@rallydefault the ps4 was the only console for 3 years that didn’t screw things up on an epic level. Microsoft has the original xone debacle, and Nintendo did such a poor job with the wiiU you would have though they were intentionally sabotaging it.
This is correct, and it's why a balance in the competition between Microsoft and Sony is needed. If one of them gets the upper hand, then they'll do all sorts of anti-consumer things like banning cross play. The last generation was in my opinion the best one when it came to competition. You had Xbox 360 and PS3 neck in neck over the core gamer audience, and then Nintendo with their Wii bringing more people into gaming, making it a bigger and more profitable industry.
Ever since the first arcade machines hit there's been console wars. Companies vied to have their arcade cabinets in arcades around the globe instead of their competitors. Then Atari and it's competitors came out as home consoles that could play multiple different games. While the 90's had the console wars heat up with vicious attacks on the competitors in advertisements it had already been a fiercely competitive business field. Even the NES had it's competitors, although it handily beat them out pretty much everywhere due to better marketing and being a reliable system. And Home Computers have been part of that competition right from the start quietly saying "Sure you guys can play games, but look at the graphics and game design I can achieve that you can't."
It's good that you admit the PS4 sold 60 % more consoles in the same time span. Now hopefully you see that there's a lot more Nintendo needs to do to get back in the race.
1.6x isn't double and, again, your same article pointed out how the Switch outsold it in the period prior. As I said, they're trading blows in hardware sales and the PS4 isn't nearly dominating the market as much as you implied. In any case it's not a metric that matters to publishers as I explained in detail and with a chart in my previous post...
Nintendo are already in a good position after just a year. 25% market share in a 3 company market a year after being at 10% isn't bad. If you had a good case to make you wouldn't need to ignore this point. You'd attack it directly and not me personally
@Octane
The only way I can see the idea of console generations persisting is if these companies artificially remove BC. Which I think will only happen if they drop the optical drive. The days of massive architecture swings are over
@Octane
The only way I can see the idea of console generations persisting is if these companies artificially remove BC. Which I think will only happen if they drop the optical drive. The days of massive architecture swings are over
Yes, there has been a lot of talk about improving loading times in the next gen of consoles, and the optical drive is a huge bottleneck when it comes to that. BC could still be a thing on downloadable games and they could even offer an external optical drive as a peripheral. Regardless of what they chose, it's highly unlikely anyone will force you to re-buy Mega Man 9 a third time as it will run on any future game console.
@Agriculture That's why you have to install the games on PS4 and Xbox, it takes the optical drive out of the equation. Problem solved! Even Zelda had a mandatory install on Wii U.
@Octane Lol, true. For the last Spiderman I had to install 46GO on my PS4 before playing it. I don't get why those machines still have a disc driver. It's useless and increase the selling price.
@bitleman
Not really what "resting on your laurels" means. It's a separate discussion. If you're "resting on your laurels" you're happy with where you are and aren't bothering to improve your position. A console manufacturer could be accused of this whether they had 9% or 90% of the market captured. If anything I'd argue that Nintendo are most definitely not because the Switch is a pretty big gamble. If they were happy where they were with the Wii U they probably wouldn't have even bothered with a successor.
Also, here's a revised version of my chart from before. Portables have traditionally been a large part of the market. When you take this into account and zoom out a bit further? This is what publishers see.
It puts the current state of the market into a bit more perspective. It is a pretty volatile market. Console transitions happen relatively quickly, it doesn't take much for a company to go from top to bottom. The way things are currently looking it appears we're probably at the start of a new transition. Nintendo is in a good position to win out of this transaction though it wouldn't take much for Sony or some other player to take some of the slack as the "PS4" inevitably slides from its peak.
@Agriculture@Octane
By "removing the optical drive" I was hedging my bets. It'll either be download only OR cartridges. I'm not convinced the market is quite ready for download only and the tech isn't quite there for cartridges. But both are not too far from killing off discs for games. That transition will be the death of PS4 BC.
@FragRed It's not the same. Codes in a box are pointless. You can't re-download the game when the servers are down. You can always install a game from the disc though, you don't need an internet connection for that.
@skywake Or we're moving to a new disc format, maybe.
@Agriculture That's why you have to install the games on PS4 and Xbox, it takes the optical drive out of the equation. Problem solved! Even Zelda had a mandatory install on Wii U.
Yes, and the PS3 dual loaded by reading the disc and hdd into memory. SSDs and card games like the Switch has will probably eventually replace optical discs and HDDs since less moving parts is better and eventually also cheaper. Another thing to consider is Sonys next gen bluray which is said to hold 300 gb of data and read it much faster.
@Agriculture Maybe eventually, but discs are a still a lot cheaper than cards. I expect Sony to stick with discs for the foreseeable future, maybe just a higher capacity disc that is able to store more data. SSD vs HDD is the same story. I don't think they can offer 1-2TB of SSD at an affordable price. So they can either continue with HDD, or do like Nintendo and offer virtually no storage at all; here's 32GB, good luck!
@skywake Or we're moving to a new disc format, maybe.
Unlikely. They could maintain compatibility with the current BluRay type game discs and push it into the 100s of GB without changing format. More to the point despite the constant talk about the size of games even the biggest games aren't struggling with current disc capacity.
When there is a transition away from the current disc format it'll be for one of two reasons. For cost reductions of the hardware because a critical mass is digital making the optical drive redundant. Not unlike what has already happened for PC. Or it'll be for the higher performance and higher durability of cartridges. It won't be about capacity.
The long term trends aren't on the side of optical media for games. Movies on BluRay and music on CD/Vinyl will outlast games on discs.
You can reinstall a disc but you are missing key updates in all games from this generation (since Wii U). I do think that discs are still a very convenient storage format though and I am sure than the next Xbox will still use them. Not sure about PS5 because they haven't even clarified if it will be backwards compatible or not. Nintendo will do their own thing as usually, which can be good or bad, but they are the stingiest.
Nintendo will do their own thing as usually, which can be good or bad, but they are the stingiest.
Nothing stingy about Nintendo's approach to storage media. They've generally pushed for the least cost efficient storage media for the sake of performance/reliability. If you think the Switch has average battery life imagine what it would have had if it used discs. And for what advantage to the consumer? PSP sized BluRay style disks wouldn't have been any higher capacity than a Switch cartridge.
I have the Wii U version and I didn't have to install anything until the updates arrived. My Wii U only has the update, add-on (DLC) and save files. I don't think it was mandatory to install anything else otherwise I would have installed.
EDIT: If it required that it was disguised as "update" and I didn't realise.
Does it matter? I'm fairly sure that Microsoft did this as a sly way to try cutting out the 2nd hand game market after the original announcement of "always online, digital only games" took off like a solid lead balloon. And that was the announcement that had to be backpedaled and caused Microsoft to lose so much ground to Sony in the current gen console war. I know I moved from buying physical games to buying digital ones when I realized I had to fully install the game anyway. It was taking the same space up on my hard drive, so what was the point of having a physical copy? And if you're not buying physical copies of games, then you can't trade them in. Thus there's no 2nd hand market. Sony likely had a similar goal of cutting out the 2nd hand game market without being seen to do so.
I'm glad that Switch games don't have to fully install if you have them on disk. This makes me more likely to buy physical copies of games again.
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