[HN Gopher] Consoles and competition
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Consoles and competition
Author : marban
Score : 38 points
Date : 2022-12-13 09:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| erickhill wrote:
| I find it slightly baffling (yet predictable) that Commodore
| wasn't mentioned once during the transitional leap from the 2600
| to "home computers." It's as if the best-selling computer of all
| time prior to the iPhone has been erased from history.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| It was Nintendo that created the 30% share for the platform owner
| that all future console owners would implement, and which Apple
| would set as the standard for the App Store.
|
| Is there a citation for this number? I thought I knew this whole
| story quite well but this is the first time I've seen someone
| cite the specific royalty rate Nintendo was getting. I'd always
| more read the generalization that Nintendo was "expensive", and
| Sony was "cheaper" and beyond that I got the impression that it
| was the reduction in costs and increases in flexibility with the
| shift from Nintendo made carts to cds that dominated royalty
| differences.
|
| (It's somewhat fuzzy to me around whether anyone was allowed to
| press Playstation discs or Sony reserved that right alone. I
| recall hearing the former but don't recall. Similarly I am under
| the impression that at some point Nintendo had strict control
| over manufacturing carts, but at some point that was loosened?
| Perhaps it was that Famicom carts at some point were a grab bag
| of manufacturers, but it all went in house with the SNES?)
| quanticle wrote:
| Sony extended that advantage with the PlayStation 2, which was
| backwards compatible with the PlayStation, meaning it had
| a massive library of 3rd-party games immediately; the
| newly-launched Xbox, which was basically a PC, and thus
| easy to develop for, made a decent showing, while Nintendo
| struggled with the Gamecube, which had both a non-standard
| controller and non-standard microdisks that once again
| limited the amount of content relative to the DVDs used
| for PlayStation 2 and Xbox (and it couldn't function as a
| DVD player, either).
|
| Is that actually true? From what I remember, and what I've read,
| the original XBox was kind of a flop. That generation of consoles
| was dominated by the PS2, with the GameCube as an also-ran,
| mostly due to the strength of Nintendo's first-party titles and
| Rare's "almost first party" work. The original XBox had Halo, but
| I don't really remember any other really standout best sellers on
| that platform. Characterizing the GameCube as some kind of flop
| that Nintendo "struggled" with seems like a misrepresentation. It
| may not have been as immediately successful as the PS2, but with
| games like Super Smash Bros Melee and Banjo Kazooie, it had
| decent success, especially towards the end of that generation.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The OG XBox was _de rigeur_ in every dorm room in the country.
| Mostly for Halo, but football games and racing games and such
| also made a showing.
|
| The Gamecube's considered a flop because it sold worse than
| _all_ their other game consoles except the (later) WiiU, which
| is their other major flop. At the time, it was sitting at the
| bottom of a not-promising trend line for Nintendo consoles
| (before the Wii blew that up). It also sold significantly worse
| than its contemporaries (XBox, PS2... better than the
| Dreamcast, but that hardly counts). I agree that it 's a great
| system, in fact--the controller is, uniquely, _brilliant_ for
| introducing young kids to controllers with more than a couple
| buttons on them, and feels great once you 're used to it even
| for an adult, and it may be lacking in games but it's got a
| fair number of excellent entries in its library. It's easily my
| personal favorite of that generation (followed closely by the
| Dreamcast, actually).
| mikepavone wrote:
| The OG Xbox did sell more units than the Gamecube (~24 million
| vs. 21.7 million per Wikipedia anyway), but these seem close
| enough that it's a bit weird to classify them differently. I
| guess one way to justify that outlook is that Microsoft was
| coming from nothing in the console space, so getting to a
| distant 2nd place (even if only narrowly) makes for a decent
| start whereas the Gamecube sold fewer units than the N64 even
| while the home console market was growing as a whole.
| sylens wrote:
| I agree the sales were close, but I think the
| narrative/momentum was very different for the two. That was
| Microsoft's first console. They started with nothing, and by
| the end of the generation had sold more than Nintendo and
| established critical IPs and an online service for the next
| generation. Nintendo, at the time, felt very backed into a
| corner - which of course gave us the Wii that shattered all
| expectations.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I would classify them differently. I mean they were both not
| very successful consoles, but the Xbox was at least a first
| effort from a new competitor. It makes sense that it was...
| more of a predictable learning experience.
|
| The GameCube seemed like a surprisingly poor showing from
| such an experienced company. But hey, hard to give them too
| much flack given the follow up. Guess the GameCube was a
| strong unexpected learning experience.
| naet wrote:
| Super Nintendo: 49.1 million sales
|
| Nintendo 64: 32.93 million sales
|
| Nintendo Gamecube: 22 million (PS2: 155 million, Xbox: 24
| million)
|
| Nintendo Wii: 101.63 million
|
| Nintendo had very high targets for Gamecube, hoping to make
| up for some of the "lost ground" of the n64's weaker sales
| compared to its predecessor. The Xbox struggled heavily in
| Japan compared to Nintendo, and was a newcomer to the console
| scene, but still made more total sales.
|
| The Gamecube also had an extra year before Nintendo released
| a successor compared with the Xbox. Both came out around the
| same time, but the Xbox 360 was released a full year before
| the Nintendo Wii. Luckily for Nintendo, the Wii ended up
| being very popular compared to the Gamecube and sold ~5x more
| consoles.
|
| I think both original Xbox and Gamecube had sales targets
| higher than what they ended up reaching, but you could make
| an argument that Nintendo failed to capitalize on their
| previous popularity and market share and had a bigger flop.
| wcarss wrote:
| I'm not here to disagree with you but I'm pretty sure Banjo
| Kazooie was never on the GameCube.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| OG XBOX was great though for XBMC media center and for pirating
| games. I guess for playing DVDs, too.
| syntheweave wrote:
| There's an interesting thing in that the sales numbers and the
| narratives differed strongly in that generation.
|
| The Gamecube, while having sales nearly equal to the original
| XBox, is beloved mostly in retrospect; at the time of release
| the consensus between North American enthusiast press and
| corporate PR swung strongly in favor of "grown up" games(i.e.
| 90's edginess with swearing, gore, and boob) while Nintendo was
| still making "kiddie" stuff. Of course, plenty of folks bought
| Nintendo's offering anyway, but it wasn't clear what their
| strategy was at that point. They gained their now-standard
| reluctance to push graphics tech further on consoles with the
| Gamecube; it was a well-rounded game player, straightforward
| enough to develop for, and not hugely different from the others
| in spec, but it avoided doing really flashy graphics demos. And
| for the press, who had gotten used to talking about how high
| tech and advanced every release was, and how big the production
| budgets were, this was an affront. If you make smaller games
| with less graphics that aren't for the reviewer's specific
| demographic, their job is harder and needs more nuance.
|
| And so while the larger side of the market aided and abetted a
| "gamer" image, which was really just catering to whomever would
| give them more coverage - Nintendo stuck to its own plan. It
| could afford to; every portable system was a hit. So they
| started making their consoles more like their portables after
| the missteps of the N64(which was a graphics beast, but too
| hard for most developers to delve deep into).
|
| The reality, of course, was that the GCN quickly became a
| fixture in college dorms because it had good party games like
| Smash and the Mario Kart series. It was there right along with
| the PS2 and XBox and their exclusives, and yet when you saw
| interviews with game industry producers and the like, nobody at
| the time said "we should be more like Nintendo". They wanted a
| GTA or a first-person shooter with better lighting effects. And
| there was a xenophobic "beat Japan" angle among some in
| favoring Microsoft over Sony or Nintendo. In effect, they
| gaslit some part of the gaming audience in order to push the
| type of games they were making and the country that games
| should come from. It was only later in the 2000's with the next
| generation releases that critical backlash against the
| "grey/brown shooter" arose and Nintendo's position was
| championed - though not by everyone.
| quanticle wrote:
| This also rings false to me: Nintendo,
| meanwhile, dominated the generation with the Nintendo Wii. What
| was interesting, though, is that 3rd-party support for the Wii
| was still lacking, in part because of the underpowered
| hardware (in contrast to previous generations): the Wii
| sold well because of its unique control method -- which
| most people used to play Wii Sports -- and Nintendo's
| first-party titles. It was, in many respects, Nintendo's most
| vertically-integrated console yet, and was incredibly
| successful.
|
| The Nintendo Wii did have excellent sales initially, but those
| sales fell off _fast_ , as everyone who wanted a Wii for e.g.
| Wii Sports or Wii Fit got their consoles within a couple of
| years, and the _severely_ underpowered hardware meant that the
| majority of games were released on the XBox 360 first, the PS3
| second, and the Wii never. Meanwhile, Nintendo 's normally
| strong first-party games struggled to integrate motion
| controls, so aside from gimmicky tech demos like the
| aforementioned Wii Sports, there really wasn't much reason to
| buy a Wii. It was a slightly better GameCube, that's all. If
| any console "dominated" that generation, it was the XBox 360.
| ketzo wrote:
| The Wii outsold the PS3 and the Xbox 360 by about 15 million
| units. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/best-selling-video-game-
| console...
| smcl wrote:
| In terms of units sold, it's actually correct. From the
| wikipedia page "List of best-selling game consoles"[0] I've
| taken the three from that generation:
|
| 1. Wii: 101.63 million
|
| 2. PS3: 87.4 million
|
| 3. Xbox 360: 84 million
|
| It's possible the Xbox 360 dominated within your friend-group
| or even your locale (fwiw I didn't know anyone who had a 360,
| my friends who had a console had a PS3) but in terms of raw
| sales it's edged by PS3 and obliterated by the Wii.
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
| selling_game_cons...
| de_keyboard wrote:
| The 360 launched first so it was probably at a higher units
| sold for a few years at least.
| syntheweave wrote:
| The Wii captured a fundamentally different market from its
| competition: that was the whole "blue ocean" strategy
| Nintendo had in mind, building on success with the DS. The
| 360 and PS3 sold "convergence" devices instead: they did a
| little bit of everything home-entertainment related.
| Enthusiasts with the cash to spare would end up with multiple
| consoles for the exclusives, but in that generation the
| software barriers to exclusivity were starting to come down;
| the PS3 had a more unfamiliar architecture than the 360, but
| regardless, cross-platform releases running the same engine
| and assets, vs a completely recoded game with different
| assets, were now becoming the norm across both consoles, so
| it was not like the old days of Sega vs Nintendo where you
| could have a totally different view of gaming by getting one
| or the other; the high end was actually getting a bit
| commoditized, and it was just the first-party exclusives that
| added differentiation.
|
| But the broader market was in unexpected places like senior
| centers, where Nintendo's offering found an ultra-casual
| niche. For those markets, it never had to do anything more
| than play Wii Sports, and was a profitable hardware sale from
| day 1, where the other two banked on loss-leading for market
| share and making it up with a high attach rate. Definitely a
| fad, but also one that printed money.
|
| All three did well enough to keep going, but they're really
| apples and oranges stories.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| This is how I remember it as well.
|
| Nintendo was public about dropping out of the console fight
| and doing their own thing, which is still true to this day
| with the switch.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| To suddenly cut Call of Duty (or Activision's other multi-
| platform titles) off from Playstation would be massively value
| destructive; no wonder Microsoft said it was happy to sign a
| 10-year deal with Sony to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation.
|
| It would be value destructive if all those Sony buyers decided to
| shrug and not buy a CoD game ever again. It wouldn't be at all if
| the CoD players could be lured to buy an Xbox. This article
| asserts that there's effectively no difference between the
| hardware at this point, so if we accept the article's arguments
| here, getting the consumers to move from Sony to Xbox with
| exclusives is theoretically easier than it's ever been. No wonder
| people are alarmed.
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