xDarc said:
l0ckd0wn said:
xDarc said:
It's computers... *shrug*
How bout those industry sales numbers bud, have we moved past Nintendo yet?
Because there is no need to. Because you do not understand your own argument. According to you, you should be able to look at any cross-section of gaming data and see a gradual increase in players and sales across the board to get us to where we are today. If it's due to gamers having children, they didn't have them all at once, there is a gradual increase- and the same is true with technological capaiblity.
The fact that Nintendo shows a decline in it's top sellers during the largest economic expansions in US history tells me your assumptions do not add up.
I think it's got more to dowith human nature. Those first waves of gamers aren't just the ones making the games anymore, they're the ones running the companies. Like the boomers, they are having their sell-out period that comes about 20-25 years after the "movement." Middle-age, about the same time people are at their peak of power and influence, burned out and bitter.
You won't find any numbers to back up that claim; but all the numbers I see don't support any kind of a trend or nice upward slope that shows how we got to where we are, slow and steady. It happened suddenly, and sudden jumps in a trend, up or down, is the result of a focused effort on the part of power and influence. Microsoft fits that definition pretty well.
Ahh, you do possess the ability to actually say something worth while.
To start, you are the one demanding a slow steady progression and I never claimed there was one. I used three distinct factors to make my claim as the reasons for the huge positive flux in gamers; 1.) The original generations of gamers did reproduce, but it was their far reaching social impact coupled with, 2.) technology and it's 3.) rise in availability and proliferation into everyday life.
10 years ago the only option we had for mobile email was RIM and dial up was still a very real thing for people accessing the net. With technology comes the embrace of technology, and thus why smart phones are the largest selling commodity next to oil right now. It's why we have 30 different BRAND NEW smart phones at any given time on the market. As technology gets CHEAPER and SMALLER the availability and proliferation of use tags along. The reason we have so many options for games and thus that many more people playing them is because of it's acceptance within society.
You latched on to what I said about gamers having gamers far to litteraly and focused entirely on the direct reproduction, which I wasn't focusing on. Yes gamers reproduce and gamers do grow out of some games, but whose to say they stop playing after a certain point? You focus on a finite period of time that you haven't defined to anyone else and no matter where in the historical life of games you focus, there is an increase in popularity over time. It's not consistant but it is there.
Also, the part where I mentioned tough economic times I was using as an example, and it actually could be a BOOST in sales because it is an entertainment item and during times of recession people go out less and find more entertainment at home; the same trend follows alcohol sales as well, with increases happening during times where the average person has LESS money.
If we step away from "gamers having gamers" like you are trying to pigeonhole what I first said, we are left with technology's impact on our lives, and it's been enormous during my/our lifetime. The more everything becomes just an optional application or cloud service or download away, the more integrated our gadgets and mobile entertainment vehicles become into our lives. What did people do on the train before we had iPhones, iPads and smart devices? They used manual, analog items like books and magazines. Many who would have brought a book with them now bring a tablet.
So in short; stop clinging to the "gamers having gamers" reasoning because you can't grasp what I'm trying to say with it and just consider how prolific technology has become into our lives and how accepted and made necessary it has become. With the advancement in processing power and the cheapening of technology it becomes more available, and more people have technology now than anywhere in history (duh), so with the increase of all things digital, games that are applications running on OSs that we now carry in our pockets are that much easier and available to use/play/etc.
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Now if you have an alternative reasoning to technology, I'd love to hear it. Showing just the sales numbers for a single company over their own lifetime, again, doesn't take into account any other system/company/competitor during that period and is just looking at data and pointing in a random direction and saying it's useful information and, at best, guessing what is happening with only partial facts.
For instance, in the years that the Xbox and Playstation were released, was there an impact on the sales of Nintendo and/or vice versa? This would be good to know, but only looking at Nintendo doesn't tell us that.
I asked about sales numbers for Sony & MS for their respective systems but you haven't given any. If we want to know real facts and figures, we have to consider the total units of consoles and games sold, then we can start parsing the data by company to show if there were net gains or losses in "gamers." Just looking at Nintendo only gives us an idea of how successful the products were compared to prior sales, which may not reflect an accurate representation of the data.
