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Ars Technica - Years after predicted “death,” game consoles are doing better than ever.
- Thread starter Deleted member 7207
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Just a heads up. VGChartz is inaccurate and is banned as a source here.
You are confusing consoles with handhelds. Nobody denies that the handheld market crashed and burned after the DS\PSP gen.
It's not a console war. PS4 deserves credit for saving consoles from the 2012 doom and gloom. If the PS4 came out and performed like the Wii U then who knows what the console market would look like today.
This is a bad take. The console market never needed saving. But both the PS4 and Xbox One sold very well (and continue to sell very well) in the US, the market the article is referring to.
Some out there saw the rise of Mobile gaming and assumed gaming was a zero sum market where if Mobile was going to go up, everything else was going to go down. This was also a terrible take.
They are.
They certainly did. Only a handful of analysts were bullish on the Switch pre-launch. This is some serious history retcon here.
Don't pat yourself on the back too hard. The future of AAA gaming has become taking the mobile model and making people pay a $60 entry fee for it. An entry fee that only gets you in the club, not even close to the full experience.
As the AAA market is still the growth driver of the larger gaming market, it's a pyrrhic victory at best.
As the AAA market is still the growth driver of the larger gaming market, it's a pyrrhic victory at best.
You need to stop, PS4 did good but I doubt it single handily saved console gaming.
But it didn't. Your post was predicated on a hypothetical that never happened.
This is a bit hyperbolic. At the time PS4 was launched there were still hundreds of millions of consoles being played daily and games like GTAV, FIFA, Madden and COD were still selling in the tens of millions.
At the time the NES was released people were busy selling their Ataris in garage sales.
I can agree with that phrasing to some extent, it was just the phrase I bolded of your previous comment that made me laugh out loud.
Credit where it's due as always. But trying to hypothesise a scenario where console gaming did die before the Switch was a thing in order to give Sony credit for its success... is way too much overthinking for me.
So yeah I agree and disagree I guess lol.
By cannibalizing the Xbox market? That just means that customers aren't loyal to a single brand and will shift back and forth; it doesn't mean the total audience for dedicated game machines isn't shrinking.
In other words, the roaring success of PS4 does largely come down to console wars.
It also probably comes down somewhat to OG Xbox, Xbox 360, and PS3 having relatively poor starts that make for more favorable comparisons.
I feel like this is completely erasing the explosion of the indie market with several games breaking 500k/1m+ across several platforms. All types of games are doing well with a variety of monetization models , period.
Weird. That's not my experience in the slightest. I've never payed for anything other than DLC that gives actual extra content.
The indie market does not and did not need consoles. Infact, outside of rocket league, there really isn't many indies I can think of that can attribute its success to the console market. Plenty indies have been enhanced by console releases, but they didn't need them to blow up.
Likewise, that doesn't change the fact that people are not buying consoles for indie titles. They may buy them in times of drought, like what the switch is now experiencing, but once the AAA titles hit a point of saturation, the little guys get squeezed out.
The point is the 2012 doom and gloom wasn't real. Sony didn't "save" the market by doing anything special. They did the same shit they've always done. The market was just never in danger in the first place.
People love predicting the end of whatever, it seems to be a popular thing in gaming. The console market may see a userbase drop compared to last gen, but it's still healthy.
Lol. Yes, yes they did. The January event was a trainwreck of hundreds of people going "DOA" at the old site.
What is the metric you are using where data says otherwise? ARPU?
That's not what I said, and thats not what you implied either.
One persons experience means very little when an entire market is moving in the opposite direction. My brother owns 200 physical games and has not bought one title on psn. Does that mean digital distribution isn't catching up and surpassing physical?
Only in the USA. The Xbox One has fallen behind the Xbox 360 wordlwide. PS4 is tracking ahead of PS3.
Fine. "The future of AAA console gaming.."
Does that addition make my point clearer?
I remember this. Was writing for a games site at the time. A lot of the people predicting this sort of thing had a vested interest in the failure of the traditional console market. It was always obvious it wasn't going to fail and that those people specifically desperately wanted it to for their own gain.
PC gaming has been camped out at death's door forever. Get in the back of the line. No skipsies.
Feel like it's the definition of confirmation bias. I posted on gaf and was right about both. Wii being a hit and WiiU being a flop. I wasn't alone. But of course people only remember the views that support their perception.
This sums it up perfectly
Feel like it's the definition of confirmation bias. I posted on gaf and was right about both. Wii being a hit and WiiU being a flop. I wasn't alone. But of course people only remember the views that support their perception.
Did people really go nuts for the Wii U when it was announced in a widespread way or was it only Nintendo fans?This sums it up perfectly
I feel like it was just nintendo fans. I mean the old site also had a long running meme of the wiiu looking through a window because it was a constant disappointment.
The original Xbox one was hot garbage. If the PS4 was that slow, underpowered and laggy, I don't think the market would have taken off anywhere like it did.
Thankfully, MS seems to have learned from that mistake with the Xbox One X, which they did a phenomenal job on. Thank God for that because the PS4 Pro was a massive disappointment.
I think the issue I would raise with your claim that it saved consoles is that people's perception of consoles isn't equal to their actual viability. In 2012 there may have been a lot of talk about whether consoles were dying, but almost the exact same sales potential that propelled the PS4 and Xbox One to great sales in 2013 were present in 2012. Such that I think if any of the three rather quality consoles released there would be a sizable market waiting for them. Console manufacturers of this generation deserve a lot of credit for their work, and if any of the three had made a mediocre or bad console I don't think that manufacturer would have been able to gain so much of that potential group as customers but the market didn't materialize just because one of them had a good showing.
I think it was mostly that people assumed the Wii U would be a hit because the Wii was a hit. Similar to how people thought the PSP and PS3 would dominate because the PS2 was so dominant.
Calling games to a lot of mobile games in the same sense as HZD or Oddisey are games... It's streching the term quite a bit. Lots of them are glorified scripting masquerading as a game. They are pulling the strings of the players like puppets and psicologically manipulating them into spending as much of their time and money as possible.
To be fair, it's not exclusive of mobile games. FIFA has been scripting online matches since forever and recent insights into Activision or EA patents show great effort in inventing new ways of screwing with their players brains.
So I'm not sure how much of the current size of the videogame industry are videogames as we used to know them and how much is glorified gambling and manipulation.
To be fair, it's not exclusive of mobile games. FIFA has been scripting online matches since forever and recent insights into Activision or EA patents show great effort in inventing new ways of screwing with their players brains.
So I'm not sure how much of the current size of the videogame industry are videogames as we used to know them and how much is glorified gambling and manipulation.
There's a certain thread on that at the old forum from after it was announced that's a real fun read right now...
I came back from launch day with a Wii U, played it all day and then posted my initial thoughts on GAF. Hated it. Everything about it was garbo. The 24hr ban I got was for referring to the controller as Baby's First iPad and suggesting that it would be Nintendo's worst selling hardware ever (I was wrong, that was still the V-Boy). I stand by that sentiment, btw.
I also didnt think the Switch would succeed, and waited until October to buy in. I'm in love. Best hardware I've bought this gen (I've bought PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One, Wii U, 3DS, 3DS XL, 2DS XL).
Wii > PS4
PS3 >> One
360 >>>>.... WiiU
DS >> 3DS
PSP >>>>.... Vita
Switch is selling good up to now, but it does it by throwing Nintendo's home console and hh businesses together - a move that is also not done out of strength.
I'm not confusing anything, those handhelds were made by the same sony and nintendo that are making ps4 and switch, less consoles means less money to invest, means less games and console sales(switch and ps4 can only dream the sales of wii+ds or ps3+psp), means less games to choose from, healthy companies try to grow, try to make as many products as they can to try to get as many people as possible, why do you think companies make so many types of biscuits or cars or tv channels or whatever when they could just do one type of biscuit or car or tv channel or whatever? Do you think they are stupid? The production decreases only when there's no money.
5-7 years ago there were a whole bunch of people that would literally laugh at you if you didn't accept that Apple would dominate the entire gaming industry by now. They wouldn't even debate, just laugh. Because it was so obvious.
My god, they were obnoxious.
I remember all the "Graphics alone won't sell the PS4" talk too. I remember saying that it absolutefuckinglutely would, because casual gamers care deeply about graphics. All you have to do is tell them that Fifa / CoD / Battlefield etc will look much better and clearer on this new machine, and they will pick one up. If that doesn't work, just wait until the Likes of Battlefield and Ass Creed are only available on the new machines, then they'll definitely pick one up. The idea that a new generation had to have some gimmick to succeed was pure hardcore enthusiast hubris.
My god, they were obnoxious.
I remember all the "Graphics alone won't sell the PS4" talk too. I remember saying that it absolutefuckinglutely would, because casual gamers care deeply about graphics. All you have to do is tell them that Fifa / CoD / Battlefield etc will look much better and clearer on this new machine, and they will pick one up. If that doesn't work, just wait until the Likes of Battlefield and Ass Creed are only available on the new machines, then they'll definitely pick one up. The idea that a new generation had to have some gimmick to succeed was pure hardcore enthusiast hubris.
I only have data from the US, but surely being 27% up from the worst year in over a decade doesn't suddenly make it the best ever.
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I dunno, you kind of have to ignore some issues to see it so black and white. Overall traditional hardware is down from it's peak in large part due to the significant retractions on the portable side. I do think we are reaching a happy medium between mobile and traditional gaming now, but obviously a large part of the Switch's success is the fact that it consolidates the remaining handheld audience into the console audience.
Lol no one went nuts for the WiiU. The reaction to both of its E3 showings was absolutely dreadful.
This sums it up perfectly
Lol no one went nuts for the WiiU. The reaction to both of its E3 showings was absolutely dreadful.
I only have data from the US, but surely being 27% up from the worst year in over a decade doesn't suddenly make it the best ever.
You're saying that people these days routinely pay 60 dollars for a game and don't get a "even close to the full experience" out of it. Like, what games are you playing that you're paying 60 dollars, and that you feel like you're not getting your 60 dollar's worth?
I only have data from the US, but surely being 27% up from the worst year in over a decade doesn't suddenly make it the best ever.
Just a small observation: are those numbers for 2017 accurate? Don't we know that the Switch did 4.8 million last year in the US?