Wow it’s a time of big news if you’re into gaming at all. I personally can’t remember being this excited about video games since 8th grade when the Nintendo 64 was unveiled. I’m going to offer my predictions on the way it will go down over the next five or six years for the big three, based primarily on their conferences on Tuesday.
XBox 360: This system will ultimately end up in last place. Microsoft is hoping their premature launch will do for them what it did for the PS2. I don’t think it’s gonna happen. The XBox 1 had to work hard to get where it is today, and that was because (a) it has the best hardware, and (b) it has the best online capabilities. This time around, they will not have the best hardware. And they don’t have very many exclusive games. And it’s only going to be kind of backwards compatible (still not sure how that’s gonna work). But on the other hand, Microsoft has a bottomless bucket of money that might enable them to keep the system around long enough to catch on. I guess we’ll see on that one.
Nintendo Revolution: This system will start out in last place, and again battle with Microsoft for the title of Not In Last Place. Ultimately I think it will come out slightly ahead of Microsoft this time around. But I don’t know as much about the system so I’m basing this largely on gut feeling. If, as Nintendo’s president (I forget his name... not Miyamoto... Iwata or something like that) claimed, Smash Brothers is a launch title that can be played online for free, I’ll hit that hard, and I know many other people that will too. Nintendo has lots of nostalgia factored into their formula, that’s the one reason they haven’t taken the path of Sega. Well that and the fact that they create these things like Pokémon and you just don’t realize how big they are. Nintendo has made a ton of money off of Pokémon. It’s kind of like how Lifetime is like the highest rated cable tv channel (or close), but if you asked people on the street what they thought it was almost no one would guess Lifetime. Nintendo doesn’t have many Game Cubes out there, but the people who own them are loyal.
Playstation 3: Yep, I think Sony’s gonna stay on top at least until the end of this decade. This time around they’re going to have the best hardware, to add to the fact that they’ll have the most games out there. I mean the system is still at least a year from launching and they announced like ten big name games. Not to mention what this is going to do for their Blu Ray DVD format... I predict that Blu Ray will win out over the competing HD-DVD, largely because of the PS3. Much the same way that a lot of people’s first DVD player was the PS2 (since DVD players were just becoming affordable way back then). The PS3 and it’s ability to play DVD’s in HD may even give more people a better excuse to buy an HDTV. As much as I love Nintendo (and don’t get me wrong, I’m going to get a Revolution regardless), I’m actually excited about the PS3. And I think that’s what Sony is good at- making people excited about their products. Nintendo used to be a lot better in that department.
Well I’m done. I have already talked at length about my inability to predict technology trends in a previous post... Hopefully I’m wrong and Nintendo will become as big as they were from 1985-1995. Hopefully Microsoft won’t be able to dump enough money into developers’ pockets to create a monopoly. And there’s still lots we don’t know about each system.
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!