Canyarion said:
People have often said that Europe loves Sony. But I think the thing is rather we hate Microsoft. Nintendo is doing just fine here, but Microsoft isn't. In response, people go for the PS2/3.
Not sure I agree. Doesn't everyone hate Microsoft in equal measure? They were investigated some years back by the Monopolies Commission, and though they were not found to be officially doing anything wrong, people never forgot it.
As for Sony's current performance in Europe - I don't really know. I know just as many people with 360s as people with PS3s. Interestingly, I don't know many 'gamers' who have a Wii. Mostly girls and young families. Make of that what you will.
In the fifth and sixth console generations in Europe, Sony completely ruled the roost. Not sure how old you are, but I'm old enough to remember gaming in the late 80s. Back then, SEGA really owned the European gaming market space. The Master System was a success in this region and South America (not in any other!).
SEGA then followed that up with his holiness the Mega Drive. If you were a European in this era and had a games console, it was almost certainly a Mega Drive. The SNES was comparatively-unpopular in this region. I only knew a couple of people who had one. Everyone else had an MD. I don't just base it on that, though. It's a documented fact.
SEGA then started getting corporate schizophrenia and decided that it would be a good idea to release two expensive add-ons for the Mega Drive, and a whole new very expensive console, all within a few years.
Nintendo had become thoroughly-disinterested in the continent by this point, since they had failed to best SEGA, who had fallen to Nintendo everywhere else (the MD held a reasonable share in the US, but the SNES dominated).
What followed was an extremely dark period for European Nintendo gamers, one which would last for well over a decade. On the NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube European gamers were almost boycotted by Nintendo. Many games simply never made it to the continent, and lots of the ones that did suffered immense delays, many taking the best part of a year (sometimes more!) to show up in Europe after release in America.
So at this point (early-mid 90s) we have a Nintendo who don't give a fuck about Europe, a SEGA who started getting drunk on their success in the region, leading them to do too much cocaine and start coming up with ridiculous ideas which confused everyone. They decided that the Saturn should cost £399.99 at launch.
That's 1995 money. If adjusted for inflation, this becomes £599.71 in 2010 money (cannot yet calculate for 2011). £600 for a console that had a laughable launch line-up. Obviously, hardly anyone bought it. I remember asking my parents for a SEGA Saturn. They looked at how much it cost and laughed at me.
Sony chose to strike at this point. A few months down the line in September of '95 Sony released the venerable PlayStation in Europe, which cost far less, had more games at launch, and more impressive graphics.
SEGA retorted by introducing several savage price-cuts on the Saturn, but it was too late. Sony had already taken Europe from under the nose of a drunken SEGA, and the apathetic Nintendo was too busy trying to maintain their dominance in other regions.
As we all know, Nintendo would fail in doing this, attempting to push a console with a poor line-up of extremely expensive cartridge games. Developers left the sinking ship and it wasn't too long before the PlayStation dominated pretty much everywhere.
The Saturn enjoyed some success in Japan, but nowhere else. The N64 flopped in Japan, did good in the US with a reasonable market share (though Sony dominated), and did pants in Europe. Anyone remember those tiny corners of GAME that N64 products were relegated to (right next to the even smaller SEGA Saturn shelf)?
SEGA upped it's game in 1999 with the ground-breaking Dreamcast (seriously, that console did things that new consoles pretend to have done first). Not only was it technically very strong, it was also damn cheap for a new console.
£199.99. I remember paying that on launch, with a copy of Virtua Fighter 3 to go with. I even remember the console being delayed in Europe from September 23rd to October 14th, due to longer-than-expected construction of the European Dreamarena.
Although they totally got it right with the hardware (with the possible exception of not having a DVD drive), they had some kind of mental breakdown when it came to marketing it. Adverts featured sweaty men cutting each others hair, sponsoring Arsenal FC, etc.
Most people who loved football back then didn't play games (I know it's different now). As for the television adverts, had they actually shown any footage of games, people would have been blown away. As it was, most people just stuck with their PlayStations.
A year later in 2000 Sony hit back and cemented themselves as the biggest provider of video game entertainment with the PS2. It wasn't so long ago, so I guess you remember all this. In a nutshell - most successful console EVER. It sold over 150 million. More than anything else ever has.
With the PS2, Sony dominated in all regions. This generation saw a new entrant - Microsoft with the Xbox. The only reason that console didn't disappear like the Dreamcast is that it had the world's richest corporation/monopoly backing it. They lost billions on that console.
But because MS and it's umpteen umbrella operations have essentially bottomless-pockets, and they saw how lucrative the console market could be, they kept the Xbox division afloat regardless of the losses incurred. They hoped to establish a brand which would become profitable in time.
Nintendo released the wet fart that was the GameCube. With it's useless little diddy discs, Tonka Toy visual cues, mostly-childish software lineup (despite the best RE game ever - REmake), and being officially-purple, it did not really make a dent on the PS2. The little discs were apparently Nintendo's compromise with developers.
Extremely piracy-conscious (the reason the N64 did not use discs), Nintendo thought this would be a good middle-ground. This would backfire hilariously when people discovered that the GameCube was just as pirate-friendly as the PS2/Xbox. The only difference is that you had to use mini DVD-Rs meant for camcorders. So once again the current Nintendo platform of the day would suffer a big storage-capacity disadvantage to competitors, but unlike before, was equally-susceptible to piracy.
Now we arrive at this generation. Nintendo have pwned by not trying to sell their console to gamers (who are a very discerning bunch), but rather everyone else. MS and Sony are fighting over the core audience, and seem (to me) to be on a relatively level-pegging. MS has a bigger share than Sony in the US, not sure about Europe (I reckon about the same?), and roughly 4 people in Japan have a 360.
I've no idea why I typed all this out. Hopefully someone won't see it as a "tl;dr"