Ryan Law brought up videogames. This past console generation offers a good example. The Playstation 2 was weaker, graphically, than the Gamecube and the Xbox. (It cost more than the former and less than the latter.) Moreover, it was plagued with hardware problems—after a couple years of use, a huge majority of first-generation PS2 owners reported numerous Disc Read Errors; their PS2s simply stopped reading games. Sony went as far as to remodel the console entirely, on top of settling a major class action lawsuit (in which they ceded no admission of hardware failure).
However, it wildly outsold the Gamecube and Xbox. It was, in a big way, the lowest common denominator. It could play old Playstation games, so users had a built-in library. They could even use their old controllers—a popular, if standard, design based on the Super Nintendo controller. The Gamecube tried a more innovative layout, with a large “home” button and surrounding buttons designed to accomodate thumb-sliding. The Xbox’s original controller was considered too big for most users. As for format, the Gamecube used minidiscs. They did not have as much capacity as DVDs, but they loaded much faster. The Xbox used DVDs and a hard drive (which made it the choice console for game pirating). The PS2 played CDs, DVDs, acted as a DVD player right out of the box, and came out before the other systems.
So the PS2 was a very conservative console. It did a lot of comfortable things, and even though Nintendo and Microsoft’s systems were unquestionably more powerful, there’s no doubt the PS2 “won”: it attracted the most software, as the lowest common denominator would be expected to do. Meanwhile, developers who spent their time on the other consoles enjoyed huge game sales from their smaller user bases: Itagaki and Tecmo on the Xbox, Nintendo (of course) on the Gamecube, etc.
Ryan Law brought up videogames. This past console generation offers a good example. The Playstation 2 was weaker, graphically, than the Gamecube and the Xbox. (It cost more than the former and less than the latter.) Moreover, it was plagued with hardware problems—after a couple years of use, a huge majority of first-generation PS2 owners reported numerous Disc Read Errors; their PS2s simply stopped reading games. Sony went as far as to remodel the console entirely, on top of settling a major class action lawsuit (in which they ceded no admission of hardware failure).
However, it wildly outsold the Gamecube and Xbox. It was, in a big way, the lowest common denominator. It could play old Playstation games, so users had a built-in library. They could even use their old controllers—a popular, if standard, design based on the Super Nintendo controller. The Gamecube tried a more innovative layout, with a large “home” button and surrounding buttons designed to accomodate thumb-sliding. The Xbox’s original controller was considered too big for most users. As for format, the Gamecube used minidiscs. They did not have as much capacity as DVDs, but they loaded much faster. The Xbox used DVDs and a hard drive (which made it the choice console for game pirating). The PS2 played CDs, DVDs, acted as a DVD player right out of the box, and came out before the other systems.
So the PS2 was a very conservative console. It did a lot of comfortable things, and even though Nintendo and Microsoft’s systems were unquestionably more powerful, there’s no doubt the PS2 “won”: it attracted the most software, as the lowest common denominator would be expected to do. Meanwhile, developers who spent their time on the other consoles enjoyed huge game sales from their smaller user bases: Itagaki and Tecmo on the Xbox, Nintendo (of course) on the Gamecube, etc.
As for the generation before that, I think the PlayStation beat the crap out of the Nintendo 64 because it was much easier to pirate games. :-)