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The Winning Next-Gen Console Is The Most Diverse?
simoniker writes "Gamasutra's latest 'Analyze This' column has game industry analysts commenting on the rise of casual games, asking whether simpler games that take less time to play may be vital to game industry growth. David Cole of DFC Intelligence disagrees that any one genre or game type is vital, suggesting: 'A key for the industry is being able to diversify.... For the N64 and GameCube, Nintendo focused primarily on its big franchises and didn't have the same level of diversity. The platform that did was the Sony PS2. Which platform could work as a karaoke machine, allowed you to put yourself in the game, had all kinds of trivia products? The reason the PSOne and PS2 sold [so well] was diversity.' Is this the key to working out who wins in next-gen?"
Yes, backwards. But that doesn't mean it's out of the hardware manufacturer's hands.
Companies like Nintendo might have been overconfident when they just decided to do their own thing with the N64 and decided that when everyone else saw how cool it was, they'd all build lots of content for it. It's these kinda decisions that don't take into consideration the feelings of major game developers (Squaresoft, EA to a lesser degree) that slowly encourage less support for a console. If Nintendo had said "we need lots of third party support, including a wide base of casual games, and we can't do this all on our own" and had therefore listened to what developers wanted, they might have been able to build more support for their console. They forgot that this wide library of games they enjoyed on SNES doesn't just happen on its own.
If companies like Squaresoft and Namco had released titles like FF7 and Tekken 3 for the N64, it would have been a much different picture. But Nintendo just decided they'd be fine without them.
It seems like everyone has learned this lesson now, and is doing all the necessary kissing up to developers. A lot of the success of this generation could simply depend on launch responses, which is where Nintendo could really gain an edge (if people don't decide Wii sucks) with their lower price. Once an edge is gained, by whoever gains it, it is quite likely things will just take off from that point and they could have the "#1" spot for a whole 5 years. Who knows though, gamers are fickle.