PS3 to be backwards compatible.

[John Crichton]

The PS2 being the oldest doesn't have anything to do with how many systems it's sold (i.e. it wouldn't have sold any less had the GC and Xbox been released at the same time).

If you have some proof that proves that the PS2 getting a year head-start had NO impact on its success then I'll believe you. Until then, please don't discount my observations as completely wrong. I said one of the reasons, not the only reason or even the main reason.

Your second point is the important one, though you have things backwards. But first, to be clear the PS2 is just continuing the success of the PS. Now that that's out of the way, the reason the Sony has sold so many systems is because all of the big name third party games have been released for it, e.g. MGS2, FF10, GTA3, games like that are called system sellers for a reason. Immediately after Square announced that FF7 would be exclusive to the PS sales of the system skyrocketed in Japan, and that is what made the PS successful.

Yes, the PS2 is continuing the success of the PS but again, show me some proof that if the Xbox was out at the same time that it wouldn't have gotten its hands on some bigger releases. The PS2 had one good game at launch, SSX. The Xbox had a much bigger system seller in Halo. Who's to know what would have happened if the PS2 didn't get such lead-time? Surely not you or I.

Getting to market first doesn't matter, if you don't have the games people want to buy, then your system won't sell. TH eGenesis was released a year before the SNES, but Nntendo caught up. The DC came out a year before the PS2 and we all know how that turned out.

The PS2 was the system out there at the time, there was no competition. That does make a small difference. Sure, it was continuing the success of the PS and that is a huge contributing factor to why it is doing so well now. It's only real competition was from Nintendo, who's user base wasn't anywhere close to Sony's. This too lends greatly to the PS2's success but I never said the year lead was the main reason why it did well - just one of the many reasons.

So to sum up, the reason the Xbox and GC lag so far behind is because they don't have the exclusive titles to push console sales. If they don't change that for their next systems things will play out the same for the next generation as they have for this one.

Catch-22. If they had a larger user-base to start with, maybe the developers would have jumped on board and made more system sellers (which there aren't many of). But because there weren't enough systems out there, the PS2 was a much better choice because more people would get to play the developers games.

I'm not saying lead time is the only reason or even a major reason for system success, I am refuting your claim that it has no impact. I am perfectly aware that quality of games, exclusive games as well as other factors are important to a system's success but to ignore a market lead is just foolish.

 

[Welverin]

I don't believe that lead time has not impact, but I do believe that what impact it does have is insignificant. And I believe that the history of the industry justifies my belief.

Developers chose to support the PS2 not because it was first, but because they believed it would be the most succesful.