22nd February 2014, 11:44 PM
Weltall Wrote:Well, that's sort of the problem. The consoles don't do anything unique. The differences between them have always been entirely arbitrary, and any of them would be capable of doing anything its competitors can do.Consoles always do something or other unique that their competitors don't, actually. I can't think of any which are exactly the same. Yeah, the PS3/360 and PS4/XO do seem more similar than past consoles, but even they have their differences.
Quote:Reality is the unfortunate wall my idea can't scale. :cYeah, there'd be less money from hardware sales -- no people would need multiple boxes, so very few people buying systems from multiple console companies, as they do now. Software license revenue may or may not be lower, depending on how the probably impossible to work out system would work, but that could well be lower too, unless they could manage to grow the market a lot. Now, every console generation so far has had more total sales than the last one, but that may or may not hold up this time... it's looking tough, but it's too early to know for sure. But on that note, the competition from tablets, smartphones, and the PC, streaming devices (if any succeed), and Steambox (if that takes off sometime) is getting tougher. I don't know if having only one system would help in that regard, or hurt... could go either way? Maybe it'd be the same there, not sure.
Quote:But, I don't think we really have competition that helps consumers, most of whom are oblivious to the subtle differences between consoles and just want to play games. Except, to be able to play any game they want, they have to own three different consoles.Well, most people just buy one. Sure they miss out on games, but it's not like most anyone buys all the good games they might be interested in on the console they do have anyway!
Quote:Besides which, from my perspective, the industry has been stagnant for a long time. The rampant sequelitis we see in game software is not the result of runaway innovation. And, for what innovation there is, we don't need a triopoly to sustain it. Nintendo's been the only one who has made any effort to actually change how games are played with the Wii and WiiU, but the Wii seems to be treated as something of a passe fad and hardly anyone cares about its descendant.Between Sony and Microsoft, even if the two are similar, though, I think that, as I sai,d having competition does help the industry. If they were both on the same standard, what would be stopping them from just pricing things higher, PC-style? It's not like people would have a choice. I guess that would reduce total sales, but if they could make more money... and considering how much they've raised prices over the past decade, I imagine they'd be even more tempted to do that even more if they didn't have someone else to compete with! Who knows if you'd see as good first party libraries from any of the three companies, either, if they didn't need exclusives to sell their consoles... you'd probably see even safer game libraries, if that is even possible. Nintendo would be hurt worst by that for sure, but it'd probably affect Sony and MS at least somewhat.
But really, the biggest problem with your idea is that consoles are closed systems. One company controls what is released, like with Apple phones and tablets. You cannot have multiple companies sharing one closed system, I just can't see it working! And if you open the system, that's just a PC by another name, and that brings in compatibility issues, massive gluts of bad games (phones have this now, but consoles don't because console companies control what can be released), etc.
On another note, of course, it is true that game variety now is down versus the past, both on PC and consoles. There used to be lots of variety, but that was when game budgets were a lot lower. These days, when one bad bet can take down an entire developer, it's understandable that developers and publishers are acting safer and focusing more on things they know will sell. They want to reduce their chances of going out of business, in a time when so many have gone under...
Quote:As for the others, the XB1 and the PS4 are definitely not anybody's idea of paradigm-breakers, are they? They're just the 360 and PS3 with some incremental upgrades and a handful of new functions, same as the 360 and PS3 were to the Xbox and PS2, and the PS2 to the PS1.That's kind of true, but many systems have been mostly just incremental upgrades -- think of the SNES, for instance. And both do add some new things, even if many of them aren't too useful for games... (all the social media stuff, sharing, etc.)
Quote:As a gamer, I don't see a problem with that.I think the PC model is the better one overall for sure, but it does definitely require a more informed consumer more willing to spend more time choosing hardware and games. Plenty of people don't want to spend that kind of time.