Nintendo Switch's Success Is A Good Thing For The Game-Industry

Sony has dominated three out of the four generations of home-consoles it has been a part of. The original PlayStation dominated the Nintendo 64 because of its less-expensive and larger-capacity CDs; and easier development-process. PlayStation 2 is still the best-selling dedicated videogame-platform ever created at 155 million sold. Although Nintendo improved things with their Gamecube, it wasn't enough, especially as Microsoft entered the fray and took some market-share that could have belonged to Nintendo. Nintendo's Wii technically took its generation with 101 million, but gamers did not use it as their primary gaming-device. The Xbox 360 won the hearts of gamers with 84 million sold, but PlayStation 3 caught up after a slow start, and wasn't far off, with 80 million.

Wii U failed, in part, because Nintendo marketed it towards gamers, and gamers had, for the most part, ignored the Wii. PlayStation 4 did all the right things at the right times. There was a big underground movement within gamers to play games on gaming-PCs. The "PC Master Race" thing, initially intended to insult PC-gamers, actually became something that PC-gamers rallied behind, and by the time PlayStation 4 was revealed, all the pedantic details about videogames, whether they be resolutions or framerates, was at the forefront of conversations. More than ever, people were interested in numbers, as it applied to the power of a machine. When PlayStation 4 was announced to be stronger than the Xbox One, and at a lower price, it was a 1-2 punch. Combine that with the fact that PlayStation 3's best game: The Last of Us, had launched that spring, and people were respecting Sony, the publisher, as they never had before.

Nintendo Switch is what the game-industry needs: competition. Sony has had it too easy for far too long. Competition has always pushed companies to make better products. When Sega and Nintendo were going blow for blow in the 1990s, the last golden age of gaming happened: the 16-bit generation. Nintendo Switch's success will be the perfect kick in the tail for Sony to up their game, and we, as gamers, will reap the benefits.

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