2005: A Console Oddity

Frederic Diot of Datamonitor, a gaming industry analyst has aired his predictions on the state of gaming over the next few years. According to Diot, the PlayStation 2 will be the most popular console followed closely by the Xbox. He doesn't hold much hope for Nintendo's GameCube after the firm's failure with the Nintendo 64, nor for Sega, who will have been fed to the dogs by that time. Of course, his prediction doesn't take into account the average life expectancy for most consoles. In the late eighties we had the Master System, which was superseded by Sega's Mega Drive (or Genesis - depends where you live), and then of course we had the Saturn, and just recently the Dreamcast. During that time we also had the Game Gear, the Nomad, the 32X, and Sega CD... Even if you strip it down to simply the major releases that's one major console every 2-3 years. The same is also true of Nintendo, and expected to be true of both Sony and Microsoft, who look to be taking over the reigns of the console industry for the moment. With this in mind, Mr. Diot's predictions seem absurd. "Xbox is not expected in Europe before 2002, which means it will miss the Christmas period in Europe. It will allow Sony to sell more PlayStation 2. It will be all the more difficult for Microsoft to catch up." Make your mind up, but we're not so sure Mr. Diot is on the money. We would expect the next generation sooner than that, particularly from Sony, whose PS2 has been available in Japan since March of 2000.