I was just thinking the other day, then saw this thread about Sony losing money. Q: what do nintendo, sony and Sega have in common? A: a false sense of security, old fashioned thinking in the marketplace, a false sense of consumer loyalty so if we look at all three companies, they share common traits: 1. all were come from nowhere surprises. --a) the nes was launched after the market was "dead" --b) the genesis "came out of nowhere" to capture a demographic no one realized existed (teens, older kids) --c) sony came out of a dead deal with nintendo and surprised everyone by dominating the market 2. they all built epic followings which fell apart at some point --a) people realized that nintendo had first party games, but sony had bigger, epic games with cutscenes, CD tech etc --b) people played the heck out of the sega sports titles, until the psx launched and sega fragmented their market to bits and pieces --c) people bought psx and ps2 for exclusives, until all of a sudden the same games appeared on microsoft's consoles, often times with better features and online play. 3. they rely on the core market too much --a) people bought nintendo systems for exclusives, until they realized it isnt about first party games ALL the time. --b) people bought sega systems for exclusives, until they realized it isnt about first party games ALL the time. --c) people bought sony systems for exclusives, until they realized it isnt about first party games ALL the time. 4. The economy makes an initial investment with a high price point to enter prohibitive to most consumers. So far nintendo seems to understand that. Would another $600 playstation system do as well? Hmm. just thinking.
Nothing you said really seems to be entirely true. Just bits and pieces. You could definitely launch another $600 Playstation if you had the software, network, and games to back it up. But I think we all know they don't have that. And your "Genesis came out of no where to capture a demographic no one knew existed" is totally wrong. Genesis came out when the SNES was still in development and up against the inferior NES. Genesis marketed itself as being "edgey" or "cool" to that demographic and painted Nintendo as uncool/for little kids, etc. It probably helped that Mortal Kombat on Sega was not censored if you had the Blood Code while SNES was censored no way around it. Anyway, I'm sure a new Playstation and a new Xbox will be on the way. However since both PS3 and 360 still have considerable life left in them, I wouldn't expect either company to be in a rush. Plus I don't think either are very worried about the WiiU.
There is a world out there apart from America... The Nintendo Famicom launched in 1983 and it was technically better then any other console on the market at that time, it had a grand total of 14 games in the first year which included Donkey Kong, in the first year it managed to capture around 80% of the console market. The NES in the UK and parts of Europe never really dominated and was in a poor second place to the Sega Master System. The Megadrive sold bugger all in Japan, even trailing behind the NEC PC Engine for most of it's life. In a lot of europe it still managed to jump to the top and stay there. Sony in Japan were well know as they had supported the MSX until the near end, Sony had written and published software in Japan and elsewhere. The MSX had dominated the home computer market in Japan with Sony alone selling over 1.25m MSX machines, Sharp by contrast has sold just over 250,000 X680x0 machines... Nintendo could be argued have always had a massive following in Japan, although the N64 and Gamecube did not sell in numbers better then the Playstation or Playstation 2, the first party games sold well enough that Nintendo probably did not care too much. Sega got out of the Megadrive/Genesis market far too soon, in Europe and America the Megadrive was effectively killed off when the Saturn launched even though the games had still been selling in reasonable numbers. The Xbox 360 despite the exclusive games, still sells like crap in Japan even compared to the Wii and PS3, the 3DS in 18 months had outsold the Xbox 360 in Japan. Like Sega they have their niche market that gives them a following. Microsoft have a very low licence rate in Japan, one reason why Japanese companies like Cave do support the Xbox 360. The best selling games on the Playstation machine have always been third party...
I thought it would be that they all make games, though the lack of Microsoft on that list would seem that Microsoft is in the clear as Jamtex points out the XBOX brand (original and 360) hasnt been as succesful in Japan as it has been elsewhere in the world. Every company has taken risks to get where it is popular or not though the only major company that took a hit on your list was Sega. What about Atari, anyone involved in the 3do, Neo Geo etc. I think it still comes down to the games no one really cares if they are pretty or not (though it helps) it needs to have playability Minecraft and Angry Birds proves this.
Sony is going down out of its own stupidity, it hasnt released a good gizmo in ages and the PS3 seems put together by retarded monkeys Nintendo has been riding the gravy train since pokemon, people just bought their shit and now they are paying the price of letting their own quality go down SEGA was sony times 10: those like kallinske who knew what was wrong and what to do had no power at all, the company was a mess and there was no clear strategy. The 32X was a good idea, a nextgen console that used an existing popular console and was way cheaper than anything else on the market, but was painfully unsupported. The Saturn was 1993s nextgen console, by 1995 it was already obsolete, so SOJ added some girth and what we got was stillborn hardware
