Dyson's Fear 3.0

The console wars revisited

So, I'm reading yesterday's Penny Arcade blog, and something occurred to me. Nintendo have to be the shrewdest company of the bunch, they sat out nearly two generations of consoles and now are back to being the number one company. Sure, they had consoles out, but the just sat back, let the market do what it did, and just watched the hype machines bark and snap at each other. That watching paid off in spades.

Amazing, that.

Now, the two big boys on the block have no idea what they're doing as the Wii keeps flying off the shelf. Microsoft has been playing hardball to overtake Sony, and now that they have, they don't know what to do. Sony's so used to being number one, that they got sloppy and arrogant, and are now scrambling to be number two. Neither one of them have really got what it takes to be there, and it's going to take a lot of shuffling to get them there. My money's on Sony overtaking Microsoft by a small margin, just because they're scared and hungry now, and Microsoft is starting to crack.

That said, the upcoming 6 to 8 months are going to be interesting. Will Nintendo hold on? Is Microsoft going to get over itself? Is Sony going to rebound? Hard to say, but I'm glad I'm not selling the stupid things any more, as it's a rough (make that annoying) time to be a retailer. I'm happy with my PS2 and library of games, and that's about as far into console gaming as I want to be right now.

Labels: video games

posted by Jason @ 1:28 AM