New brand of consoles?

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DaHeckIzDat
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Joined: April 9th, 2015, 1:41 pm

New brand of consoles?

Postby DaHeckIzDat » October 16th, 2017, 11:44 am

Ever since I was old enough to appreciate video games, the market has always been a three way battle between Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Sony makes Playstations, Microsoft makes Xboxes, and Nintendo makes whatever the hell they feel like. Do you think we'll ever see a new brand of console, something besides what the big three have been giving us for the past couple decades?

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scotland
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Re: New brand of consoles?

Postby scotland » October 16th, 2017, 12:40 pm

Its seems like we have a couple of families of companies - existing companies that are diversify into making game playing devices, and younger companies doing it.

If you look back to the 1970s, and go through the generations (including computers), you might see patterns. Sometimes, its a big company that decides to diversify either internally (like Mattel creating Mattel Electronics) or externally (Warner buys Atari). Sometimes its a small start up, as Atari began (and then bought up), or Amiga (then bought up), etc. Sometimes its someone making a related tech consumer item that decides to branch out a bit, like NEC or Fairchild or Nokia.

Atari was a smart start-up, but had to be bought up by a big company to have the resource to grow. Mattel was a mid-sized company that wanted to profit by the business, but had no real stake in it. Sega had long coin-op roots, but really struggled in adapting what made them successful for many years in the arcades to success in the consoles.

So, here we are. Nintendo is an old company heavily invested now in the video game industry. Their fortunes are not at all secure, as they are very modestly innovative. Nintendo is a large company, but not on the scale of a Sony or Microsoft. Nintendo has about $13 billion in assets and 5000 employees. Sony is a massive multinational with $160 billion in worldwide assets and like 129,000 employees. Microsoft is even bigger at $240 billion in worldwide assets and 124,000 employees. Its worth noting that Apple is even bigger (and Samsung is pretty big too)

I think only another large company could compete, namely Google, Apple or Samsung, but they'd have to look at if its worthwhile to do so. Perhaps a large Chinese company could, beginning with a Chinese install base, create a competing console. For small companies, I think even if one has a good product, they're just going to be gobbled up.

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pacman000
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Re: New brand of consoles?

Postby pacman000 » October 16th, 2017, 1:09 pm

Developing a new system probably isn't too hard for someone with a background in electronics. Developing software, however, is hard; you'd need to create hundreds of titles a year just to get consumers interested. Each title could cost $10 million+. Then you'd have to market everything; that's another $100 million+ each year.

Apple or Google could do it, but they'd probably create a general purpose entertainment system. You'd need a company focused on games.

I'd love to see a new system; I remember looking through Sears and J.C. Penny's catalogs in the 90's and seeing dozens of systems, but I know of no one with deep enough pockets/the right background to successfully bring one to market. :(

Voor
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Re: New brand of consoles?

Postby Voor » October 17th, 2017, 7:34 am

As weird as it sounds, I liked it better when there were two major companies--Nintendo and Sega. There were more exclusives and differences between the same game on each system were much more obvious. I guess we had this again with the 64 vs the PlayStation, but then Xbox has to show up with a tiny little game called Halo and ruin everything. Lol.

I also like it better when the overall mentality of consumers was that you had to choose one over another--the competitive nature of "which one to get" was fun. My brother owns a Switch, PS4, and XBox1, and I dunno, it just doesn't seem as fun.

GameOfThrones
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Re: New brand of consoles?

Postby GameOfThrones » October 18th, 2017, 3:34 pm

Atari box incoming? A possibility.
Steam box still out there. Very technical.
Android consoles still out there but very primitive probably only as powerful as a switch (a joke) but in the same market.

Amazon fire, good but not great. Break into the mainstream as a major games players.

Which leaves us with ..
Microsoft vs Sony vs Nintendo.

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Stalvern
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Joined: June 18th, 2016, 7:15 pm

Re: New brand of consoles?

Postby Stalvern » October 19th, 2017, 3:17 am

Voor wrote:As weird as it sounds, I liked it better when there were two major companies--Nintendo and Sega. There were more exclusives and differences between the same game on each system were much more obvious. I guess we had this again with the 64 vs the PlayStation, but then Xbox has to show up with a tiny little game called Halo and ruin everything. Lol.

That's basically how it is right now, though. You have the Switch, the PS4, and the crappy PS4.


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