actors won't be in the situation they were in 2005/2006.

In North America, Sony will no longer have some mind share advantage.
Actually in Europe MSFT started from even lower than in NA, there has been the RroD incident, still they won the UK and it seems that overall they are close to a tie.
Sony won't have the BRD advantage or any advantage in the feature sets of the machine.
Actually depending on MSFT policies about Kinect (stad or not) and what kind of OS they provide for their system, it will be the contrary.
Sony is not in a financial situation to subsidize as much as MSFT if the later is in a situation id it needs to.

Overall, I've a tough time seeing how Sony is to come on top on that one without making some tough arbitration.

To me it comes down to provide a cheap core system and hope that MSFT is somehow stuck in his multiple interests: if kinect2 is standard, if they want some form of win8rt on the system, they want leading gaming poerformances because of their multiple agenda it will comes at a price.
MSFT can subsidize heavily but there is a limit to that. After a 8 years generation, the system could prove too costly (at launch) for quiet some people.

That's imo could be the salvation for Sony IF they comes with cheap core system. In any case I think that Sony should be aiming lower than MSFT and aim at an affordable price for release.
They are likely to be at features disadvantage, a mind share disadvantage in US, barely above parity in EU. Low price and free PSN could gain them a healthy user base pretty quickly.

I expect them them to go head to head with MSFT and to be left with anothe, close to deadly, hole into the wallet...

I'll vote when I see the price of the systems in presence. For now my inclination is toward MSFT.

 

[LXFBN]

PS4, MS will pay for abandoning the core gamer.

 

[liolio]

PS4, MS will pay for abandoning the core gamer.

How do you know sony or msft decision on the matter?
And what are core gamers? Real hardcore gamers for anything but a hand few of exclusives aside might have moved to Pc a while ago.
I would say a the real core are the few that bought the systems early at full price.

Edit posted quickly at job from a phone that post turned out dreadful. Awful grammar, words omissions, and more.

 

[Rangers]

Playstation making a comeback, now almost caught up to Xbox.

 

[Rangers]

PS4, MS will pay for abandoning the core gamer.

By who? Unless Valve actually gets a console box out for 400 or less, they have nowhere to go.

Besides, Sony and MS haven't abandoned anybody imo. Merely trying to broaden their market.

Certainly, they could do things to drastically piss me off in service of pursuing non-core gamers (mostly, weaksauce hardware), but they havent yet.

At the end of the day I see core gaming increasingly a third party affair. Sony and MS could both end first party altogether and I dont think it would have much affect. I'd still buy core consoles for EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc,. So MS, Sony make the boxes, go after the broader market with entertainment, Kinect, etc third parties service the core. Not saying it would be ideal but as a theoretical I think it illustrates the point.

 

[AlphaWolf]

I think he was saying the ps4 will win the next gen because MS is abandoning core gamers.

However, the act of including casuals to their gaming platform has in no way abandoned core gamers. Xbox360 still appears to be the 'goto platform' for games like COD.