If someone loses we all lose.

It's not news to anyone that frequents any major video games site, that there are people who want certain consoles/companies to fail. Why? Well that's a question for psychologists to answer, but reasons given include "Company A is arrogant and rips off consumers", "I had a bad experience with Console B" and "Company C is taking technology/gaming in a direction I disagree with"

Of course some of these accusations are legitimate, in part, maybe Sony only added the Blue-Ray to the PS3 as a way of winning another format war, RROD is certainly a problem that has effected a number of consumers, and the Wii is currently home to a pile of shovelware (alongside some classic titles).

However the failure of one of these companies, whilst giving some people an ego boost, would not be beneficial for anyone who views themself as a gamer.

Competition is part of what makes a market healthy, it lowers costs and improves quality, and this is why there are laws against monopolies. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo must compel us to purchase their products. To do this they must be cheaper, more powerful or offer more features. Nintendo's Wii arguably only exists because the company was failing to compete in the traditonal console field, and was forced to look for a new way to revitalise their sales, thus giving us motion controls.

Failure can mean a number of things for a company in the games industry, for massive companies with multiple divisions like Sony, a company can handle the loss of a generation, especially if other sections remain profitable. The same goes for Microsoft, who have shelled out £1 billion on warranty extension, and can still continued with gusto. Nintendo could afford to lose two console wars and still fight on.

In the credit crunch, things look a little different. Sony is making money from the Playstation brand, but the other departments aren't looking too happy. Microsoft, who have a much bigger bank balance, have cut prices aggressively, but in other areas are finding their dominance is not as total as it once was. Nintendo, benefiting from the fact that they are basically a video games company and nothing else, are sitting back on the Wii's profits, with little worry.

If Sony was to close it's games division (which is massively unlikely), we wouldn't see a suddenly perfect microsoft console emerge and in fact Microsoft would have less reason to provide a compelling new console, so long as they had the only option in the HD gaming market. Maybe a new Nintendo HD console would attempt to move into the gap created in Japan but I still can't see Microsoft becoming the dominant force without a lot of support from Japanese developers. We would however see the disappearance of at least one of two well know gaming franchises, as Microsoft would not pick up all the old PS3 exclusives, mostly due to the fact that it would be able to shift more of it's own IPs instead. We would also see the end of competition in the handhled market.

In the even more unlikely event that Microsoft decided not to produce another Xbox, we would probably see a shift in the type of games being made, and a return to Japan being the world centre of console gaming. I'm a person who values variety in my games collection and as much as I enjoy JRPGs, it has been refreshing to see a more western style of games being developed in the last few years.

Hypothetically if Nintendo went bankrupt due to the wii suddenly losing it's messiac popularity overnight, we would be left with only the two traditional consoles again, would other companies rush to copy a feature that failed? I think not.

So far I have only really been refering to hardware, as that is what the console war is really based around, but the same rules apply to software.

If all of EA's new IPs fail, then they will simply give us the rehashed versions of Madden and Fifa each year. New IPs cost more, development costs are what sink most designers.. If LBP flops then why would a company try something similar on the Xbox360? The answer is they wouldn't, because the target demographic is the same.

We are being told that the video games market is very robust, but even GTA doesn't seem to be pulling in enough money to make it's publisher Take Two a profit. Free Radical made many good games that were successful sales wise, one bad egg in Haze, and they shut their doors. The video games industry can still be a cruel mistress.

Failures of hardware or software can sometimes ensure that we do not have to put up with poor quality, but the sentiment of fanboys in the console wars goes beyond that, they would rather see good games on other systems fail, and when we, the consumers don't buy the great stuff, why would designers bother to give us any?

[serena217]

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