Seriously, Console Wars Are Pointless

[YodaUnleashed]

I agree with Yahtzee (for once), I didn't buy a PS3 for the first time last year after being an Xbox 360 player exclusively for 6 years becuase I really wanted the hardware, I bought it because I was missing out on some really great-looking games that I wanted to play and experience but were only available on Sonies system. If consoles were standardised and this whole 'exclusivity' crap shelved, this would most certainly only widen the accessibility of the 'art form' that is video games which is only a good thing in my books.

 

[Treblaine]

The DVD player analogy would break down if DVDs came in different technical specifications that required progressively better hardware to run - like games do.

Xbox 360 is as powerful today in 2013 as it was when it launched in 2005.

The only changes to Xbox 360 have been to make it cheaper to manufacture, lower power consumption and peripheral changes like adding internal Wifi and a new Hard-drive and a fancy new looking box. It still runs software in the EXACT SAME WAY. The vital technical specifications are UNCHANGED!

Console technology moves forwards in big leaps like the leap from DVD to Blu-ray. But console has the equivalent of blu-ray and HD-DVD selling in the same market yet you can play HD-DVD on blu-ray players, nor Blu-ray on HD-DVD players and you can't jsut choose one as so many movies are exclusive to either Blu-ray or HD-DVD.

Look at how much Xbox 360 has kept up to spite using tech that wasn't even top-of-the-line in 2005.

 

[Treblaine]

No. They make a profit on the hardware the exact same way they make profits on this long exhaustive list of consumer electronics that are sold without being loss-leaders:
-Smartphones
-Tablets
-MP3 players
-Desktop PCs
-Laptops
-Giant HDTVs
-DVD and blu-ray players
-TV record boxes

Almost EVERY CONSUMER ELECTRONIC DEVICE is NOT sold as a loss leader but for a profit and people buy them at that price, and takes components of standardised compatibility.

Video game consoles are the one exception.

You have no idea what you're even talking about. Smartphones are mostly sold at a loss. The reason you can pickup the latest IPhone for less than 200 is because the company selling it is subsidizing the cost with your network contract.

DVRs ALL sold at a loss with a few minor exceptions. TiVos are subsidized with your monthly subscription, and that 99$ to free ones you get with Cable and Sat are subsidized with your TV subscriptions because they know that DVR owners are less likely to leave. Even just hucking up a customer to Direct TV with basic service gives them a Minimum 150$ loss. It takes a year and a half before they see any profit from that customer.

Heck even things like DSL are subsidized with your Phone service. Which is why they have to jack up the price if you get Stand Alone DSL.

AMD CPUs are frequently sold at a loss. There has only been a few years they've been able to sell at at profit because their power usage was better than intel, and that's what people wanted in their servers.

A significant portion of Consumer Electronics are sold at a loss.

You sell at a loss to establish your market share.
You're ether going to take advantage of Economies of Scale in hopes that Future production costs drop enough to make it profitable in the long term, you can bundle it so that the sum of all the products is greater than the loss, or you can go with the Razor and Blade Model and bank on selling enough Blades to make up for practically giving away the Razors.

No one wants to Spend 500$ on something like smart phone, DVR, or even a Game System.
No One wants to write software for something with no market share ether.

Your logic for your Utopia is completely devoid of Economic Reality.

I'm sorry, but that is NOT sold for a loss.

You are going nothing but paying in instalment, You CANNOT cancel the contract and keep the phone. You must keep paying. The cancellation fees are as high as if you kept paying the monthly costs.

Again, the games and apps are not used to subsidise the cost of the phone.

Again, TiVo subscription was a mandatory, it was no different from buying an SUV and paying instalments for months. Every single thing you bought for the TiVo didn't cost 25-30% more (which is how much console licencing increases the cost of console games) with that money going to TiVo.

Most Digital-recorders for TV as they have no subscription model at all, they sell for a net gain and just record TV when you want them to.

You sell at a loss to establish your market share.

That's a different matter entirely and doesn't mandate games each having a $15 licencing fee that must go to the hardware manufacturer. It's no greater hurdle to leap for a Universal Console than the current contrasting platform exclusivity agreement.

I agree, platform licencing is important. But different platforms with contrasting exclusivity is not the solution. And loss-leading model CANNOT be tolerated if it adds $15 onto a game that would be $45.

Pay in instalments if necessary... at least the payments eventually end. But the games will always be much more expensive than they should be.

"No one wants to Spend 500$ in an iPhone"

But they do. Their non-reversible network contract, the price difference between that same contract sim-only and what they actually have to pay per month after the initial money down cost... that IS WAY MORE THAN $500 just paid via instalments over 24 months. Are you so dense you don't realsie $500 disappearing out of you bank account because only a bit of it was taken each month??!?!?

No One wants to write software for something with no market share ether.

If that were true then we'd never have gotten any console after the NES. Because no new console would come out as it had no games, and no new generation of games would come out as there was no new console.

Don't give me that chicken or the egg bullshit, Publishers and hardware developers can cooperate to have hardware and software come onto the market at the same time as with most console launches there is a launch line-up and very often bundled games.

"Your logic for your Utopia is completely devoid of Economic Reality."

Coming from the guy who doesn't realise that they are simply paying for their smartphone by instalments is somehow a loss-leader that requires high licencing fees that's only possible with competing platforms having petty exclusivity.

 

[bgwelk]

Yahtzee is absolutely right about the console wars. Movies, TV and music have already developed to the point where anyone can pick up a recording device and share their art on any medium, whereas gaming is still behind in the sense that my independent game can't be universally played on a major console. It's the reason iOS games are starting to look like the more innovative ones in the gaming world. Anyone can design an app and market it on the App Store, and many of these games are daring in the way they experiment with new ways to use the iPad's functionality, either in arcade games, puzzlers or more detailed action/adventure games. It's getting to the point where there are only a handful of exclusive console games anyway, and a person who is selecting a new console is deciding based on whether they feel they want a cheap, family friendly device like the Wii, a sophisticated piece of hardware like the PS3 or something well rounded like the 360. The games themselves aren't the issue. If gaming wants to be perceived as an art form, it has to be somewhat democratized and open sourced. We're no longer living in a world where there are only 5 big movie studios, 3 TV stations or record labels, and we should stop acting as if there can only be three options for gaming.

 

[ex275w]

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.

Let's just say that most people who make use of ROMs don't own or even know how to dump the BIOS, and most of the ones who create ROMs also don't lose the original game copy.

 

[Catrixa]

Urgh, as much as I loathe the idea, I think Apple has cemented the lock-customers-to-your-product strategy as the way the world is going to work from now on. Yeah, consoles started this trend first, but Apple did it on such a huge scale that I don't think you could pitch Yahtzee's idea without getting laughed out of the conference room, before being kicked out of the building. Then being shot. Having a customer base that isn't loyal because they like you, but because they have to be loyal (you spend $300 for the device, maybe $500 for games, and unless you're a gaming enthusiast, you're not switching), is literally a money farm that isn't affected by weather. The only time you'd lose money is when no one is buying anything, even from your competitors. The only thing that really keeps the consoles from being truly Apple is the lack of backwards compatibility. At the end of each console cycle you can switch, because your old game collection won't work on ANY other device.

Come to think of it, this is probably another reason for sequel spam. Want to find out what happens next? Better buy our new console!

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Yep, I want games consoles to be more like DVD players. Region-locked monstrosities from a bygone age.

...And as a European player, who needs all those American / Japanese games anyway? I still get my Minecraft!

 

[Batou667]

The DVD player analogy would break down if DVDs came in different technical specifications that required progressively better hardware to run - like games do.

Xbox 360 is as powerful today in 2013 as it was when it launched in 2005.

The only changes to Xbox 360 have been to make it cheaper to manufacture, lower power consumption and peripheral changes like adding internal Wifi and a new Hard-drive and a fancy new looking box. It still runs software in the EXACT SAME WAY. The vital technical specifications are UNCHANGED!

Console technology moves forwards in big leaps like the leap from DVD to Blu-ray. But console has the equivalent of blu-ray and HD-DVD selling in the same market yet you can play HD-DVD on blu-ray players, nor Blu-ray on HD-DVD players and you can't jsut choose one as so many movies are exclusive to either Blu-ray or HD-DVD.

Look at how much Xbox 360 has kept up to spite using tech that wasn't even top-of-the-line in 2005.

True, and that's why I don't think unrealistic to say that SOME DAY the jumps between generations won't be worth it any more. The cynical part of me says we may already be there (with the recent news that PS4 and Xbox 360 "may not offer better graphics" - so why release new consoles!?) Xbox 360 and PS3 games are already pretty damn good graphically, who knows what more we could wring from the hardware if developers were encouraged to optimise their code rather than plan for the "next gen".

But then again, what if somebody had decided this at the start of the last generation? Imagine we were still playing new releases on original Xbox and PS2-level hardware up to this day. Think of all the great experiences we'd be missing out on.

Does this mean a new console every 7 years until photorealism is achieved? I sincerely hope not. I think one or two more generations are inevitable and maybe even a good thing. But I welcome the day games become cross-platform and we can focus on the quality of the software rather than this silly hardware arms-race.

 

[medv4380]

"Your logic for your Utopia is completely devoid of Economic Reality."

Coming from the guy who doesn't realise that they are simply paying for their smartphone by instalments is somehow a loss-leader that requires high licencing fees that's only possible with competing platforms having petty exclusivity.

Says the guy too foolish to realize that Selling a console at a lose is the exact same dame thing. Just that the Console maker has an incentive to continue to make games, or they won't get their money back. I prefer the penalty to be on their end anyways since it being on the consumer end results in poor service.

I'm also not saying that their aren't people out their who won't spend 500$ on an unlocked smart phone. Heck, I'm one of them. I spent 500$ for an Unlocked Nexus One despite the fact that I could have got one for 200$ with only a 100$ early termination fee. However, most people don't have that kind of money to toss around.

 

[Theminimanx]

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.

EA has bought Crytek, it's just that Farcry wasn't part of that deal. But they do own the Cryengine.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

So essentially, he's talking about turning game consoles into base level gaming computers... Considering the price tag the PS3 came out at, you probably could have built or found, with enough searching, a bottom level gaming computer. The nice thing about computers is that you can upgrade them constantly, so you don't fall behind the times so long as you have enough to drop 80 bucks here and there.

 

[DiamanteGeeza]

If anything, it was more exotic and harder to use than the PS3's architecture. The PS2 succeeded despite difficulties of developers in extracting its power. The Xbox and Dreamcast were both much simpler to develop for, and the gamecube was marginally easier (aside from the quaint memory model.)

As someone who has developed on every machine you mention (and many more), the PS2 was absolutely not harder to use than the PS3. At the time it was a shock, because we were used to writing code for a very different style of architecture, but for those of us who grew up writing assembly language, it was manageable. A pain the ass, and much cursed and cussed at, yes, but manageable, certainly in later years. The PS3 was less of a shock in the direction they took after PS2, but is many times more complex. The PS3 is harder to develop for than the PS2 was, I'm afraid.

And just for the record: the Dreamcast was fine, the Xbox was a pain because the components and specs kept changing, but MS had decent dev tools, and the Gamecube, despite being underpowered, was a joy to develop for (not marginally easier - an absolute breeze) - super simple architecture. It's just a shame that the dev tools were so bad!

And I realize this is OT, so apologies!

 

[Jfswift]

I wonder if the 90s are going to come back in the way of "add-ons", where if you want to play a game from the previous generation, you have to plug in a module that plays that game.

I should take a picture of my Frankenstein Sega monstrosity, with the cd unit, 32x and master system plate all pieced together at once. XD

 

[Dryk]

I'd like to point out that running games on PCs doesn't solve this problem. Try getting a copy of Myst to run on any recent computer without crashing every five minutes. We are constantly losing our old experiences... and it really upsets me

 

[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.

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...

Well, yes. It would definitely hurt console sales, and I believe many consoles actually start making a profit late into their lifecycle.

I was more wondering about the end of a console's lifecycle. If you aren't going to make, say PS2 consoles anymore and have no plans for backward-compatibility on your new consoles, why not crank out the PC emulator and sell it for $60? If they could pull off the graphics enhancements the homebrew emulators like ePSXe are capable of it would be an easy purchase for people with modern PCs and lots of old games.

 

[JudgeGame]

I'd like to point out that running games on PCs doesn't solve this problem. Try getting a copy of Myst to run on any recent computer without crashing every five minutes. We are constantly losing our old experiences... and it really upsets me

Myst has never crashed on my PC. I've had several versions over the last years. Also, nowadays there are vast libraries of ROM hacks preserving the majority of decent games from all the obsolete console generations. I think it's a nice gesture to go to the trouble of organizing and maintaining them.

 

[Simca]

Well, at least the PS2 being abandoned (and not sent to fiery torment) means that the PS3 won't be abandoned. I've been planning on getting a PS3 this year, since PSPlus is a good deal as opposed to Xbox Live Gold.

Oh, I'm just playing into their hands. All of their hands, in fact. What about the poor family with only one television with members who want to try different experiences? What if the older son wants to play Gears of War, the younger daughter wants to play Little Big Planet, and the parents want to play Mario together? Too bad, they can't, because only one console can fit in their budget or even their living room. THAT, my fellow readers, is why this console war should end.

But... if a poor family can only afford one TV, why would they waste money on buying a gaming console to begin with?

It turns out (and this may blow some minds here) that you actually don't need more than one TV set in a household.

 

[Marik Bentusi]

Y'know if we standardized consoles and devs would just compete over the best hardware under the hood or most comfy controllers, we'd probably end up with a PC with a gamepad, wouldn't we? Kind of the Steam Box, but with the absence of Linux software restrictions Valve dreams of.

 

[vortalism]

I think the next generation of consoles need not worry about the controller. As a wise man once said (on this very website) [paraphrased] "controllers are a perfectly apt medium of connecting man to machine by way of thumbs." Even as a PC gamer, I understand why my console friends like their controllers the way they are, despite me getting cramps after 2 hours of play (I've got really big hands). What I believe the evolution of the console entails is the way games are networked and distributed to us-- the software which gives greater ease and betterment to our gaming experience. From what I've seen OnLive is a good step in the right direction, not perfect by any means, but a step. We need more new ideas for both connectivity and just good digital distribution on consoles, and none of that DRM bullshit. However I doubt we'll ever get rid of that anytime soon...

 

[kazriko]

As someone who has developed on every machine you mention (and many more), the PS2 was absolutely not harder to use than the PS3. At the time it was a shock, because we were used to writing code for a very different style of architecture, but for those of us who grew up writing assembly language, it was manageable. A pain the ass, and much cursed and cussed at, yes, but manageable, certainly in later years. The PS3 was less of a shock in the direction they took after PS2, but is many times more complex. The PS3 is harder to develop for than the PS2 was, I'm afraid.

And just for the record: the Dreamcast was fine, the Xbox was a pain because the components and specs kept changing, but MS had decent dev tools, and the Gamecube, despite being underpowered, was a joy to develop for (not marginally easier - an absolute breeze) - super simple architecture. It's just a shame that the dev tools were so bad!

And I realize this is OT, so apologies!

Hah. Specs and components changing would only be a problem for the early titles.

You're right, I was being a bit hyperbolic on the PS2 being harder than the PS3, but they are a very similar arch, with the PS3 just having a lot more, and more freedom, which meant more challenges with moving data around rather than a nice clear pipeline through the 3 cores to the GPU. I was more thinking about the GPU on the two, with the PS3 using a really standard PC derived gpu, while the PS2's GS was just odd.

In any case, treating it as a war is bad, we should just be treating it like competition for developers and consumers. I still think that a complete lack of competition would lead to stagnation...