The PS3 was a year behind and it still managed to finally catch up and win the race before the next gen starts. (lol wii u...cute) What on gods name do you think the PS4 will do to the Xbone with both consoles releasing in the same month? Will the sales gap be like what the PS2 did to the Xbox?
Omega-316
It's not as if the PS3 was at a complete disadvantage.
The original Xbox was an unpopular brand in Japan and Europe prior to the 360 release (and still is unpopular in Japan, and in many European markets). The Xbox also only sold 27 million units so brand recognition was tiny in general at that point. Along with that the 360 was also the only console with pay2play online multiplayer, and it suffered from RROD which kept a lot of people from buying it.
The Xbox 360 had a ton of things going against it, and still managed to sell as well, if not better, than Playstation, and it also accumulated more games, and more software sales. That's a pretty huge win.
This gen starts out differently than last, but there is no way to guarantee a winner before launch because we don't know what will happen. A few questions you could ask are:
- Is it the mainstream audience preordering PS4's at launch, or the hardcore fanbase? Will the PS4 sell steadily for the next 5 years, or drop off after the initial launch phase much like the Wii U did?
- Will the PS4 suffer a DRE or RROD type problem that causes people to distrust the product, and move elsewhere?Â
- Will the Xbox One see a humungous increase in hardware sales after its first price drop much like the PS3 did?Â
- Will the casual audience flock back to smartphones/tablets after the launch phase is over leaving every console to sell less than their predecessor?
And so on, and so forth. There are a ton of potential situations that can result in success, or failure for any of the console makers. There's NO POSSIBLE WAY to gauge success based off of past success, or preorders.
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