There is an interesting article on Kotaku discussing the cat fight between Microsoft and Sony as they duke it out for second place. “Some console war,” quips blogger Brian Ashcraft.
But perhaps the most interesting commentary stemming from the article is the eighth comment down: “I’ve only bought a Wii,” says reader Balius. “The prohibitively high price of the PS3 (including upgrading my media center to high def to get some gain out of it), the high failure rate of the 360, and a general lack of games I’d personally want to buy on both systems has kept me from buying either of the competitors.
“It’s not that the Wii is so great, though it is fun as a social event, it’s that Sony and Microsoft have failed, in my opinion, this generation.”
Agree? Disagree?
Eons,
You make a good point. For the original comment to apply, you’d expect that while the Wii is selling the “best” it’s still not selling well. But in fact, it’s selling at a faster pace than even the PS2 did. The PS2 was previously the most successful console ever. So far, the Wii is more successful, regardless of the mistakes of the competition. Look at the xbox and cube. They made plenty of mistakes, but you didn’t hear people saying the PS2 won by default. It’s just silly nonsense. The PS2 won because that’s what the majority of people wanted at the time. Just like what we’re seeing now with the Wii.
I absolutely disagree: pick any console of a previous generation and compare it to any of the three current generation consoles. Be it hardware, games, or connectivity, all three of the current generation consoles easily out-perform the previous ones, and each year the games look better and better. They also play better, being that each year the new games refine the previous ones.
The problem is that, if you grew up with video games, you are probably burned out of them at this point. By now you already have a favorite genre, and have settled down to get immersed into one specific game that caters your specific taste. That doesn’t mean that everything else is crap!
Big production values sometimes get developers lost and a crappy game will come out now and then, but in general, the games produced right now are the best that have ever come out.
Don’t let your nostalgia-induced foggy memories make you lose sight of what these new games and consoles have to offer!
Oh, and Eons_past makes an excellent point: even if you take the selling numbers of the “worst” performer of this console generation, they are about to catch up with the best performer of previous generations! You can hardly call that “a failure”!
(Now, whether all these non-Nintendo companies will get a return on their investment is a WHOLE other issue…)