Thread 11920353

Did people often bring up console unit sales to prove their side won the console war, or is that just a recent thing that young kids never really cared about?

>>11920353 (OP)
Anon think about it. Do you really think children were reading sales figures for game consoles so they could be more informed on why they (their parents) made the right choice in purchasing their system of choice, or do you think they just said it's better because of graphics or because they liked the games?

>>11920353 (OP)
People were doing it in Internet slapfights back in the day, yeah.

I’ve genuinely never understood why people cite console sales as proof that the games are good.
The Switch is nearing the end of its life, has sold over 152 million units, and still has way fewer exclusives than the PS3 or Xbox 360, even though the common claim was that its weaker hardware would lower development costs and make things simpler for studios. Clearly that didn’t happen, given how long it takes for Nintendo’s first-party games to come out on average.

>>11920353 (OP)
The data was printed in magazines so some people must have cared.

>>11920478
Forgot to add, but I still don’t get how the Switch managed to sell so many units despite having fewer games than past consoles. How is that even possible? Is the appeal of a portable gaming system really that significant?

>>11920478
>has way fewer exclusives than the PS3 or Xbox 360
No?

>>11920353 (OP)
It was seen as important because more consoles sold meant more games would be made for the system. We knew the fact that way more people bought a PS1 than an N64 was the biggest reason why it got more games.

>>11920353 (OP)
>Did people often bring up console unit sales
Sony invented that. They made their business struggle; YOUR struggle. So you could fully identify and integrate as the customer. Worked pretty well for them. Before 1994 nobody cared. The measure if what a good game was, was how much fun it delivered.

>>11920482
Not retro but the alternatives to the Switch are really shit.

>>11920478
The Switch has more exclusive titles than the 360 or PS3, also Nintendo themselves have published more games on the thing than they have on any of their previous consoles.

>>11920353 (OP)
I just talk about games, I find the subject of sales incredibly uninteresting.

>>11920353 (OP)
Buy an Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Sega CD, Virtual Boy or a Dremcast if you think sales numbers is not a direct reflection of the overall quality and trustworthiness of a product.

You can use a car brand analogy to understand why everyone bought a Sony PS2:
>Sony PS2: a BMW.
>Dreamcast: a shitty and weird italian car.
>Nintendo: a VW Beetle.
>Xbox: a generic Ford F150.

>>11920353 (OP)
People never really console warred much during the lifetime of the systems before maybe 7th gen. You'd here more discussion about MK vs street fighter than the root system. A Genesis v SNES debate was typically just a byproduct of sonic vs mario.

No one talked about sales, they talked about the games when it came to the superiority of their console of choice.

>>11920478
>Clearly that didn’t happen
No it did, that's why the eShop is saturated with absolute fucking trash

>>11920478
>The Switch
The sixth console generation existed years before the total brainrot induced by social media and smartphones.
People in the early 2000s still had some form of dignity, awareness and self-worthiness to understand what was right and wrong, true and false, valuable and useless, good and bad, genuine and fake, worth it and not worth it...etc.
It's a matter of context.
The video game market should have gone through another crash, similar to the Atari crash of the 80s, but that obviously won't happen again because the human population, nowadays, has the mentality of stray dogs.

>>11920353 (OP)
>or is that just a recent thing
Check vidya magazines from 1998-2002. Sales always mattered but they didn't got used to prove that psx won 5th gen or that ps2 won 6th and 7th gens.

>>11920481
Nice display for a 1994 magazine.

>>11920562
PS2 had a nice library but shitty build quality and poor performance

>>11920958
Same with PS1

>>11920493
>We knew the fact that way more people bought a PS1 than an N64 was the biggest reason why it got more games.
I swear, mindbogglingly retarded takes are becoming more and more frequent.

>>11920958
PS2 has a huge amount of games running at 60 fps
build quality? xbox is the worst

>>11920562
Everybody loves the DC's library tho. It didn't really fail either, SEGA just kind of went under for a lot of other reasons, all have which been talked about to death.

Jag, 3DO, Sega CD, all have good games on them. Arguably the SCD didn't fail, SEGA just stopped supporting it after like 1995 or so; 3DO wasn't a "failure" per se, it just came out with a mind boggling price tag (for the money it was first released for you could have gotten a NEO GEO, but that didn't have waow CD games).

I'd argue that the Jag didn't "fail" either, it seemed to be really big in the UK for whatever reason. Atari just went under for reasons that dated back to the late 80s and the overall business policies of the Tramiels.

>>11920493
No, that had to do with CDs being very inexpensive to manufacture and Nintendo alienating developers with the cartridges. Supposedly the N64 architecture is also a nightmare to program for, but I don't know much about that.

>>11920353 (OP)
Is it true Sony just keeps making up PS2 sales numbers anytime a console gets close to outselling it? I heard that the Switch surpassed it until sony 'all of a sudden" discovered a few extra million sales they just hadn't reported for some reason.

>>11920562
>Buy an Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Sega CD, Virtual Boy or a Dremcast
I've always wanted to, but sadly scalpers exist.

>>11920353 (OP)
It's mostly mentally ill cubies who try to put down the PS2 by saying it only mogged the fuck out of the shitcube because of its DVD player.
But if you remind cubies the PS2 also had a higher software attachment ratio, they all dilate and bleed out shortly after.

It mainly coems down to cubies being insecure little trannies butthurt the PS2 had more features like CD playback, online play with hundreds of games, and backwards compatibily with nearly every 5th gen game and PS1 accessory, all of which the shitcube all lacked.

>>11920353 (OP)
I never knew that PS2 sold so many units back then. I knew it was more than its competition though.

>>11920353 (OP)
anon console popularity was always important so you could get your friends to borrow you their games

>>11922692
Mifflin Devin sounds based.

>>11921476
Yeah it was mail in PS2 sales and it was totally legit.

It's a product of Youtubers and zoomers. The latter have no way of quantifying the great age they missed out on, so the best thry can do is read about it on Wikipedia and hear about it from Youtubers. It's how they "form" their opinions. Kids back in the day didn't believe in sales numbers.

>>11921476
it's fake nintendo zoomer BS. a sony exec mentioned the sales a while back as nintendo revealed theirs and all the autists thought it was sony trying to one up them. the sales numbers have been public for years and the 160M number line up perfectly with earlier numbers.

>>11920353 (OP)
no one cared about that, and that chart is more fake then a troon.
still wonder how many million sales will they add now that switch surpassed ps2 sales (again for 10th time, keep being butthurt gaystation fags!!).

>>11920353 (OP)
No, they didn't use to, and it really does come down to the 5th gen console war, seriously. Gaming discussions in the nascent internet were dominated by upper-middle income American kids; working class households and non-American families just weren't early adopters. The 5th gen console war comes in given that the N64 failed globally, and even within the US got smashed by the PlayStation; but its success among American rich kids guaranteed it a monopoly over the early internet discussions dominated by those same American rich kids. It's not like working class gamers had internet back then, and you know which system they owned? The PlayStation.

The discussion switched to sales once the rest of us got online, as that shattered the illusion that Ocarina is the only game that's allowed to exist and that it's universally-recognised as the platonic ideal of the medium.

>>11920353 (OP)
People generally didn't know how well their console was doing unless games stopped getting released for it. Halo and GTA felt like they were pretty much neck-to-neck in popularity until the numbers were just something you could look up on Wikipedia.

>>11920491
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nintendo_Switch-only_games

Half of those aren't real games but just indieslop garbage. 360 and ps3 did also have no games but switch is even worse when you count only real games

>>11921476
Nintendo fans got really unhinged over it because the only notable thing about the switch is the sales numbers. Sony stopped publicly updating numbers over a decade ago, internally it was tracked. Someone did an indepdent study half a decade ago and found out it's about 160m based on serial numbers, jimbo ryan confirmed it a year ago and it's the worst thing to ever happen to Nintendo fans.

tl;dr, PS2 sold well, Nintendo fans most affected.

>>11925143
>Indie games aren't real games
What are you retarded?

>>11925143
Also the eshop probably got a lot of Xbox Live ports that took away their exclusivity status.

>>11925149
Being honest doesn't make you retarded. Name 100 exclusive actual real games on Switch (you can't)

>>11925164
>Only games made by AAA studios are real games
Fucking kill yourself consoomer.

>>11925191
Not real games, queer.

>>11925308
So about 90% of retro titles would be consider "not real games" by your metric retard.