Oh how soon we forget.
The truth is that game companies have been making these kinds of huge mistakes for decades, usually on their third outing. Going all the way back to the days when Sega and Nintendo were the top two contenders. Sega found success with it's second console, the Genesis, but then proceeded to flood the market with hardware and confuse consumers with it's third generation consoles, the 32X and the Saturn. The 32X confused customers by being an attachment to the Genesis rather than a stand alone machine, and it made matters worse when Sega quickly dropped support for the add-on. The Saturn, on the other hand, was a victim of the transition from 2-D to 3-D games, or more specifically, it was a victim of Sony's Playstation. Sony caught Sega completely off guard with the Playstation, a machine designed from the ground up for three dimensional gaming. This caused Sega to release the Saturn months ahead of time, leaving game developers and consumers baffled.
Fast forward to a little over a year later and Nintendo released it's third console, the Nintendo64. Opting to buck the inevitable transition to disc based media and stick with the much more expensive cartridges, this was when Nintendo lost it's spot as kings of console gaming. I wouldn't call the Nintendo64 a failure, but Nintendo's decision to stick with carts, coupled with new policies making it harder for 3rd parties to put out games for the console, meant that it would go on to lose to Sony's Playstation.
But not even Sony, with it's record breaking sales from both the original Playstation and its successor, the Playstation 2 (which would go on to become the best selling console of all time), could break the curse of game console makers stumbling on the third outing. Even with Microsoft releasing the Xbox360 a full year ahead of the Playstation 3, Sony, along with just about everyone else, was confident that the immense popularity of the Playstation brand meant that the PS3 would quickly catch up to, and surpass the Xbox360 in sales. But ultimately, the high price tag of the PS3, along with a hard-to-develop-for architecture kept the PS3 trailing behind Microsoft's machine month after month. It didn't help either that many top Sony executives were quoted saying things like "we want people to get a second job to be able to afford the PS3", or, "we could launch the PS3 for $1000 and no games and still sell out". There's seems to be some debate as to which console has the most sales worldwide, but here in America the bad decisions made by Sony with the Playstation 3 clearly lost them the crown.
And here we are again, watching yet another leading console maker - Microsoft - stumble on their third outing. What's so incredible about Microsoft is that some of the mistakes that they're making with the Xbox One appear to be the same mistakes that Sony made with the PS3. Ironically, these mistakes that Sony made are what allowed the Xbox360 to step in and take the lead. You'd think someone at Microsoft would've been paying attention to that. Of course Microsoft managed to create an entirely new set of problems, not the least of which being the used game issue, followed by the always-online announcement. It's almost sad to think that if no other major players enter the console gaming arena, this could be the last time we see a company so publicy implode. But I'm sure someone will come along and keep things interesting.
They say that the third time is a charm, but when it comes to video game consoles, it looks like the third time is a curse.
