Game System Wars

One of the interesting and common threads found in the creative applications built with the Amazon Web Services is the fact that they can take data that's been laying out there in plain sight for a number of years and turn it on its side (so to speak) to provide a whole new look at it. We saw this several years ago with applications like Live Plasma and the Hive Group Honeycomb.

Earlier this year I blogged about The DVD Wars, which used Amazon data to provide a bird's-eye view of the market for two the competing next -generation DVD formats. Sites like this can help consumers to make purchasing decisions based on real data about which format has the most available titles, and how well those titles are doing. Personally, I have sometimes found myself buying "none of the above" in these situations, since I don't want to bet on the wrong horse (yes, I did buy a Betamax VCR, how did you guess?).

There's a new multiple-choice purchasing decision on the horizon now - which next generation gaming system should you buy? The author of The DVD Wars has built another site to help with this decision. The Game System Wars compares a number of metrics for the Nintendo Wii, the Microsoft XBox 360, and the Sony Playstation 3. There are a number of charts featuring live and historical data showing trends in sales rank, number of titles, number of accessories, and lots more.

Very cool!

-- Jeff;