Article: Save your Scorn
Do those predicting or celebrating the Wii’s decline have a point?
Published as part of our sister-site GamesIndustry.biz’ widely-read weekly newsletter, the GamesIndustry.biz Editorial is a weekly dissection of one of the issues weighing on the minds of the people at the top of the games business. It appears on Eurogamer after it goes out to GI.biz newsletter subscribers.
Only a few years ago, Microsoft was the company that couldn’t do anything right in the games market. The original Xbox was widely ridiculed – it was the size of a house, its controllers were designed for gorillas rather than humans – and the company’s quarterly reports, each revealing the scale of the gaping money pit in the Home & Entertainment division, were a steady dripfeed of further fodder for the fire.
Soon, though, it was Sony’s turn to occupy the stocks in the middle of the village. Around the launch of the PS3, the formerly dominant hardware firm couldn’t do anything right – and the slightest misstep was construed as a company-killing disaster.