Seriously, Console Wars Are Pointless

[Mojo]

The only solution I can see is to have a universal gaming OS that can run the Unreal Engine, Cryengine, Frostbite, Unity, Game Maker, RPG Maker, XNA, Havok, Source and other engines and Frameworks and license it to game developers and manufacture consoles that can efficiently run those engines. Of course this will never happen, as much as I wish it would.

Considering that the first three are all owned (directly or indirectly) through EA, and that those three engines are responsible for a vast number of popular titles and franchises (especially the modern shooters), it'd honestly be in EA's best interest to push for a single standardized console. It'd cut their development costs immensely by removing the need to port the game to whichever console they didn't focus on during development.

The Unreal Engine was made by and is owned by Epic Games who are not owned (directly or indirectly) by EA. The Cryengine was made my Crytek who partnered with EA for a while, but Far Cry was still published by Ubisoft. I guess you could say the Frostbite engine is indirectly owned by EA since all games made with it were published by EA, contrary to the other two engines though.

Gaming engine developers just need to slow down, and stop making such demanding engines. Take a page out of Valve's book, match the requirements for Source. Crysis does not look pretty on my machine, it just looks like a screen full of jaggies, and a 40FPS frame rate.

First you say that competition is good because it enhanced the graphics of the Atari and the NES, but now you say game developers should stop improving them? I get that obviously the Source engine has better visuals then the NES but if you argue that way, maybe we should have just stuck the the original quake engine then. The Source engine doesn't have directX 11 or PhysX and cant handle huge open worlds like Skyrim or GTA, all of which can look pretty damn awesome if you ask me. Sure you can say we don't "need" that, but we don't need the Source engine either then do we?

 

[Vuliev]

The Unreal Engine was made by and is owned by Epic Games who are not owned (directly or indirectly) by EA. The Cryengine was made my Crytek who partnered with EA for a while, but Far Cry was still published by Ubisoft. I guess you could say the Frostbite engine is indirectly owned by EA since all games made with it were published by EA, contrary to the other two engines though.

Ah, my mistake--I was under the impression that EA had bought Epic and Crytek. DICE, the owners of Frostbite, is owned by EA, though.

 

[Treblaine]

One thing that gives me hope is the recent trend of Android-powered gaming devices like the Archos Gamepad [http://www.archos.com/products/gamepad/index.html?country=ca&lang=en], the Wikipad [http://www.wikipad.com/], the Ouya [http://www.ouya.tv/] and Project Shield [http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/7/3845282/nvidia-announces-project-shield-handheld-gaming-system]. None of these are console-killers at the moment, but if any of them manage to get some third-party support they'll represent an important step on the road towards standardized gaming hardware.

Valve's console project also seems promising, if the rumours of it basically being a pre-configured Linux PC running Steam's Big Picture mode are true, but we'll have to wait for more details on that.

They may show the way forward, but what will really take it is Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all sitting around a table and agreeing to a standardised platform, where they are still in the hardware game for peripherals but they are mainly software focused.

I'll tell you, it's closer to that than it's ever been before.

Nintendo is least likely to bite, Microsoft and Sony I can see signing anything to grease the wheels, but Nintendo's got a history, they've got pride. They "saved console gaming" after the collapse of 1983, saved it with the licensing and exclusivity model we have today.

That made console gaming survive, but console gaming is not on the bring of disappearing now, it's a massive industry that directly competes with movies and TV revenue.

Sony have been distancing themselves, they have diverging hardware between PS3, PSV and increasing presence in PC gaming (Planetside 2). Hell, they renamed PlaysStation Network to "Sony Entertainment Network".

One thing about this one singular box is the networks might be separate, Xbox Live would exists as a completley separate login from Sony Online and Nintendo.

The box would be nothing but dead dry hardware. And it might as well be, the way you interact with the Xbox 360 has changed so much sicne it launched in 2005 even if you have the exact same hardware, from software updates.

See Microsoft doesn't exist in the hardware, it exists in the software, and and here is the thing where I think Microsoft will want to sign:

If someone buys this supposed Multi-Console to play a Sony game... then all Microsoft have to do to win them over to buying their games... is just advertise "Hey, download the Xbox Live app". Before, if someone had bought a PS3 it was a tough sell convincing them to get buy Microsoft games as they'd have to fork out for a console, but now that barrier would be down. They could smuggle their games onto what would have been the equivalent of them buying a PS3. And vice versa, the exact same applies to Sony seeing people who bought a console to play a Microsoft game like Halo

It's brilliant, it COULD work, I can see the capitalist liking this and going for it and liking it so much they'll never want to go back.

The question is, how will we get there and how long will it take?!?

 

[Treblaine]

I say playing Uncharted on Xbox would be terrible, mainly because I love how Uncharted's grenade throwing mechanics work well with dualshock.

Much like on PC, peripherals would be an open market for things like that. You could easily get a different controller that had motion controls for games that support them.

But the incentive would be to get advanced technology widespread and inter-operable. Look at the PC market how much peripheral technology has advanced by competition and no guiding body at all.

Even if Sony owned the patents to motion sensor in Dual-shock, Microsoft games on this uni-console could use that feature.

Microsoft and Sony would exist on like Sega, as publishers. But I think a key part is big guys like those will command their own custom operating system for standardised hardware. So turning it on you chose Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony OS, then you join their network and their store, just like Steam and Origin model on PC.

Because the Xbox branding... it's not on the hardware, it's on the software.

 

[medv4380]

If someone buys this supposed Multi-Console to play a Sony game... then all Microsoft have to do to win them over to buying their games... is just advertise "Hey, download the Xbox Live app". Before, if someone had bought a PS3 it was a tough sell convincing them to get buy Microsoft games as they'd have to fork out for a console, but now that barrier would be down. They could smuggle their games onto what would have been the equivalent of them buying a PS3. And vice versa, the exact same applies to Sony seeing people who bought a console to play a Microsoft game like Halo

It's brilliant, it COULD work, I can see the capitalist liking this and going for it and liking it so much they'll never want to go back.

The question is, how will we get there and how long will it take?!?

Wouldn't work, and whoever tries it would kill their company.

Lets exclude Nintendo from this part because it doesn't apply to them, and hasn't for them since they entered into the console market.

The hurdle to this Multi Console is cost. Sony and MS "technically" have to jump it, but they have an alternative. They choose to use the Razor and Blade marketing model in order to Sell the Systems at a huge loss. If they didn't the PS3 would have cost upwards of 800$ at launch. So your choice is do you buy a single PS3 20GB for 800 or for 500?

Sony wanted to sell units so they opted for the 300$ loss and planed on selling games to make up for that loss. The "Multi Console" doesn't have the option so they'd have to have that full 800 price at launch. Then to tack on the cross compatibility you're going to have an increase. Some parts are shared but some are not. The Processor is the killer piece. They are "almost" the same, but one has bonded units to create cores and one missing core for backwards compatibility with the XBox. This means ether two very expensive processors or a custom processor. Custom means it wouldn't take advantage of the PS3 or 360 price drops and would have to drop at its own pace. You're looking at a single system that's over 1000$ just to break even. If you want even a modest profit you're going to have to sell them for 1200 or 1500. This is not practical, and is why it's not done. If you included the Wii on this the architecture is radically different and would increase the price to the point where just getting a Wii CPU instead of a custom build would be better.

So lets go by their current costs. Do you buy the single Super Console for 500$ or each of the others for 200 - 250? If you're rich you go for the Super Console if you're getting both anyways. If you're reasonable and understand your budget you buy the one that is best for you for your money. Sometimes that's a PS3, and others it's an 360. You might want both economically but most of us can't afford every system whenever we want.

The only way your Super Console would even be possible is if MS and Sony worked together and sold it at a HUGE loss to make it, and agreed to SHARE profits on the games for their respective system. That's never going to happen.

 

[Atmos Duality]

It's not a competitive market so much as it is three separate monopolies, all trying to get exclusive titles and franchises, rigidly controlling what can and cannot be played on their turf.

I've been calling it an oligopoly for years, though I was also referring to the deadlock on the market the publishers had and not just the console companies.

Fortunately, since then, their market has been coming apart. Things are changing.
Some for the better (linux-based platforms are getting more support than before), some for the worse (DRM in general).

None of the Big Three would stand for complete standardization, it'd kill their gaming business.
Of course, with such standardization, you wouldn't really have consoles at that point, because consoles as we know them are just propriety computer systems made to play games.

 

[Scow2]

So, Yahtzee, if Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo become glorified game publishers and controller-makers, then who is going to decide when it's time to update the standardized hardware that runs these games and controllers? Currently, consoles become more powerful each generation because each console manufacturer does not want to be the one with the least powerful console (unless you are Nintendo). Where would that motivation to upgrade hardware come from if not competition with other businesses? Why would the big three undertake massive R&D and tooling facilities to make new hardware when they are making a great profit with old hardware?

If you idea was implemented 8 years ago I bet we'd all be on the Nintendo Wii with no hint of future generations of hardware on the horizon. Wouldn't seem like such a great idea then, huh?

"If Hollywood only makes movies and DVDs, then who is going to decide when DVD players get upgraded?"

Simple, the public does. He's not advocating for a single static console, he's saying consoles should be more like DVD players and be able to run all games universally. And when the time comes for updated hardware, you can have your pick of the new consoles that are being produced, just like when Blu-Ray came out. And the public chooses via the free market if this becomes the new standard. That way nobody is strong-armed by exclusives into buying a particular new console with gimmicky features they really don't want, they can pick a console to suit their needs and style.

His platform is that the companies SHOULDN'T be what they are.

Nintendo is a game-maker that creates hardware specifically designed and tailored to the needs of its games. This is the ONLY company that is actually a game developer and publisher, and them making their own consoles is what sets them above, say, EA or Activision. They will not bow to working within the constraints set upon them by others' hardware creations, and instead make consoles specifically designed to run their games.

Microsoft is a massive Operating System and Software vendor, and is the closest to the "Stripped down Gaming PC" people think ALL consoles are. The Xbox is seen as the "Standard" console because of this - it's designed to be a simple gaming/entertainment platform pretty open to other developers, with hardware and firmware comfortable and familiar to PC game developers, giving them the stablity of a console and familiarity of a computer. In fact, this functionality is in the console's name: "Direct-X Box".

Valve seems like it will be entering the console war as something of a hybrid between Nintendo and Microsoft, being primarily a Games Distributor - to that end, they seem to be making a platform capable of getting STEAM out to everyone, without straddling their service to a box where it has to compete for functionality and processes that a standard computer has to.

Sony is a home-entertainment systems manufacturer. Games are a VERY small part of their business model. Furthermore, it's pretty much their modus operandi to create proprietary innovations similar to what's already on the market (Or bringing something new to the market) that carry either a superior quality or convenience but straddled with proprietary Patent/Copyright protection. All the "Format Wars" of the past usually had Sony on one side of them - Betamax Vs. VHS. BluRay vs. HDDVD. MiniDisk vs. CD and early MP3 players. The only "Format War" not involving them is Mac vs. PC. Thriving on and propagating the "Console War" is entirely characteristic of them.

So, essentially, the reason we don't have a "Video game platform Standard" is because each console is made by a company with a unique vision for how their respective gaming platform fits in with their business model - Nintendo makes the console for its games. Microsoft makes a console for others to make games for, Valve is making a console that plays their games, and Sony's making a console that's different from everyone else's because they're Sony.

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

why I want to agree with Yahtzee on consoles being similar in power the ps3 does have bluray optical media and major support from Japanese developers for console exclusives. I know that some people do not care if they ever play any jrpgs or Japanese type games, however this is still a big market and helps move game systems.

The second thing I pointed out is blu-ray optical, while the 360 and ps3 have games that virtually look the same one thing does still remain which is multiple number of disc. These however are the only difference in this console generation the previous 128 bit gen that not only had 4 systems, but some of the greatest games ever made.

On a personal note I think that the console wars are just stupid/pointless. Please just play games people regardless of the system you own. Now if you are able to afford all 3 then by all means go ahead since it's smarter then adding flames to a pointless war. Now I leave you all with something I dug up recently out of my closet.

 

[DanDeFool]

Yahtzee brought up the idea of emulation, and it brings to mind a question that's been nagging me ever since I first saw a copy of bleem (look it up) at Best Buy.

Why don't console manufacturers ever make their own emulators?

How easy would it be for Sony to write an authorized PS2 emulator and release it on PC? If a bunch of bedroom programmers can make this shit work in their free time, it seems like it'd be easy for Sony to do an official (and superior) version and sell it.

Maybe there are piracy issues or something.

 

[Treblaine]

If someone buys this supposed Multi-Console to play a Sony game... then all Microsoft have to do to win them over to buying their games... is just advertise "Hey, download the Xbox Live app". Before, if someone had bought a PS3 it was a tough sell convincing them to get buy Microsoft games as they'd have to fork out for a console, but now that barrier would be down. They could smuggle their games onto what would have been the equivalent of them buying a PS3. And vice versa, the exact same applies to Sony seeing people who bought a console to play a Microsoft game like Halo

It's brilliant, it COULD work, I can see the capitalist liking this and going for it and liking it so much they'll never want to go back.

The question is, how will we get there and how long will it take?!?

Wouldn't work, and whoever tries it would kill their company.

Lets exclude Nintendo from this part because it doesn't apply to them, and hasn't for them since they entered into the console market.

The hurdle to this Multi Console is cost. Sony and MS "technically" have to jump it, but they have an alternative. They choose to use the Razor and Blade marketing model in order to Sell the Systems at a huge loss. If they didn't the PS3 would have cost upwards of 800$ at launch. So your choice is do you buy a single PS3 20GB for 800 or for 500?

Sony wanted to sell units so they opted for the 300$ loss and planed on selling games to make up for that loss. The "Multi Console" doesn't have the option so they'd have to have that full 800 price at launch. Then to tack on the cross compatibility you're going to have an increase. Some parts are shared but some are not. The Processor is the killer piece. They are "almost" the same, but one has bonded units to create cores and one missing core for backwards compatibility with the XBox. This means ether two very expensive processors or a custom processor. Custom means it wouldn't take advantage of the PS3 or 360 price drops and would have to drop at its own pace. You're looking at a single system that's over 1000$ just to break even. If you want even a modest profit you're going to have to sell them for 1200 or 1500. This is not practical, and is why it's not done. If you included the Wii on this the architecture is radically different and would increase the price to the point where just getting a Wii CPU instead of a custom build would be better.

So lets go by their current costs. Do you buy the single Super Console for 500$ or each of the others for 200 - 250? If you're rich you go for the Super Console if you're getting both anyways. If you're reasonable and understand your budget you buy the one that is best for you for your money. Sometimes that's a PS3, and others it's an 360. You might want both economically but most of us can't afford every system whenever we want.

The only way your Super Console would even be possible is if MS and Sony worked together and sold it at a HUGE loss to make it, and agreed to SHARE profits on the games for their respective system. That's never going to happen.

Spoiler: tl:dr, skip to summary

Sony and Microsoft don't manufacture their hardware anyway, they get Foxxcon to do it.

Xbox 360 didn't sell for a huge loss:

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/05/ps3_vs_xbox_360/

Yeah, hardware as capable as Xbox 360 Elite was made for $320 in 2007. I remind you the Elite console included a small form-factor $120GB hard drive back then hare drives that small and that high capacity were balls expensive. Now Hard drive price is plummeting for capacity greater than we knew what to do with.

If they didn't the PS3 would have cost upwards of 800$ at launch.

That's not for high performance, that's for obtusely different components. Shit like the Cell processor was very expensive but made virtually no difference to performance.

Even if the console cost $60 more, that is ONE PURCHASE to play ALL CONSOLE GAMES! There is no possibility of suddenly needing to drop another $400 on another console because a game you really like has come out but on the other system.

The fact is public are cottoning on to the "loss leader" plan utterly fucks them over. Yeah they pay $250 rather than $330 up front, but then EVERY NEW GAME costs and extra $15 in licencing. $15 adds up. You buy 5 games, that's $75 buck, and I'd probably spend more than 5x$60 on games if each game was $45.

People are used to paying high up front costs for low running, million of people spend $800 on a phone then won't pay more than a 2 bucks for an app they use every day.

"Then to tack on the cross compatibility you're going to have an increase."

Fuck cross compatibility of different hardware. Send ONE HARDWARE SPEC SHEET to Foxconn, and they make ONE CHIPSET! Any upgrades would be by agreement with the consortium. The design DOWN TO THE FUNDAMENTALS is licensed out to anyone with the factory to make them to adequate standards. As consoles are in fact made today. Upgrades would mainly be in cost cutting, power-reduction, and form factor, they would all be functionally identical until a new series upgrade was made, normally after 3-4 moore's law cycles where there is an order of magnitude increase in processing capability.

" Custom means it wouldn't take advantage of the PS3 or 360 price drops"

It would. The consortium would work on redesigns to licence out to manufacturers like Foxconn, Toshiba, etc which would be cheaper to make.

" You're looking at a single system that's over 1000$ just to break even. If you want even a modest profit you're going to have to sell them for 1200 or 1500."

You're trying to make a $500 margin on a $1500 mass produced product. HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of these are going to be sold and you're trying to be so greedy. you'll end up with nothing as your competition will undercut so easily and willingly undercut? Mass produced things like these do far better on slimmer margins. Plus you pulled the $1000 out of nowhere.

Bottom line: a Uni-console in 2007 would have sold for $350 and games would have sold for $45.

Today there are even better options. Have entirely modular data-storage so you don't pay for any more than you need and can shop around for any hard drive you like at the price you like. Hard Disk Drives are so standardised they can be plugged in like N64 cartridges, just remember to power down the device before you insert/remove. Same as with N64 and every cartridge based handheld today. So that cuts a lot off the price.

AMD, Nvidia and Intel are developing very low cost "systems on a chip" that is GPU and CPU all on one chip that can be mass produced. Investing in one design will make it very cheap to make a single very capable system.

So with modular memory cutting cost, modern technology that makes powerful hardware no longer so expensive it needs to be loss leading, and the changing consumer trends of awareness of high running costs, a uni-system is very viable.

One advantage of this is how manufacturers can take the basic spec and release it in different form factors.

Ultimately the consortium would only have control over one thing, the configuration of the main-board that would have integrated GPU and CPU and standards for what type of interface they need like must have this type of power supply and so on. But beyond that manufacturers would have a free reign.

Samsung could integrate it into a TV. Another company could make a more cube shaped version, another a wide and ultra slim one. One could have a tray loading DVD drive, another slot loading.

but once the game is in the drive, they all play the exact same way, controller inputs are the same, the Video output is the same. But a company could make a laptop version, with an integrated screen and battery power. This exists already for Xbox 360 but it's a very expensive custom conversion mod that is totally unauthorised. Opening up the "set board" would mean a company could buy the base boards from Foxconn (built under licence to specification of the consortium) or whichever factory makes them as a discrete component. Then you jsut get compatible memory-storage modules (SSD, HDD, SD-card, you name it)

new smaller boards would be released over time, taking up less space and using less power. Eventually they'd be the size of a tablet and conceivably a company could buy the motherboard, construct a tablet around it and sell it as that.

It would be an open market of designs but it wouldn't be fractured by how each different design had games exclusivity. There are so many different DVD player designs but they all play DVDs!

So, in summary:

1. Sony, Microsoft and hopefully Nintendo all meet and agree on a set design of fundamental components of the motherboard. These are all the vital essential parts for the software, the hardware will always function the same. They write up standards for what components must be used with it, so it must be a blu-ray drive of at-least this speed, must have certain specification of power supply, must fit CPU cooling to certain standards.

2. consortium sells the motherboard licence to companies like Foxconn, with the promise they are already developing games and software for this hardware, Sony and Microsoft are already making Halo 11: Electric Boogaloo and Uncharted 7: the legend of Curly's gold for this chipset, and guarantee companies will buy chipsets to assemble into consumer components.

3. Foxconn sells the industrially manufactured boards to smaller companies that figure out how to assembled them. Whether a big chunky machine with cheap but effective Optical drive, or a sleek thin console, or integrated into a TV. Some may be without a DVD drive at all, focusing entirely on downloadable games. And price varying accordingly. This is left to the "artistes", it's not an industrial process like the motherboard, it's an open design process adapting to the form factor the consumer's choice.

4. Finished products are sold in stores all bearing the branding that they are a "Uni-System" (or whatever the branding) that means any Uni-branded game WILL work on this system, guaranteed. Just like the "DVD" symbol means putting a DVD movie in there it will just work.

5. Consortium immediately begin research on refining the design of the base board to be smaller, cheaper, less power hungry, as well as draw up designs for a next generation of an approximate order of magnitude more powerful. The smaller better boards function identically, software developers don't have to change a damn thing.

Ultimately the risk is spread around this way and is much more like how all other consumer electronics are made. And it IS a bullshit model selling your hardware at a loss then the consumer has to shill out an extra $15 per game for every new game they ever buy.

I think Sony and Microsft would much rather focus on the software side than agonise over hardware, just come up with a single good chipset that works with their software plans.

Consortium licences dynamically with more convenient board sizes, big industrial manufacturers like Foxconn use economy of scale to drive down costs, the end buyers tailor the form factor to the user's needs.

 

[Narcogen]

There are no economic incentives to create the world Yahtzee wants.

Console makers subsidize their hardware development and initial deployment with the portion they get from being the single channel through which software can be made available.

Having a single architecture shared by a broad platform with competing OEMs destroys that completely. It commoditizes the hardware and leads to a race to the bottom, which is where the PC space has gone. It's why the best and most cost-effective gaming rigs are custom builds, because getting hardware into the market at competitive price points means discrete graphics; and while this console generation is long in the tooth and the best gaming PCs always overpower them shortly after launch if not earlier, they're still more powerful than the least expensive laptops, tablets, and smaller, cheaper desktops.

What Valve is doing, for instance, is not creating an open architecture platform. They're not bringing PC gaming to the living room. They're bringing Steam to the living room. They're bringing their PC-based catalog to a new console, one that they will control and curate just as MS and Sony and Nintendo do their respective platforms.

Others have wished for it before, but there's simply no profit at all to be made in engaging in the industry as Yahtzee wishes it to be. One company or companies would bear the brunt of the costs for developing the platform, only to be undercut in the marketplace by cheap clones who pay less in licensing fees than the platform took to create. Raise the fees, and you'll have no OEMs, so the openness of your platform is for nought. Lower them, and your partners will kill you. Unable to act as a gatekeeper for access to technical specs or development kits, unable to control access to distribution channels, the platform leads will soon have no source of revenue. People will buy the cheapest version of the hardware they can find, developers will put their games out through distribution channels of least resistance, and piracy will be rampant, just as it is on the PC. To most established developers, this new platform will be less attractive than either the existing PC or console spaces.

I challenge anyone to develop a reasonable description for how a market could function under this model. I'd like to see one, but Yahtzee isn't the first one to suggest that they'd like to see the market work this way without explaining how it can, or why anyone other than gamers would want it to. Publishers, developers, and manufacturers certainly don't want it to.

 

[T_ConX]

Yahtzee is right. Why do I need three different boxes, each one costing $200 to $300, just to play Xenoblade, inFamous 2 and Forza 4?

 

[Pebkio]

Sniped because my post is too long...

Okay, let's go through a few basics with you:

Consoles seem more powerful than lesser rigs, true, but because they're made to be specialized. Meaning that they can ONLY do the small amount of tasks a console is designed to do, generating less software overhead and letting the processor run more efficiently. The invisible hand of money didn't make it that way, it was just the design of the hardware.

Console makers subsidize their hardware development and initial deployment with the portion they get from being the single channel through which software can be made available.

You say that like it's supposed to make sense. That's insane. Acer isn't losing mad cash by selling personal computers so why is Microsoft losing mad cash by selling proprietary computers? This is one of those "God works in mysterious ways" statements. You aren't really thinking about it, you just accept that companies HAVE TO use exclusive software because hardware is too expensive for them.

Case-in-point: PC users didn't put up with that nonsense from Microsoft in the 90s.

Raise the fees, and you'll have no OEMs, so the openness of your platform is for nought. Lower them, and your partners will kill you.

Well gee, Batman, why doesn't every company ever just form a small monopoly then? I'm pretty sure if we made a road system that only let American cars drive on it, GM wouldn't have needed a bail-out. Let's just forget the fact that GM needed that bail-out because it's competition was better in the eyes of the market.

Finally, Valve is a publisher who is dealing mainly in digital distribution. Nothing about that automatically forms the same monopoly as Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PS3 and Nintendo's Pile O' Poo. They just happen to be the most successful broad-range digital distributor and shouldn't be compared to what consoles are doing.
---

But since you asked, okay, I'll give you a system:

In a world, in which all consoles could play all games. Each company would have to hire an analyst. That analyst runs several tests of their particular target consumers (every year) and comes back with a sliding scale of features-to-cost... with the mean of the scale being what their patrons would most likely be willing to pay for. (We'll guess as to what each company would be doing)

Nintendo would make the cheap pieces of crap. Barely functioning, but cheapest. You can technically play new games, but the frame-rate kinda sucks, load times are a *****, and there's practically no online community beyond a store.

Xbox would be in the middle. The games play alright, but still chug a bit during big scenes. Since this is the in the "middle console" range, it's more likely to have a large, more dynamic, online community and therefore have the best online features.

Sony would be the high-end producers. They'd have to streamline their OS, removing a lot of the whiz-bangs and doodads you'd see on the Xbox... but you'd rarely have issues playing a game smoothly. AND, you'd get the best graphical experience.

Then there would be the pretentious open-source console, Ouya. Look at that name, even that's pretentious. That'd be the linux of consoles made for the niche crowd of people who like to root their system every damn time they want to run something. What a load. (I'm kidding, I like open-source stuff. Especially Linux).

Now, since exclusivity is a lie in this world, each company would do the same thing: Make a child company to publish games. Technically they could just publish games themselves... but why buy a Sony console to play a Microsoft game when you could buy a Sony console to play a "Realwin" game?

Each company would have it's own market, not through exclusivity, but through what that market's consumers wanted from the console. There would still be new controllers and even motion control, but it would be up to game developers to provide working facsimiles. And they would be able to, because the encoding for each console would have to be the same. There would be those gimmicky games, but efficiency would drive true innovation.
---

There, a system that works. Sure it doesn't produce the most amount of profit, but I think we're worshiping money a bit too much as it is. We don't need the MOST profit... just profit. Oh yeah, and consoles wouldn't be under-priced. Remember when I brought up that console producers are losing money on every console? It's because consoles cost more than what they're selling them for. Ask yourself why they're doing that. This post is long enough as it is, so I won't get into it here. But I'm hoping you can come up with the reason yourself.

 

[medv4380]

Ultimately the risk is spread around this way and is much more like how all other consumer electronics are made. And it IS a bullshit model selling your hardware at a loss then the consumer has to shill out an extra $15 per game for every new game they ever buy.

I think Sony and Microsft would much rather focus on the software side than agonise over hardware, just come up with a single good chipset that works with their software plans.

Consortium licences dynamically with more convenient board sizes, big industrial manufacturers like Foxconn use economy of scale to drive down costs, the end buyers tailor the form factor to the user's needs.

The risk is spread equally around? So you think this Super System would be able to be sold at a loss so that consumers could afford it, and that they would be willing to spread that loss equally? Nintendo would easily be in position to demand that the other pay a higher share since they make, and sell more games than Sony or MS. Sony and MS are dependent on 3rd parties to make the bulk of their AAA games.

It's not BS to sell the hardware at a loss, and you don't get an extra 15$ Sony or MS tax for it ether. AAA PC Titles cost 60$ at launch, and your PC isn't subsidized by selling at a loss. Most of the lack of Price cuts on the Console market comes from the Publishers and Game Stop figuring out how to properly meet demand. They don't over print their games by 50% anymore resulting in an early grave in the bargan bin. What does happen is that the developer get access to an Install base that wouldn't have been able to afford the equivilant hardware profile for a PC. Which means more sales, and that extra 15$ goes to the developer of the Hardware for making that possible. It means more sales to more people that you wouldn't have been able to sell to otherwise.

If your system wasn't sold at a loss then some Nobody can come in and steal a significant portion of the market. Just like how Sony and MS tried. Nintendo is the only developer that tries to sell at a Profit from the start, or with a modest loss easily covered by 1 or 2 games. That's why they always end up looking "slower", but end up with the more stable hardware. Sony went with the "Great Leap Forward" approach with a massive 300$ loss and a 500$ price point. Problem was MS did the exact same thing, but went with Cheaper RAM causing the RROD. Heck MS even stole the R&D Sony paid for from IBM by going to IBM and saying "We want the same processor you're making for Sony but a Year Earlier with XBox backwards compatibility". This is what makes it a WAR and not a friendly competition. But that's what is meant by Competition in Capitalism.

Anyone can enter into the Console market and try to become the next best thing, but if all you are is some generic nothing then someone else can come in with your exact hardware, and beat you by doing the simple things. Better Developer support, marketing, some novelty motion control, an exclusive must have game, or any little shinny bobble that gets Developers or Gamers.

There was, and probably still is, a very good reason people believed that the gaming market only could support 2 consoles. The Conservative model that Nintendo follows requiring good 1st party support, and the Razor and Blade model Sega and others have followed to the grave. They both work and they both move the market forward in their own way. The 3rd system was always supposed to be the PC for those too rich who could afford a new 1500$ system every 5 years or less. Great for testing new concepts. Bad for reaching a mass audience. The lines have blurred over the years, but the concepts is still there.

Your method sounds like it would more likely follow the model the lead to the Crash of 83. Dozens of nearly identical console with no reason to buy one over the other. Heck, you've even removed the profit motive to even make the hardware so it would be hard to see any reputable company following you on the death march.

 

[cookyt]

EDIT: Well technically the PC can allow you to 99% of all games ever made but it's kind of illegal to do so. Also the Phone market is kind of heading that way what with the Android, the only problem there is Apple as always.

Wait, what, illegal? To my knowledge, it's perfectly legal to play your games on PC, it's just cumbersome to achieve legality with some titles. You may have to buy/build your own hardware to dump your own system's BIOS and game ROMs, and then "lose" the original copy so that the backup clause with regards to copying digital media kicks in, and you're legally allowed to play with a dumped ROM. In the end there's always a way.

OT: while there's still money to be made in keeping things separate, I don't see any grand standardization of gaming happening anytime soon. Personally, I'd like to see things move more towards PC gaming with the big companies just selling custom rigs and services, but even that's not a solution. If you really wanted to standardize console hardware, I see a few

For one, you have the problem stemming from beefy OS's like Windows hogging resources. Maybe an OS can be developed specifically as a platform to run gaming machines on. That way, we can have a standard environment for developers to make games on. Of course, that would continue the separation of consoles and PCs as the PC gaming market is too entrenched in the Windows OS, so we miss out on the holy grail that is full game format compatibility.

Another problem is that by design, standardizing the hardware of game systems will remove one of consoles most powerful advantages: the freezing of hardware between generations. If consoles were standardized, there would be no enforceable way to freeze hardware. The vendors would all agree to use a certain set of specifications, and then they would try to one-up each other by producing more powerful hardware within the specifications of the old hardware. The quirks between each implementation would mean that no developer can write code for one configuration and expect it to work flawlessly on another.

You can prevent/mitigate this by either giving a single vendor license to produce certain components, or you can just live with all consoles having slightly different hardware. The first option would give a single company a monopoly on console hardware production. That is similar to the situation we're in now. The second option would mean a software layer would need to be built to handle these quirks, and we lose the speed gains of freezing hardware. That is more or less the situation the PC is in now.

This isn't to say that standardizing console hardware can't be done, but if we want to do it, we need to be smart about how to future-proof things so that the inexorable march of progress doesn't stamp all over our plans. This can be accomplished by a well-defined set of rules on how and when hardware will be changed, and in what way. Frankly, I don't see how anybody capable of producing the hardware will want to agree to such a set of rules (there would be money to be made in breaking these rules), so I'm at a loss.

 

[Pebkio]

So you think this Super System would be able to be sold at a loss so that consumers could afford it, and that they would be willing to spread that loss equally?
...
The 3rd system was always supposed to be the PC for those too rich who could afford a new 1500$ system every 5 years or less. Great for testing new concepts. Bad for reaching a mass audience. The lines have blurred over the years, but the concepts is still there.

Your method sounds like it would more likely follow the model the lead to the Crash of 83. Dozens of nearly identical console with no reason to buy one over the other. Heck, you've even removed the profit motive to even make the hardware so it would be hard to see any reputable company following you on the death march.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on a few points:

"Sold at a loss so consumers can afford it" is a misrepresentation. It's a one-line brush off a big problem. There is only one reason to sell something for less than it's worth: So that you can then sell something else for more than it's worth. Microsoft and Sony aren't altruistic companies with the goal of "People NEED our product so we must take a loss to provide it to them". They're getting something out of it, that's why they do it. If they didn't get the profit they wanted, they'd stop undercutting themselves.

The PC has a high initial cost, but even back in the 80s, hardware was designed to be swappable. Even processors could be changed out for a fraction of the original costs. So no, any intelligent person wouldn't be spending $1500 every five years.

The crash of 83 wasn't because there were so many choices. It's because there were nothing but BAD choices. All of the game providers got lazy and sloppy and showed a real lack of quality so most of the consumers got their entertainment elsewhere. It stands to reason that if even a tenth of the console games showed themselves to be good, consumers would've purchased a console... which we saw when the NES was released.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

Well despite the fact different companies make different USB storage devices, there is the SD card slot so the USB isn't the only method.

I think there should be different consoles for the simple reason of "I want a Choice" for instance if I want to play online with a new game, but don't feel like reactivating my Xbox gold subscription, I can always pick up the PS 3 version instead or if the PS 3 version is shit I can opt for the PC or Xbox version.

Having no exclusives and 1 base system would create more problems than it would solve, there would be nothing you could do from getting screwed. One of the most powerful tools of the consumer is to say (screw you I'm going with the other guy) Take that away and watch publishers take even more advantage of us.

I don't buy PC games with annoying DRM, I don't like paying for Xbox live and I don't like the PS3 version of Skyrim. I want these companies to fight for my business, because the minute they don't have to is when we'll all get DRM, monthly subscriptions, Newly released hardware that's outdated (yes I'm looking at you Nintendo) and broken games with even bigger patches day 1. And if we don't like it we'll get told to suck it because where else are we going to go?

 

[ThatGuy]

Yahtzee brought up the idea of emulation, and it brings to mind a question that's been nagging me ever since I first saw a copy of bleem (look it up) at Best Buy.

Why don't console manufacturers ever make their own emulators?

How easy would it be for Sony to write an authorized PS2 emulator and release it on PC? If a bunch of bedroom programmers can make this shit work in their free time, it seems like it'd be easy for Sony to do an official (and superior) version and sell it.

Maybe there are piracy issues or something.

It would cannibalize their console sales. It's the same thing as selling a game console for the price of a software program. On the other hand, people always say that consoles (PS3 for example) are sold at a loss, and that they recoup the losses in games sales. But I'm skeptical...