Zefah said:
No one knows anything. We can only speculate.
Remember at the beginning of this generation how most "analysts" stated, as if as fact, that the Playstation 3 was going to dominate the competition and that the Wii would be a relatively short-lasting 'fad'? They are certainly wrong at this point...
But then, you're assuming that the analysts know their shit, which they clearly don't. Analysts make projections based on current data and past numbers (and by "past", I mean "from the last generation ONLY"). They don't know anything about the industry
per se, how it works, what is successful and why it is successful. The overwhelming majority has zero hindsight, because all they do is look at the numbers. All they've been saying was "Hey, Sony has been successful for 2 generations now, surely they will win this time too!" How poor an analysis is that?
Now, before knowing what the Wii was all about and the price of the PS3, this was understandable. In fact, almost everybody here would have agreed that, unless the three manufacturers changed their plans radically compared to last gen standards (which Nintendo did), Sony would have won, or at least be quite successful. But the analysts (namely, Michael Pachter, but not only) kept saying that they expected the PS3 to win 6, 12, 18 months after launch, even though the trends were completely different.
There are a few people who are far more knowledgeable, and some of them are GAF members (I myself am trying to be more knowledgeable, but I'm not quite there yet
). The problem is that, to my knowledge, there's only ONE person who writes in-depth articles about the industry and its future. The guy is good, if brash and sometimes out-of-touch on topics that are not directly business-related (game design for instance), but as far as videogame industry analysis goes, you can't find better articles than his, because no one bothers analysing it as he does. He was one of the only people that predicted that Nintendo would win, and he did so in a very confident way. I'd really like it if someone took the time to give their insight, apart from him, but anyway, that's beside the point.
The italicized "know" in my previous post meant that I did not mean "know" in the strictest sense, sorry if I didn't make it clear enough. Of course, we don't know what will happen
accurately. Yet, believe it or not, an industry can be really analysed, and you can predict the big picture. You need to know the industry as a whole, from its beginnings to its present state, as well as the strategies used by the competitors. The only unknown that could have a significant impact is whether these competitors will stay true to their respective strategies or not. Say, for instance, that Nintendo makes too many mistakes in its disruption strategy. That could have disastrous results.
Argh, I'm always writing too much, sorry for that.
[EDIT] By the way, Mama Robotnik, you're awesome. Finally, a reference that I get (not much of a Star Trek fan, but I like Doctor Who)!
