Console Manufacturer - First-mover Advantage

First-mover Advantage

The first-mover advantage that certain console manufacturers experience can be a great boost, on the other hand is it a somewhat risky strategy. Though it may attract early adopters by providing an advanced alternative to current offering, this strategy leaves room for competitors to copy the hasty company’s successes and learn from its mistakes. While there have been cases of consoles becoming successful partly because they were the first ones released within a specific era (most notably Sega with their Mega Drive during the 16-bit era), success from being the “first-mover” is not always guaranteed. Sega tried once again but failed to reap benefits by being the first-mover during the 128-bit era with their Dreamcast. Unfortunately for Sega, many consumers decided that they would rather wait for the PlayStation 2 to be released instead. Other console manufacturers have also attempted this strategy, such as the 3DO and Jaguar, all failed miserably. Nearly every console manufacturer who released their console first to the market by a significant margin, permanently exited the race soon after. Despite this trend, in releasing the Xbox 360 before its competitors’ products were released, Microsoft hoped to benefit greatly from the first-mover advantage – and its gamble paid off, shipping around 6 million units before the others launched. As many gamers decided to buy a cheap, novel Wii, and only one of the expensive, high-end, traditional alternatives, Microsoft’s early launch allowed it to firmly trounce Sony in the first years of the seventh generation. However within a year of the Nintendo Wii launch it had already beaten Xbox 360 sales which had been available for 2 years already.