The console Wars, in review
I was browsing Instagram the other day when a Playstation ad came up, and out of curiosity, or maybe just because I wanted to gauge the public reception of the Playstation 5, I looked at the comments. And, oh man, they weren’t kind to the Playstation. Most of them were declaring Xbox the winner of the generation already, thanks to Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Bethesda, the developer of Fallout and the Elder Scrolls series among others. I think that it’s unfair to Sony, because as we will see, there have been multiple instances of a surge in sales late in a console’s life cycle, so it’s unfair to write off a console before it even ships. And the very notion of the Console Wars is rooted in a bygone era of measuring how superior a console was by the number of bits, which measured processing and graphical power. So many of these games are available on a number of other systems, that it’s silly to be a rabid defender of one system while detracting all others. But, we’ll get to that later. The console wars started in the early 1990s, when Sega started to mount a substantial foothold in the gaming market in North America.
Sega’s first console, the Master System released in North America in 1985, and sold very poorly compared to Nintendo’s Entertainment System, though it fared better in Europe and other territories. In the late 80s Sega announced the Genesis, called the Mega Drive in Europe, and it was released to the world throughout 1989 and 1990. It positioned itself as a more mature offering compared to Nintendo, and with it being touted as a 16 bit offering compared to Nintendo’s 8 bit NES, the advertisements said as much, with the famous slogan “Genesis Does What Nintendon’t”. Even with all the momentum Sega had, it got off to a slow start. Sales exploded in 1991, following a slash in prices, and the inclusion of Sonic The Hedgehog as a pack-in title with the console. This led to the Genesis outselling the Super Nintendo for about four Christmases in a row. Even though in my opinion Nintendo had the superior console graphically and in terms of sound capability, the Genesis had some good games, but it ran into the problem that the Xbox One suffered from. Other than Sonic, which was a marquee exclusive, it had very little exclusive games, and the games that it did have were superior in terms of graphics and sound quality on the Super Nintendo. And the Super Nintendo had one thing that Sega didn’t have for the Genesis, longevity. The advanced graphics of games such as Donkey Kong Country helped the Super Nintendo survive up against stiff competition from the Playstation and Sega Saturn until the Nintendo 64 came out. Speaking of the Saturn, it has a rather interesting history and I would say it’s the most interesting failed console ever.
The Saturn launched in Japan in late 1994 and initially sold well, and Sega of America had announced that it would launch in late 1995 in North America. However, in an attempt to gain an advantage over the Playstation, Sega rushed the launch up to just after its unveiling at E3 1995. Sega of America’s CEO Tom Kalinske described the features, revealed the price, ($399, including a pack in title Virtua Fighter) and basically said “oh yeah, it’s also out right now”. This surprise announcement shocked retailers, and led to a few backing out of their deals. Sony took advantage of this, with Steve Race, of Sony of America, single handedly winning the generation for Sony in under a minute:
What a moment. Perhaps this is the moment that Sega was doomed as a hardware manufacturer, perhaps it was when the Dreamcast failed, but in my opinion, at this moment, it was a two horse race.
Sony ran away with the fifth generation, selling 102 million Playstations across its lifecycle. Nintendo never really stood any chance, and it was for a variety of reasons, but the way the games were played was a big one. Nintendo used cartridges, which were really expensive to produce and couldn’t hold as much space. Sony also had a stable of second and third party developers, including Square, which published Final Fantasy 7, the Playstation’s Killer App. The Playstation was really a system for every type of player, because of the sheer enormity of the games’ library. Nintendo really didn’t have any support beyond their first party offerings. I think the failure of the Playstation Classic, the microconsole that’s basically an emulator of the original Playstation, perfectly illustrates why the Playstation was so successful. In addition to piggybacking on the successes of Nintendo’s previous classic editions, and thus being derivative, the game selection was…not great. Sure, there are some standout games, like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7, and Namco’s Ridge Racer, but since the PS1 had such a varied library, it’s almost impossible to come up with a definitive list to please everyone.
Entering the sixth generation, Sony looked to retain their lead with the Playstation 2. The release in March of 2000 essentially killed the Dreamcast, especially since the PS2 functioned as a DVD player, immediately lending it a reputation as an “All in One Entertainment System”. It quickly became a hot seller, and didn’t slow down for over a decade, with Sony discontinuing it in 2013! That’s after even the PS4 came out. It finished it’s life as the single best-selling console of all time, a title it still holds today. This was the console that made me first realize that I loved video games, and it’s one I hold in a great deal of esteem even today. I had a black slim model, which gave out after the laser stopped reading discs. After that, I received a silver slim model, which I stupidly sold when we moved houses about 9 years ago.
About 9 years later, I own a PS4 controller that’s almost the exact same color
Sony ran away with the 6th generation and Nintendo’s Gamecube and Microsoft’s new Xbox struggled to keep up despite stellar games on Nintendo’s part, and…not much on Xbox, besides shooters like Halo. I may be a bit biased but you know the lineup of exclusives was weak when only one(!) is an everlasting franchise to this day. Microsoft even bought Rare, the English studio that developed Donkey Kong Country, Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark and other games for Nintendo. Instead of actually doing something with them, like you’re supposed to, they’ve basically allowed them to do nothing in nearly 20 years. Sony looked to carry that momentum into the seventh generation, going up against the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360, but, in their hubris, they got carried away.
By E3 2006, the Playstation 2 had been out for 6 years, and Sony was riding high off of its success. Presumably, it was assumed that those that bought the PS2 would be locked in to buying the PS3. It was initially priced at $500.00 for the 20 gigabyte model and $600.00 for the 60 gigabyte model. Accompanied by weirdly surreal advertisements and a disastrous E3 2006 press conference, it started off really slowly. Let’s look at some of those press conference clips as an intermission, shall we?
The Giant Enemy Crab lost its life to many brave Japanese warriors that day…
Very few know what it’s like to bomb on the E3 stage; this guy does, and I feel bad for him. While Sony was dealing with that debacle, and finding their feet, Microsoft was dealing with problems of their own.
The Red Ring of Death, a spectre that arose rather mysteriously, was an indicator of a rather ambiguous hardware failure that plagued early Xbox 360s. Launching for $299 on November 22nd 2005 and initially selling huge amounts, the Red Ring of Death soured Microsoft and the 360’s reputation for a while, but it eventually recovered. Thanks to massively popular exclusives, like Halo and Gears of War, it quickly gained an edge over Sony. But Sony and Microsoft remained behind the leader, Nintendo’s Wii.
The Wii sold like gangbusters in its first two years, largely thanks to the novelty of motion controls at the time, and its pack in title, Wii Sports. Quality games in literally every year and a reasonably strong showing from 3rd party developers helped sales of the console stay strong. This was right around the time where I was beginning to understand the differences in consoles and the advantages and disadvantages of each one. With the Wii, I put in a ton of hours across all types of games. Wii Sports Resort is one of the best Wii games ever, as is Mario Galaxy and its sequel. My brother, sister and I put a ton of hours into Mario Party 8, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, and New Super Mario Brothers Wii. It really was the ultimate multiplayer machine, and I love it for that. But with the Wii, it was barely more powerful than a Gamecube and that would hurt Nintendo in the long run. By E3 2011, the Wii was the unquestioned winner of the generation, and Nintendo was high on that success, and in their hubris, like Sony before them, they did something monumentally stupid:
Knowing what we know now, we figured out that what was shown off in this trailer was nowhere near what we got. I suppose that’s why they say, “never trust a trailer”. We did get Wii U versions of Wii Sports and Wii Fit, and those lived up to what was promised in the trailer. But it felt like Nintendo banked on this being a hit because it carried the Wii branding. It wasn’t, as it was discontinued after only 4 years on the market. It didn’t completely suck, however, as the first party offerings were excellent, Super Mario 3D World, Super Smash Bros 4, and Wind Waker HD were all excellent, and made good use of the Wii U’s gamepad. And backwards compatibility with the entire Wii library was a huge plus. But it finished a distant third, in part due to the public’s confusion over what the heck this thing was! Was it an add-on to the original Wii? Was it a new controller? Was it a new console? This confusion later gave way to apathy and slow sales remained slow. I, however, was adamant that this was the future and wrote an explanatory essay to my mom explaining why I had to have one. And for Christmas, I received a beautiful glossy black Wii U with Nintendo Land and New Super Mario Bros U.
Nintendo Land was incredibly fun and very good at explaining what the Wii U was all about, you had all these different minigames showing off different features of the gamepad. In my opinion, the best ones were Mario Chase, where one player with the Gamepad was Mario and all the rest were Toads chasing Mario around a course, and Metroid Blast, a third person shooter where the player with the gamepad was in a spaceship, and players with the Wii Remotes were on the ground fending off waves of enemies. It’s a great time, as all Nintendo published games are, but therein lies the principle problem that plagued the Wii U from the beginning. The lack of third party support is striking, and it’s the reason my Wii U sat gathering dust for months. But when a first party game hit, it more often than not was super high quality, and could keep one entertained for hours. But, slow sales because of wasted hardware potential, and lack of third party support killed the Wii U. It never really took off, and was discontinued in 2017.
Meanwhile, riding high after winning the generation come E3 2013, Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One. Why not the Xbox 720, as was speculated for many years prior to the reveal? I have no earthly idea. The fanmade renders from these times before the official reveal were fun to look back on, I mean, look at these!
Simpler times
In the unveiling, Don Mattrick, a Microsoft executive, revealed that the Xbox One would require internet and used copious amounts of industry lingo, just really laying on the executive speak very heavily. It was a disaster of a conference, but in an interview with respected insider Geoff Keighly, he ruined Xbox One’s name before it had even launched with this statement:
”We do have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of connectivity and its called Xbox 360”.
This gaffe, this arrogance, this stunning display of snobbery is what won the generation for Sony. That, and the games, of course. It’s incredibly tone-deaf to read criticism, to read what the fans want, and are looking for, and throw your hands up and say “don’t buy our console if you don’t like it”. While Xbox positioned itself as the all in one entertainment box, Sony focused on the games more than anything, and that’s what I look for, because I have my streaming solutions figured out.
We have one more eighth generation player to focus on, Nintendo. On the heels of the Wii U’s failure, Nintendo went back to the drawing board and devised an elegant solution, hybrid home console and handheld gaming.
This was, and is a genius and innovative idea, even though I hardly use the console in handheld mode. The Switch is the Wii U’s tablet controller, but fully realized. Launching with Breath of the Wild on March 3rd 2017, it has becoming the sales darling of this generation, selling more than the Wii U did within a year of its release, and right now it sits behind only the Wii in terms of Nintendo’s console sales, selling 60 million as of June 30th. I got mine with Super Mario Odyssey and the Pro Controller because the regular Joy Cons felt disagreeable to me. The failure of the Wii U led Nintendo to preemptively strike deals with loads of third party publishers, bringing loads more variety to the system. You want to play the Doom reboot on the Switch? Well you can! But as always, Nintendo’s first party offerings will always lead the way in terms of sales figures. I anticipate more quality titles from Nintendo in the coming years, and I think the Switch still has a long life in front of it.
So what of the future? In about a month, we’ll see the release of Sony’s Playstation 5, and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X. The tribalism recalls the rivalry of Sega and Nintendo, which was a nasty back and forth that we need to ascend beyond. If this teaches you anything, it should be that every company has missteps, but there are always reasons for purchasing every console, and we shouldn’t belittle the consumer for their choices. Because, chances are, they have already made their choice and will stick to it. I have, I want a Playstation 5, because of backwards compatibility and compelling exclusives. If you want a Series X, good for you! We’ll talk about the cross-platform titles. And if they are on the fence, people should be allowed to decide what the best option is for them personally, with little outside interference. It doesn’t matter who “wins”. It only matters that we, as gamers, get to play!