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Next Nintendo Console In Spring 2005?
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an IGN story claiming that the Gamecube's successor will launch as early as Spring 2005. This date, sourced from anonymous development houses, seems earlier than expected, and IGN mentions that "..asked if they had received any official documentation for the machine, all software houses contacted said no." But equally, any console getting a head start on the next generation will have a significant advantage, and as IGN suggest, "Nintendo has repeatedly stated that it would not be the last hardware manufacturer out of the gates with its next console."
Well, first of all, there's an unfair comparision because there was no point in providing backward compatibility with Dreamcast. What could you possibly make Dreamcast backward compatible with?
Sega had planned on having software available for the dreamcast to run PS1 games (Bleem I believe it was). The way it would've been offered seemed like a waste of time to me, though, and it really only strengthened the Sony market.
The reason backward compatiblity is beneficial to PS2 is that the original Playstation had a huge software library, and development was still ongoing at PS2's launch. The same goes for GBA, backward compatibility is important because GB has a HUGE software library.
While the size of the library is important, I think it's also important to re-emphasize (and re-word) what you just said: PS1 (and GB) development continued after the launch of the new console. Part of it was simply that games continued to go into development for the older consoles after first-gen games for the new consoles started (hell, there are still PS1 games in development), but part of it was also knowing that the console would still be supported on the new platform. Otherwise, if a platform (such as GameCube) was due for replacement within a year, it's very likely that development could stop altogether if the new platform was not going to be compatible (note: this probably would not be the case with the most popular consoles, but development would stop quickly after the new release).
I agree with you that the success of the PS2's initial period was largely due to its backward compatibility, but it solely depends on the fact that Playstation was already #1 and has a huge library. It's an advantage unique to Sony at that time.
The advantage isn't truly a unique one, they were just the first to capitalize on it. Backwards compatibility is something that people have always wanted in consoles, and they were simply the first to do it out-of-the-box, without added cost from the end-user perspective.
If the next Nintendo console will indeed ship in 2005, that will mean GameCube will only have 3 years worth of a backcatalog. Having backward compatibility to this small catalog will probably makes little difference to the console's initial sales. Consider that the Genesis was backward compatible with the Sega Master System (via an adapter), yet it was Sonic that sold the Genesis by millions.
That last part is interesting to me, because I didn't know there was backwards compatibility for the Genesis, even though I owned one (and my step-brother had an SMS). However, I think it's more important for the consoles that are not #1 to have this, because it could cause people that never bought the first console to buy the new one, and pick up some older titles. After all, the only reason anyone really cared at launch that the PS2 could play PS1 games was so that they wouldn't have to keep their PS1 attached to the same TV as their PS2 (and so many old PS1 systems migrated to people's cars). Most of the people buying PS2 systems already had a PS1 and didn't absolutely need a PS2 to play PS1 titles, it just let them put an old console away. OTOH, someone that never bought a GameCube might like the option to try some GameCube titles if they bought the new system.
Moreover, backward compatibilty really does very little to a console's longetivity. After the first year or two, once there are enough native titles out, nobody (other than the really enthuaist) wants to play games from the last generation.
Perhaps it is just an enthusiast thing, but it's still nice to see new PS1 titles hit the shelf every once in a while. I know I'm certainly glad to have most of the Final Fantasy line playable on one console.
There are more important things to the success of a console's launch period, like price, launch titles, exclusives, brand loyalty, and most important of all, hype. Backward compatibility is relatively irrelevant when compared to a
-PainKilleR-[CE]