[QUOTE="Mass_Effect"][QUOTE="Link256"]Simple. If history has shown us anything, its that something is not over until its over.
For example, while this may seem as if out of context, many folks doubt that United States had any kind of realistic chance against British back in the Revolutionary days...and if you would have judge the basis on the entire war from the early battles alone...you would have been "right on the money" correct...and yet...despite all of the grim feelings at the begging...despite grim hope.....United States, at the end of the day (well, you know what I mean), proved to be victorious...
dsmccracken
I'm not going to go into a debate about this, but America had the French and Spanish fighting against the English. Sony doesn't have anyone backing them up. But I still think Sony could win this gen
Bottom line, the analogy is ridiculous, as all the why's and how's of the American Revolutionary War are infinitely more complex than the birth life and death of a single electronics product. He was trying to bring up a moment in history where things looked bleak, someone or something was counted out, and came back to triumph. For every example that can be given like that from history, 10 can be given where the underdog got it's ass kicked. Analogy = failed.Here's some history for you. Neo Geo and 3DO were both very powerful systems for their time. They were also very expensive. In the end both failed and went into that great pile of forgotten electronics in the sky. Cost of a console is NOT a trivial factor for its success. What people who are in the financial position that $600 is nothing to just throw away don't realize, is that they are in the minority, not the majority of consumer demographics.
But here are the differences in history between PS3 and those past consoles;
* Neo Geo and 3DO were newcomers to the field, being 1st time consoles they had to build up a userbase from scratch. Which was hard to do being more costly than the two established names that people were already familiar with. They were trying to convince people to spend a great deal more on an unproven brand. Not only were the consoles expensive, but Neo Geo games were on $200 cartridges. That's right, that is what you had to pay for each game!! PS3 of course is now very well established and has a large user base to carry over to their 3rd iteration. But they won't have ALL of their PS2 owners moving to the PS3 at that cost.
* Neo Geo and 3DO had terrible 3rd party support. Back then, the big appeal in consoles was popular 1st party titles and bringing the popular arcade titles to the home. SNES and Genesis had that going on in spades. 3DO carried a limited selection of 1st party titles and no arcade ports. Neo Geo meanwhile was basically a home version of the SNK arcade machines, literally with the same hardware just in a more "compact" mode. So while it was porting arcade titles to the home, it was porting ONLY SNK games and that was it. PS3, even with exclusivity losses, has no problems with 3rd party support and a lineup of established franchises.
* Neo Geo and 3DO may have been more expensive than the leaders of that generation, but they also had the superior power to back that up. You could look at SNES side by side with Neo Geo and the graphical power was easily seen in Neo Geo that made SNES look like the old 8bit Nintendo. 3DO was the 1st fully dedicated 3D console. They were banking on people willing to spend more for more powerful hardware, but didn't realize that the casual market has a perception of what is an acceptable price for a piece of entertainment electronics. Also having weak 3rd party support didn't help them.
* In the case of the PS3, it is priced higher but doesn't show such a graphical advantage over Xbox 360. And yes before you say it, I agree we WILL see better games coming in due time. But X360 games will carry on their own advancement in better games so they will always be on par throughout the race. The point being, if the average consumer doesn't see a huge difference in power that the more expensive console displays, how is the price justified when they can get an equally good next gen gaming experience for less with X360?
So what it comes down to is this. PS3s very expensive cost which will cause Sony to lose it's #1 position, is offset by its established game library which will keep it in the race, so PS3 will NOT FAIL the way Neo Geo and 3DO did.
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