Skip to main content



Cascading Behavior in the “Console Wars”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2013/11/14/ps4-vs-xbox-one-winner-emerges-via-social-media-analysis/#2d152c55665d

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_Seventh_generation

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/272742/ps4-vs-xbox-one-vs-switch-global-lifetime-salesjanuary-2018/

 

These articles and charts show the evolution of the popularity and sales figures of the consoles from the big 3 game and console makers: Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.  For the 7th and 8th generation of home consoles: Microsoft made the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, Sony made the PS3 and PS4, and Nintendo made the Wii and Switch (the Wii U is also an 8th Generation console from Nintendo but is not shown in these figures and was replaced by the Switch).  PC gaming might have something to do with these shifts since it only gets more popular every year, but we can’t say for certain.

Although it is not explicitly said, some of these shifts in popularity are probably from cascading behavior in networks.  The social network being the people who buy home consoles and the choices are between 3 different consoles of that generation (in class was 2 choices of A or B).  We will name the choices based on the companies offering the consoles (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo).

For the 7th generation of consoles, the Nintendo Wii was the clear victor.  Appropriately code-named “Revolution”, it introduced revolutionary new ways to play video games and quickly outsold both Microsoft’s Xbox 360 followed by Sony’s PS3.  So many people were buying Wii’s that so many people looked past the other options.  The threshold value is unknown, but the fact that so many people bought a Wii means that the fraction of neighbors most likely far surpassed the threshold of choosing Nintendo’s console over the others.  There were so many initial adopters of the Wii that so many neighbors were using the Wii, so the Wii quickly cascaded through a lot of the network.

For the 8th generation of consoles, everything completely flipped.  Sony’s PS4 outsold both Microsoft’s Xbox One followed by Nintendo’s Switch.  Some factors of this include poor reception of Microsoft’s press conference at the E3 conference compared to Sony’s successful press conference at the same event.  It also became clearer that Nintendo was more focused on a different audience group than what Microsoft and Sony were aimed towards.  Nonetheless, so many initial adopters of the PS4 lead to many PS4 owners and a smaller number of Xbox One and Switch owners.

We can draw many parallels from these so-called “Console Wars” and the diffusion of behavior on a social network we discussed in class.  There were initial adopters of the different 7th generation consoles and their choices cascaded throughout the social network.  When the 8th generation consoles came out, new initial adopters chose new consoles that then spread once again throughout the same network.  There are many factors we did not consider such as brand loyalty, not switching to an 8th generation console, the shift of audiences, etc., but when we have social media that helps spread opinions of the new consoles it is pretty much certain that this concept that we covered in class has some effect on the console market.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Blogging Calendar

November 2018
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  

Archives