Sessler Tackles the Question of Only One Console in this Week’s Soapbox
By Ron on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 1:02 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony
As you may recall, David Jaffe joined the folks who’ve been calling for a single, unified console platform, making the hue and cry sufficient to get Adam Sessler talking about the idea on his weekly Soapbox piece.
I tend to agree with a lot of the points that Adam makes in this piece, especially where he says that competition between the console manufacturers is a good thing. If we reduce the field of consoles down to one, whether it’s a a conglomerate production or not, that competition is completely removed. What possible motive for innovation could a company have if there’s no competition to drive them towards it?
I do believe that the quality of games overall would increase, simply because developers could become intimately familiar with one piece of hardware, and then wring the very best they could out of it.
However, in the long run, a unified console would be, at least in my mind, a profound loss for gamers everywhere.
Instead of always parroting the “no competition” argument, how about a little critical thinking here?
Has the PC market evolved since IBM introduced the PC in 1981? USB, Firewire, AGP, PCI… the list of innovations goes on and on. Yet that’s a standardized market. If I buy a piece of software for my Dell, I don’t have to buy it again if I get a Compaq for my next computer.
How about televisions? We’ve got DLP, plasma, LCD, LCoS, they come in a variety of sizes. Yet they all play the same TV shows (for the most part, HD issues notwithstanding). The point is, I don’t have to switch content providers just because I bought a new TV.
How about DVD players? We first got progressive scan players, followed by upscaling players. Then players came along that would play DVD+R and DVD-R. Then DVD-Audio and SACD playback was integrated into some players. Yet when I rent a movie from Hollywood I don’t need to first go to the Denon section to make sure the movie will play on my machine.
Standardization has eventually appeared in almost every high-tech industry, and it hasn’t killed competition. I wish people would stop holding up competition like it’s some golden goose. How exactly has the HD-DVD/Blu-ray competition benefited you, the consumer? There are plenty of ways companies can compete. It can be based on features or quality for example. If your Microsoft XPS360Box went RRoD on you, you might decided to pick up the Sony PS3Box60 next time. Do you honestly think the RRoD would have been as big a problem if you could have bought a competing version of the console that would play all the same games and use the same peripherals?