When Consoles Lose, Everyone Wins

Ground Glass writes "Does the traditional knowledge that 'history is written by the winners' hold true with consoles? Perhaps, but there's more to it than that. Sometimes, systems that fail do so because their most salient concept was one no one was ready for - these provide future 'innovations'. Sometimes their loudest message was one only a niche group would ever want to listen to - they provide much needed perspective. In an early medium, the failures are the ones questioning what a game should be. It's no wonder the winners keep writing their ideas back in."

Comments

Where the Developers Roam

[SuperKendall]

Microsoft has lost so much money on their console business that throwing the XBOX 360 out there as quickly as possible made sense

First of all, I had to comment on this line which I thought had some really odd logic behind it - losing money? Throwing it out faster should help!

I believe the old saying goes "throwing good money after bad".

Not that I think the 360 is a bad console but it's gotten there with booster rockets spouting pure money, and it's yet to be seen if ther overall choice to fire the boosters up again was a good one in the long term.

Here's my question: if the PS3 flops where will Sony's followers turn? Microsoft? Nintendo? Or will they abandon consoles entirely? I'd like to say they will turn to Nintendo, but I'm not so sure. I'm certain the Wii will do well, but I seriously doubt it can steal Sony's market share back.

I would say that's a pretty huge if, but "if" there were no PS3 I as a gamer would go wherever the bulk of Japanese developers went. The people writing Ico or Katmari - they are the ones I follow, not any one specific console. I admire fresh an innovative ideas in consoles and more often than not such ideas come from abroad (we do get some from the US as well, just not in the same quantitiy and rarely with the same polish).

That is why the recent article on the 360 "not needing Japanese developers" seemed to me very wrong.