Tekken Dev Wants One-Console Future

[Space Jawa]

List of things that will happen about the same time we see a long-term one-console market: Cubs win the world series; Israel and Palestine make nice, hug, and work things out peacefully; Rule 34 comes to an end.

The only way we'll get to a one-console future is if the governments of the world all fall and the new One World Order dictates a single console, or if two drop out of the market and leave only one standing. And even if two drop out, what is there to stand in the way of a new competitor jumping in and making it a two-console market again?

Sony already almost teamed up with Nintendo and got burned, which is why they're in the market in the first place. Both Sony and Microsoft have different visions for their consoles than Nintendo has for theirs - Sony and Microsoft view their consoles as means to an end of taking over home entertainment, Nintendo is a game company that's focused on machines without a great deal of unnecessary features. Then you have Microsoft's expensive Xbox Live vs. the largely free Nintendo system and whatever Sony's got going for them. And that's just a start of what problems you'd have to get past.

The idea of all three coming to an agreement on a single console that works for all three is a pipe dream, nothing more. And even if they could work out the differences, the one-console market would only work until a fourth party decided they wanted to get in on the competition and introduce a second console, at which point you'd be back to square one.

Like oldtaku said, the Sega and Nintendo comparison is a very poor analogy. Sega was out of the console market and downgraded to a 3rd party company for years before they made a game that combined their respective mascots. Wouldn't have happened if Sega was still making consoles in addition to games.

 

[Doom972]

Pretty bad idea. One console means less consumer choice, thus less overall satisfaction, and with no competition whatsoever, prices could soar, and consumers would essentially be at the "big three"'s mercy.
Nothing wrong with those companies working together once in a while, but the "one console" idea just spells disaster from my point of view.

They fix the prices anyway. It's $60 per game, regardless of content. Many consumers have to buy more than one console to get all the games that they like.

What about a single console that anyone can make games for? The console makers make the console and the game makers make games for it independently. This way there will be true competition.

 

[ZephrC]

See, I've been saying this forever.

I'm sorry, but the idea that somehow having three different consoles to buy is making video games better is just complete and utter bullshit.

That's like saying there's less creativity in movies because we only have Blu-ray for our fancy HD viewings. It just doesn't even begin to make sense in any way, and I don't understand why everyone seems to just assume it's true of video games when it clearly isn't true of any other medium.

 

[Easton Dark]

I'd love it. Microsoft handles online and interface, Sony handles the hardware, and Nintendo handles game certification (Notice how games on the Wii run so well so reliably?) and the gimmicks.

If it wasn't for the monopoly and customer abuse to follow that I'd be all for it.

Damn right, you know when you see Nintendo's seal of quality on a game it has to be great.

Wait let me zoom out on that...

Spoiler

All right, all right, but come on. They have a better track record than Sony or Microsoft with their Fallouts and such.

 

[Pearwood]

Good idea, never gonna happen. A console designed by Nintendo using Microsoft hardware and with Sony quality control would be pretty much ideal, put together Nintendo's creativity and Microsoft's technical specs then have Sony make sure it doesn't explode for no apparent reason. Also one of the other two should be under contract to punch Microsoft in the face if they mention the words "subscription fee".

 

[duchaked]

well that's fitting for the dev since I've always felt fighting games were of a one-aspect of gaming sorta deal.

 

[Easton Dark]

Right, cause they've never tried something that advanced or amazing. I'll remind you, there wasn't a single crash-prone game in existence on the Ps2.

Come to think of it, there weren't that many famously bad games on the Ps2 either. Stuff like Aquaman or Kabuki Warriors was all on the Gamecube and Xbox. In fact, Sony stopped a lot of crap getting through.

Sony has not continued that tradition, sadly. I wish they had. Nintendo still does a great job at it, so I go with them.

 

[Hagi]

I'm still surprised that people see consoles as something radically different from PCs, tablets and smartphones.

They're all pretty much exactly the same thing except for the OS running on it. They all have CPUs from exactly the same small number of manufacturers, they all have motherboards from exactly the same small number of manufacturers etc.

Physically speaking they're pretty much just different sized versions of each other. There might be a few very, very minor pieces of hardware unique to each device but all of those are ancillary, they don't form part of the core of the machine, and thus can easily be attached to any other device. Just like we can attach headsets to PCs and essentially use them as phones.

These guys don't need to work together on yet another closed platform that attempts an arbitrary link between software and hardware that does not actually exist. These guys need to start making open platforms.

They don't need to work with each other. They need to work with the hardware manufacturers to create their software (because that's all they're creating, the hardware is not made by them) that can run on any strong enough piece of hardware.

 

[Zepherus14]

Pretty bad idea. One console means less consumer choice, thus less overall satisfaction, and with no competition whatsoever, prices could soar, and consumers would essentially be at the "big three"'s mercy.
Nothing wrong with those companies working together once in a while, but the "one console" idea just spells disaster from my point of view.

^ Ya pretty much what this guy said, with one console it would be a lot easier to simply jack of the prices even more.

 

[Guffe]

Could work out.
Probably won't.
Everyone wants to be the big dog and get all the cash.

 

[Aircross]

Need a one-console future?

Why not PC?

It can theoretically do anything.

It can play console games with the right emulator, it can use console controllers (including motion plus.)

 

[darksakul]

So... Ouya?

Or the Playbox U 420: cuz he got some high hopes.

Hell yeah the Ouya

I'd love it. Microsoft handles online and interface, Sony handles the hardware, and Nintendo handles game certification (Notice how games on the Wii run so well so reliably?) and the gimmicks.

If it wasn't for the monopoly and customer abuse to follow that I'd be all for it.

Nintedo, Game certification? Are you trolling? Nintendo besides 1st party games have mostly shovel-ware.

I'd love it. Microsoft handles online and interface, Sony handles the hardware, and Nintendo handles game certification (Notice how games on the Wii run so well so reliably?) and the gimmicks.

If it wasn't for the monopoly and customer abuse to follow that I'd be all for it.

Damn right, you know when you see Nintendo's seal of quality on a game it has to be great.

Wait let me zoom out on that...

Spoiler

I agree all that seal means its Licensed by Nintendo, there no actual grantee of quality.

And if you think the N64 Superman game was bad, try looking at the NES Superman game.

If anything Sony should buy-out Nintendo and let the Nintendo brand fall into obscurity.
Along with the dozen or so series Nintendo keep on remaking.

 

[Adon Cabre]

Yeah, great idea. In fact, with one console, we can portion out the $ to each developer in order to, well, like Obama said, "share the wealth".

When did he ever, in his life, say that? No, not words you think are synomymous with those words, those exact words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUvwKVvp3-o

I slightly misquoted, but it's just as jarring. Again, this comes from three years back, and it's in a memory bank partitioned off for joker politicians like Mr. One-Term here. Actually, I'm joking, there's no candidate in sight to beat him. He'll win in November easily.

You can listen to all of it, but trust me, he says: "SPREAD THE WEALTH".

Transcript
http://familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1465/pub_detail.asp