Watchtower said:
First part yes. Never argued that. Second part, absolutey not, obviously. They are very much alike in terms of games, third party support and the demographics they are going for.
Really if we're back to 0 then at this point I will have to call it a night.
Arghhhhhhhh.
No they are not.
The PS2 was hugely successful with kids and females. Big markets. The former probably more so than the latter. Want to know why successful franchises from the PS2 like Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper and Ratchet and Clank are either dead or have experienced pretty heavy declines this generation? Because kids were a big part of their success, and they do not exist on the HD platforms in anywhere near the numbers they did on the PS2. For all the "lololol Nintendo is kiddie!" arguments that went around during last generation, the PS2 dominated that market.
Look at the sales of any Lego game. Or any Disney movie game. They sell on the Wii. Those games used to sell on the PS2.
Similarly, females were a large reason for the success of games like Buzz, Singstar and the Eyetoy games, especially in Europe. They've moved to the Wii, and made games like Wii Fit, Mario Kart, Guitar Hero (started on the PS2, ended up selling best on the Wii) into massive hits. Mario Kart was always a successful franchise, but it rocketed into the stratosphere this gen, because Nintendo completely captured those markets. It was always relatively successful in them, but this generation it dominated them like never before.
You can ignore those two segments of the market all you want and continue to put your fingers in your ear and say "lalalalala core games lalalalala I can't hear you", but the fact of the matter is, those demographics were a huge part of the success of the PS2. Just as the 'core' gamers were a huge part of the success of the PS2.
Look at it this way: the PS2 has sold around 1.5 billion pieces of software. And around 150 million consoles. That gives a nice round tie ratio of around 10. So that means, on average, a PS2 owner owns 10 games. That seems pretty low for a 'core' gamer, right? Even if you just include your figure of 100 million 'core' gamers and assume the next 50 million only used it as a DVD player. That gives us 15 games per owner. Even that's pretty low. If they owned a PS2 for 5 years, that's only 3 games a year. Doesn't sound very 'core' to me. I mean, if we're calling people who buy 3 games a year 'core', it seems to dilute the meaning of the word.
The PS2 was such a huge success because it basically managed to dominate every single demographic. I bet if you asked Sony, they'd say the exact same thing. The 360 and PS3, to this point, have failed to do that.
NBA Live was going to get destroyed either way. I think this is why they canceled. EA knew they couldn't take on Jordan with a sub par game.