Someone was mentioning that they thought the PS3 was the only real competition to the Xbox 360, and didn't think Nintendo's announced Raw Power System (aka the Revolution spelled Wii) currently counted as real Xbox 360 competition due to the generally younger audience feel that Nintendo has attracted. This was right after someone else provided the view that Nintendo will be the absolute winner of the next gen console war because major Gamecube owners won't even consider an Xbox/PS3 and will buy a Wii, and many Xbox/PS3 owners will buy a Wii in addition to their other system.
I find the PS3 more amusing with every new announcement. I donât think it can compete. Sony seems to be in a very weird delusion phase, too, because they keep announcing that the PSP is going toe to toe with the DS, but all the evidence in the world points to the contrary, that the DS is simply continuing Nintendoâs dominance of the portable game space. How many PSPs do you see in a day?
Nintendo in all its incarnations (DS, Gamecube, Wii) absolutely is a competitor for the 360, particularly for the XBLA crowd that is buying 360s solely for the Arcade. (Iâm curious if any of the statistics/marketing people are tracking this yet.) Iâve met some people from the Gamecube camp that have moved to the XBLA crowd, and the competition between XBLA and the similar services from Nintendo just might be the fiercest battle of the next generation of consoles.
I think the war on console technology is finally over and the war on content is about to truly begin. Nintendo has proven, with its âkiddie libraryâ that it can hit the lowest common denominator and get just about every gamer to buy and play at least one Nintendo game. Can Microsoft compete with that? An interesting statistic I heard several times this weekend: 8 of 10 best-selling games (both currently and all-time) are rated E by the ESRB. Microsoft may have a better chance with the harder T-M audience than Nintendo, but that isnât really the audience buying the most games.